LGK
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2007
- Messages
- 2,975
I do think that the vendor''s email customer service rep could have been a clearer as to why they couldn''t meet the needs of the customer- the professional photo shoot thing at least explains their method a little. I''m glad that a Topazery president posted that info... however, I''m surprised that the emails didn''t include it in the first place, as they were pretty terse and wrote the sale off amazingly quickly.
As a customer, even if it seems irksome initially, it is probably good to know that there''s no need to spend any more time pursuing a sale and to move on- less wasted time all around.
As someone who has worked with selling antiques over the internet on a website in the past, I do know you get TONS of weird questions- signal to noise ratio on email customer service selling antique, one-of-a-kind type items is terrible; I''d say you get one serious question for every ten or twenty non-spam emails, and of those serious questions, you then do an enormous amount of work to make the occasional sale. While in an ideal world, the email customer service person would keep this frustration to themselves, as obviously it isn''t the fault of the real, actual customer that it can be an utterly frustrating job, wellllll... we are human. I have occasionally told a customer not to purchase an item. Usually that point is reached (for me) after a dozen emails and a bunch of research books opened and many pics sent, but I do admit I''ve done it... perhaps with a little more tact I hope, but maybe not.
While it isn''t to excuse their abruptness, that''s probably the *why* of it, anyway. She probably just answered about twenty emails asking "can you appraise my X for free?" in various sneaky ways, often phrased as "I want a better pic of this" (with the unstated second half of that question often being "to see if it is just like my thing").
I think a good way for Topazery to improve would be for them to make SURE they have head on photos- that''s so essential for selling antique cuts, and for judging eye cleanliness. At least they have a good number of high res photos otherwise. That would cut down a lot on the questions asking for pics, I''m sure.
Also a little more info on the "no more pics" thing to pass on to customers would be good at minimum, but ideally I would rethink that policy for sure. Or perhaps to tell the customer, "call us to discuss this" to try to make sure they were only dealing with actual customers wanting more pics... because it shouldn''t be *that* hard to get someone to snap a few extras. I don''t expect to sell a Steuben vase without, say, a pic of the mark on the bottom, and if a customer asks me for a closeup of it I will send them one if they respond to my first email to them. That''s often my first method of testing how serious they are- many not-so-serious customers, or non-customers, won''t email you back when you reply to them and say "So, you wanted a pic of X?" (Perhaps there''s some thing preventing them from taking a quick pic easily, but dang it''s hard to sell antiques online without that ability!)
I''d also think that not jumping to the "please go shop somewhere else" thing quite so fast would be good. Unless there''s some info missing here, the customer came off to me as fairly serious from his email, and I, if I was their email rep, would have pursued it as a possible sale. Even if no more pics are possible, asking the customer to call would have been a good move instead. (IMHO. Perhaps their business model is completely different than the antique mall I work for, but I doubt it.)
And for what it''s worth (though I didn''t read any of the customer''s emails as snarky at all) as an email customer service rep, you NEED a thick skin for those types of things... emails can read as abrupt anyway and if you take a slightly terse email as offensive as a customer service rep, you''re in the wrong job for sure and will be furious all day long every day. (FWIW, I hated doing it, and now my husband does that job.) I would have been a bit floored by the response too, and asking some questions like he did seemed like a reasonable response to me.
As a customer, even if it seems irksome initially, it is probably good to know that there''s no need to spend any more time pursuing a sale and to move on- less wasted time all around.
As someone who has worked with selling antiques over the internet on a website in the past, I do know you get TONS of weird questions- signal to noise ratio on email customer service selling antique, one-of-a-kind type items is terrible; I''d say you get one serious question for every ten or twenty non-spam emails, and of those serious questions, you then do an enormous amount of work to make the occasional sale. While in an ideal world, the email customer service person would keep this frustration to themselves, as obviously it isn''t the fault of the real, actual customer that it can be an utterly frustrating job, wellllll... we are human. I have occasionally told a customer not to purchase an item. Usually that point is reached (for me) after a dozen emails and a bunch of research books opened and many pics sent, but I do admit I''ve done it... perhaps with a little more tact I hope, but maybe not.
While it isn''t to excuse their abruptness, that''s probably the *why* of it, anyway. She probably just answered about twenty emails asking "can you appraise my X for free?" in various sneaky ways, often phrased as "I want a better pic of this" (with the unstated second half of that question often being "to see if it is just like my thing").
I think a good way for Topazery to improve would be for them to make SURE they have head on photos- that''s so essential for selling antique cuts, and for judging eye cleanliness. At least they have a good number of high res photos otherwise. That would cut down a lot on the questions asking for pics, I''m sure.
Also a little more info on the "no more pics" thing to pass on to customers would be good at minimum, but ideally I would rethink that policy for sure. Or perhaps to tell the customer, "call us to discuss this" to try to make sure they were only dealing with actual customers wanting more pics... because it shouldn''t be *that* hard to get someone to snap a few extras. I don''t expect to sell a Steuben vase without, say, a pic of the mark on the bottom, and if a customer asks me for a closeup of it I will send them one if they respond to my first email to them. That''s often my first method of testing how serious they are- many not-so-serious customers, or non-customers, won''t email you back when you reply to them and say "So, you wanted a pic of X?" (Perhaps there''s some thing preventing them from taking a quick pic easily, but dang it''s hard to sell antiques online without that ability!)
I''d also think that not jumping to the "please go shop somewhere else" thing quite so fast would be good. Unless there''s some info missing here, the customer came off to me as fairly serious from his email, and I, if I was their email rep, would have pursued it as a possible sale. Even if no more pics are possible, asking the customer to call would have been a good move instead. (IMHO. Perhaps their business model is completely different than the antique mall I work for, but I doubt it.)
And for what it''s worth (though I didn''t read any of the customer''s emails as snarky at all) as an email customer service rep, you NEED a thick skin for those types of things... emails can read as abrupt anyway and if you take a slightly terse email as offensive as a customer service rep, you''re in the wrong job for sure and will be furious all day long every day. (FWIW, I hated doing it, and now my husband does that job.) I would have been a bit floored by the response too, and asking some questions like he did seemed like a reasonable response to me.
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