Customer Service When You Are Selling on Amazon Handmade

When Amazon Handmade first launched in 2015, it completely changed the landscape for many handmade business owners. It opened up doors to new audiences, more sales, and business growth. But, as with anything in life, there are some changes that we, as handmade sellers, had to make in order to accommodate Amazon into our business plans.

Customer service on Amazon is different at first for most handmade sellers, and while some people might think this is a bad thing, it’s actually a very good thing. Let’s dive into customer service and how it works when you are selling on Amazon:

Why It’s a Very Good Thing

Amazon holds sellers accountable for customer service, very accountable. This pushes all handmade sellers to start treating their business like a business and hold themselves accountable, too. 

Sure, sometimes having to answer messages so quickly while on vacation can be a pain, but it's a good thing because it means we have to make plans for our business now. Will we need someone to answer messages while we are away? It gets us thinking about customer service more like a CEO.

If Amazon didn’t hold sellers so accountable and treat their customers as well as they do -- do you think they would be as huge as they are today? Likely not, which means we wouldn’t be able to get the volume of sales on Amazon Handmade that we do. Customer service is their bread and butter, and if we want a piece of the Amazon pie, we need to re-adjust our business processes and systems to stay on their good side as sellers.

Change Your Mindset Around Customer Service

Instead of complaining about Amazon’s metrics and customer service requirements, use them as a tool to adjust your mindset around customer service. You can also use their requirements to adapt your systems and the processes in your business.

It’s time to hold yourself accountable, too, CEO!

Making sure to provide an excellent customer experience is important on any channel you are selling on, and that’s what truly keeps customers coming back.

Don’t Take Things Personally

As handmade business owners who create our own products and genuinely have a passion for what we do and create, it can be hard not to take things personally. Selling on Amazon Handmade isn’t for the faint of heart; it does take a bit of adjusting where you stop taking things so personally. The best way to do that is to focus on your business in more of a business sense instead of as the creator (or designer or artist, etc.).

Have a customer submit a return request with not-so-nice comments? It happens. Amazon customers are known to be straightforward and sometimes downright mean. They are used to dealing with Amazon as a corporate giant instead of knowing a creative handmade business owner is on the other side looking at their comments.

If you can step up your mindset, focus on the business side of customer service, and reframe your policies, procedures, and systems -- it’s all beneficial in the end, whether you continue to sell on Amazon Handmade long-term (which I definitely recommend!) or not.