Tips for requesting Customer Service from a seller

[Pamela Galli]

Many sellers have tens of thousands of customers and need to handle customer service issues as quickly as possible, but find they must often play twenty questions to find out the information they need do do so. For the fastest solution to your problem or question:

 

Read the seller's profile first. Follow any instructions there.

Go straight to telling the name of the product, when it was purchased, a detailed description of the problem and when it first ocurred, and what you have already tried on your own. 

The product owner should make the request himself, not through a friend, unless the owner does not speak the seller's language. 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Great tips.  I would only add this:  READ THE INSTRUCTION NOTECARD before contacting the creator, if one came with the product.  Many 'problems' will be resolved if you do this and you won't have to wait for the creator to respond.

[Bobbie Faulds]

Here are the steps I follow..

Make a copy of your transaction from your Dashboard.

State exactly what the problem is. DON'T just say, I have a problem. Same for a request...State what you want.

BE POLITE. Nothing annoys a creator/seller than someone that is rude and Irate before they've had a chance to even look at a problem. I've had items missing, especially in fatpacks before the advent of texture change huds. I politely had my transaction at the start of the card and then stated exactly what's missing. Usually, in less than 48 hour, it's fixed. When you're a creator and packing the boxes for sale, sometimes things get missed no matter how often your double check. Everyone is human.

If something doesn't work as expected, read any notecards that come with it. I've had a couple of DUH moments when I've gone back and reread notecards. With my applier clothing, to get the look you have to place things on the right layer. I include a notecard that tells you this as well as put it into the description.

Do check the seller's profile. Most reputable sellers will have listed if they are going to be unavailable and will either state they'll fix any problems when they return or have the name of a contact person listed.

Just keep calm, logical and polite. As a purchaser, I've only had a problem with one seller in 8+ years. You will run in to the occasional seller that isn't responsive. Just don't buy from them again. Their lack of customer service will come back to haunt them and will kill a business faster than anything else. Old axiom in business...a happy customer witll tell 5 people, an angry customer will tell 10.

[Sassy Romano]

Feel free to use any of the following templates in either IM or Notecard.  

BAD TEMPLATES (free for use):-

(To use these most effectively, first found out if the merchant prefers IM's or notecards).  To really wind a merchant up, if they ask for IM's only, send a notecard and if they ask for notecards because their IM's are capped (that's an easy one to solve but moving on), send an IM and **bleep** that you got no response by leaving a bad review on MP)

"Hi, you there?" - This one is highly effective at getting no response or if the merchant has IM's to email, may elicit a response of "no"

"Can u help me?" - This is a perfect one to use when the merchant is offline.  This is a real priority getter.  Clearly you're in trouble, your life is on hold and the merchant will log in immediatley to attend.

"ur product dont wurk" - Merchants have a long list of solutions to this one, the list is exponential in size based upon the number of products that they sell, more so if the products are technical in nature.  Merchants will enjoy spending 3 or more days in IM's to email checking each solution against the unknown problem with the undeclared product.

"I bought <item> for a friend and they didn't get it" - it's no trouble at all for the merchant to drink a vile of mana and cast a spell to magically know a) what the item was and b) what your friends name is.  Your friend will most certainly receive their product within four minutes.

"I don't understand the instructions" - Merchants will drop everything to re-write the instructions, even if they can't determine from this message whether it's the meaning of the instructions or the language they're written in.

"I am Master Thorius and I command my slaves to use your product, one of them is having problems but is not allowed to speak to strangers, you a a stranger and so you must deal with me" - Yeah this one is great, merchants may claim otherwise but they secretly LOVE a good roleplay (Pamela especially) and will relish nothing more than the prospect of spending the next three hours in third person para roleplay trying first to shop for appropriate apparel for the role play region, then to find a good horse to get from the arrival TP location at the tavern to traversing the narrow river crossing, solving the enroute riddles before finally arriving at the masters house, whereupon the enthusiastic merchant will now immerse themselves fully in your roleplay to resolve the problem with your Mark 5 Light Sabre that doesn't work in the script disabled Gor sim.  Awesome!  They love it.

"Your product doesn't do what I want it to, can I have the scripts modify?" - no problem, there's no intellectual property at all in scripts, the merchant will rez that complex object and change all the permissions in nested objects just so that you can make a competing version or otherwise compromise IP.

"you suck!" - yes, frequently, moving on...

The thing I bought wasn't delivered by MP, I'm leaving a bad review - Yes!  another one that merchants love because although even Linden Lab claim to own the delivery process and even though Linden Lab tell you how to resolve redelivery problems by filing a Support Case (if the merchant can't or won't help)... guess what?  IT'S ALL LIES!  Yes really.  For a long time, merchants got together to build the Marketplace and completely own all the infrastructure for it that sits inside of Linden Lab data centres, it's quite a result of world wide collaboration indeed.  Leaving a bad review for something you didn't get is like leaving a bad review about how a car drives that you don't own, it's really empowering and gets you noticed.

