Contact a buyer using Buyer-Seller Messages
Buyer-Seller Messaging Permissions
The Buyer-Seller Messages page enables you to contact customers when you need more information to complete an order or to respond to customer service questions.
If more than one person in your business handles buyer communications, you will need to enable their email addresses before they can communicate with your buyers. To enable or block an address, go to the Messaging Permissions page.
On the Contact Buyer page, certain contact reasons will be available for you to select based on the order status and specific product categories.
To contact a buyer, follow these steps:
- On the Orders tab, select Manage Orders.
- Locate the order that you want to contact the buyer about.
- In the Order Details column, click the name of the buyer when it is available to open the Contact Buyer
- Do one of the following:
- Using your seller account: On the next page, select the contact reason, complete the message, and click Send.
- Using your email: In the To field on the Buyer-Seller Messages page, copy the buyer’s encrypted email address. Then go to your email and use this address to contact the buyer. The buyer still won’t be able to see your email address.
The above steps do not apply to Canceled Orders. For discrepancies or questions about the cancellation process, the buyer should contact Customer Service using the Contact Us form.
Delays: If your email provider delays sending messages to AlphaDiscounters, the Buyer-Seller Messages page will reflect this delay.
Rejected email: If you send an email to a buyer that doesn’t come from either your registered Buyer-Seller Messaging email address or from another approved email address, your message will be rejected. You can resend the message after you enable the email address you want to use. To enable or block an address, go to the Messaging Permissions page.
Buyer-Seller Messaging Permissions
If you have more than one person within your company handling buyer communications, you can approve or block their email addresses to communicate with the buyers using the Messaging Permissions tool on the Buyer-Seller Messages page.
Note: Email messages to the buyers not coming from the account’s registered email address on Buyer-Seller Messaging or from an authorized email address will be rejected. These email messages will need to be resent after authorizing the email address.
You can approve or block senders from the Messaging Permissions page.
The Messaging Permissions page displays the following:
- Email addresses of those within your company to whom you have granted access to send emails to the buyers through Buyer-Seller Messaging.
- Email addresses of those whom have not yet been approved or have been blocked from sending messages to buyers.
Email addresses can be personal email aliases as well as group email aliases (for example, the customer service department of your company).
To add an additional authorized email address or change the status of a current email address, follow these steps:
- Visit the Messaging Permissions page.
- Click +Add an email address at the bottom of the Email column.
- Input the email address and select the appropriate status from the Approved, Blocked, or Delete options.
- Click Save.
To change the status of a previously entered email address, follow these steps:
- Visit the Messaging Permissions page.
- Click Edit.
- To change an address from blocked to approved, click the radio button in the Approved column.
- To change an address from approved to blocked, click the radio button in the Blocked column.
- Click Save.
Note: You can approve an internal sender that was previously blocked or block an internal sender that was previously approved. However, you can’t delete the email address of an internal sender if it has already been approved or blocked.
Attachments up to 10 MB are allowed for messages sent from Seller Central for specific contact reasons. If you use your own email service (for example, Outlook), the 10 MB limit is for email text and any attachments combined.
You can send one or more attachments (up to 10 MB) in your replies to a buyer’s message. Buyers can send one or more attachments (up to 10 MB).
The following formats are supported:
- Text files (.txt)
- PDFs (Adobe Portable Document Format)
- Word documents (.doc and .docx)
- Image files (.jpg, .gif, .tiff, .bmp, and .png)
Note: AlphaDiscounters may remove any attachment that contains inappropriate content.
What is Customer Service Dashboard?
Your Customer Service Dashboard represents key metrics that impact buyer satisfaction with your responses to their inquiries.
Key metrics on the dashboard:
- First Contact Resolution Rate
- Average Response Time
- Customer Service Rating
The Customer Service Dashboard page is updated each week with new data calculated over a running 4-week period. For example, your Customer Service Rating in the week of Jan 1, 2023 is calculated from the feedback from December 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022.
What is First Contact Resolution Rate?
First Contact Resolution Rate indicates how often your first reply to a buyer resolves their question/issue.
Why is First Contact Resolution Rate important?
Buyer’s satisfaction is strongly correlated with First Contact Resolution Rate. Repeat requests, negotiations, escalations often lead to frustrated buyers and effects repeat purchases from you. First Contact Resolution Rate is also useful to track efficiency for your customer service providing insights into improving customer service which may lead to reducing overall customer service costs.