Please and Thank You! - merchants are your servants, there's no need to be polite, after all you gave them your money right?!

(Sarcasm aside, i'm English, it's in our culture to be polite, please and thank you isn't assumed, it's expected and goes a long way to a good dialogue.  You can leave it out but don't be surprised if the response is curt.  Please and Thank You don't cost you anything, feel free to give them away, even in SL these phrases are mod/copy/transfer.)

(Second point on this, as a merchant, if someone has paid money then regardless of whether it's $1 US or L$250, there is a value associated with it and I do subscribe to the expectation that a merchant responds no matter what the L$ cost, when funds change hands, there's a reasonable expectation that some value is received in return by the purchaser.  If the merchant cannot resolve, they're not under obligation to do so but equally one hears a common response of "it only cost you $1 get over it, muted!".  If the product is faulty, either fix, replace or refund, it's not rocket science).

GOOD TEMPLATE

Hi! I purchased <item> from

• inworld [   ]
• Marketplace [   ]

Transaction details <insert them if the merchants asks for them, not all do>

The problem that i'm having is that I performed <action>  (put here what you did, include any steps leading to the issue)

The expected result was <what you wanted to happen>  (this may be obvious but include it anyway)

But what happened was <what actually happened> (yep, this is the biggie, put here what actually happened, try to keep to the facts but don't skimp on detail, just don't waffle.)

(If there's a redelivery terminal, try to get a replacement first and see if the same problem exists, if it does include the detail that you obtained a redelivery).

Chances are that the merchant has probably seen this before and will immediately know what the issue is and will be happy to resolve but it's a pretty boring solution even if you are the proud owner of a Mark 5 light sabre in a Gor sim.

LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Assuming that the merchant understands only English, please don't feel the need to apologise for what you feel is bad English.  I hereby apologise that any 12 month old child will beat me at any non English language that I try.  I guarantee that your attempt at English will be far above any of my attempts to speak your language.  Use the good template above and either fill in the statements in your own language, Google is usually accurate enough if you write properly in your own language, or do your best but write enough to allow the merchant to piece together enough broken English to make sense.  (This paragraph is actually meaningless as it probably won't be understood by anyone who needs to read it).

 

[Pamela Galli]

Excellent tips from all, hopefully a couple people read them.

My dream is some system like Casper has, where an IM to him takes you to a support ticket on his website. People are more likely to actually state the issue up front. Of course if they are hell bent on sending a #%*$ notecard they could circumvent it.

I have my profile set up with help picks and links to my FAQ and support pages. On IMing me ppl are asked to read profile (which begs for no notecards), and receive a NC with questions i need the answers to in order to address a problem. When an IM goes to email they receive a message to read my profile, with website help links. My kitchens come with a HUD given three different times/ ways, that links to a website with instructions and pictures. And so on.

Why all this? Because in SL the longer you are in business the more stuff out there you are responsible for providing customer service for, the larger your customer base, and the more time you spend not just servicing your products but explaining how SL works and doesnt work. I would say 20% of CS requests actually have anything to do with my products or anything I have any control over. And I am happy to help, but sometimes a bit despairing that the time I have to make things gets eaten up.

 

 

[Dillon Levenque]

Now that I've stopped laughing, I do actually have a suggestion for merchants (although I suspect I'm preaching to the choir with the group of same in this thread).

I purchased a gift on MP. My friend never received the item. After we waited a few days I contacted the merchant (can't remember by which method but it was the one requested) and explained what happened, including transaction numbers, item number/description, and recipient's name. I included a comment that the recipient was well acquainted with SL and had checked all the likely places. Next day or so, my friend logged in and IM'd me to say she'd gotten the gift. So everything was taken care of properly.

However, I really would have appreciated an IM from the merchant telling me that. Just a one-liner—"Gift Re-delivered"—would have been fine. I know it's an extra step and I know there's no real need for it, but feedback does make a difference in how I feel about a merchant.

[Tamara Artis]

Nice tips! But no use since people who are supposed to see them do not read product descriptions or notecards, profiles etc., don't bother to try demos and demand an instant service. 

[Pamela Galli]

---

Tamara Artis wrote:

Nice tips! But no use since people who are supposed to see them do not read product descriptions or notecards, profiles etc., don't bother to try demos and demand an instant service. 

---

True. But today I got this miracle of a request, in IM to email, from someone who seems to have read my first profile pick explaining what info I need:

 

 "Hi Pamela, I purchased the BISTRO Dining Table 4 - Tan Wicker about 2 months ago, Just today, I was resetting the props on the table when I got a script error, BISTRO Dining Table 4 - Tan Wicker [script:[iDZ] Menu v2.5.6 4-2-2014 rolig] Script run-time error

Too Many Listens. I took the table back in my inventory and re rezzed it, still got the error, i even relogged. Can you please help? thank you"

 

A miracle! I told her a script reset would fix it, and it did.

 

---  ETA Then I got two emails each saying New Note.