What is Average Response Time?
Average response time indicates how long it takes you to respond to buyers inquires.
Why should I care about Average Response Time?
Buyers feel valued when they know their business is valued. If buyers feel neglected and their inquiries do not receive a quick response, they look for other avenues to solve the issue. Claims is one such avenue which impacts your Selling ability on AlphaDiscounters.
Is faster response always better?
While speed is important for exceptional customer service requires quality and helpfulness takes priority.
What is Customer Service Rating?
Customer Service Rating indicates buyer satisfaction in response to your reply. We gather buyer feedback on your response messages through a survey asking “Did this solve your problem?”.
When do buyers receive the “Did this solve your problem?” survey for Customer Service Rating?
Anytime Selling Partners reply to a buyer message they received, the “Did this solve your problem?” survey will be included at the bottom of their response message to the buyer. This survey is not included on messages sent from Selling Partners to proactively contact the buyer without having received a message from the buyer first.
What happens if I resolve a buyer’s problem after they have submitted negative feedback in the survey?
Your customer service rating reflects whether a buyer was satisfied with an entire conversation. For longer conversations where the buyer provides feedback on multiple messages, your Customer Service Rating will only consider the most recent feedback from the buyer.
This means that if the buyer provides positive feedback at the end of a conversation in the “Did this solve your problem survey”, your Customer Service Rating will only be positively impacted. If the last feedback provided in a conversation by the customer through the “Did this solve your problem?” survey is negative, your rating will be negatively impacted.
Why did my customer service rating not updated this week?
Your Customer Service Rating is calculated each week. Some weeks Selling Partners may not receive the required 40 buyer responses to the “Did this solve your problem?” survey in the last 4 weeks. In these instances, where a seller has not received enough responses, they will be shown their rating from the most recent calculation that had enough responses.
Each week, your rating will be automatically re-evaluated (without no manual intervention) based on the number of survey responses.
Why do I not see my customer service rating?
Only Selling Partners who have received 40 responses from buyers within the last 4 weeks on “Did this solve your problem?” feedback survey listed on all seller responses emails will see a Customer Service Rating to ensure that the calculated rating is meaningful.
Each week we will re-evaluate whether you have received enough responses to calculate your rating.
Why does the customer service rating matter?
Buyer satisfaction is critical for business growth and is directly correlated to a high seller feedback rating. Your Customer Service Rating is a representation of the quality of your service and an indication on whether buyers would be likely to purchase from you again.
High Customer Service Ratings are correlated with repeat purchases. Low Customer Service Ratings are correlated with negative seller feedback. Additionally, when responding to the question “Did this solve your problem?”, buyers have the option to provide direct seller feedback that is enforceable.
Is my score good or bad?
Table below summarizes ideal scores and what the range equates to:
| Metric | Needs Attention
(Range marked in Red) |
Needs Improvement
(Range marked in Yellow) |
Keep It Up
(Range marked in Green) |
| Customer Service Rating | 0 – 5.9 | 6 – 7.9 | 8 – 10 |
| First Contact Resolution Rate | 0 – 54% | 55 – 7 9% | 80%+ |
| Average Response Time | 12+hours | 2 – 12 hours | 0 – 2 hours |
Will my account be suspended for a low Customer Service Rating, First Contact Resolution Rate and Average Response Time?
We will not suspend your selling privileges on AlphaDiscounters if you have a low score.
How can I improve my rating?
What to do:
- Shorten the time to respond to and resolve buyer issues.
- Always meet AlphaDiscounters 24-hour service level agreement.
- Personalize your communication (e.g. name, repeat customer, prior communication).
- Write clear, concise, and professional responses to buyer questions.
- Test any included links before sending the message.
- Include tracking information when responding to buyers asking for a shipping update.
- Have buyer-friendly cancellation and return policies.
- Ensure your shipping and return policies are listed on the product page.
- Acknowledge buyer complaints, apologize and ask what you can do to fix it.
- Be clear in setting your customer’s expectations and meet them (e.g. response time, replacements, refunds).
What not to do:
- Ship without tracking information.
- Ask customers to find information or complete work that you are able to do yourself (e.g. contact the carrier).
- Include vague or empty product descriptions, shipping or return policies in your messages.
- Send automated reply emails to customers.