Sellers concerned about their eligibility for the new Etsy Star Seller program have a new tool. Key to qualifying for the Star Seller badge is a seller’s rate of responding to buyers’ messages.
On Monday, Etsy announced sellers could now download a CSV file to get a closer breakdown of their messages.
“Quick update for you all: you can now review your response rate in more detail. To get a closer breakdown of your messages, you can download a CSV by going to your Shop Manager dashboard > Star Seller dashboard page > selecting the Message response rate tile > selecting the Export link next to Message breakdown.”
Sellers must respond to 95% or more of initial messages from buyers within 24 hours to qualify for the program (among other criteria). When sellers expressed concern (“Am I not allowed to take a day off,” one seller asked), a moderator advised them to set up an auto-responder, as EcommerceBytes reported in August.
Additionally, the moderator said Etsy only counts initial buyer messages in the score, writing, “so responding to follow ups from the same thread in under 24h is not required to be a Star Seller.”
But clearly sellers feel pressure to be the last one to respond in a discussion with buyers. In a post on Monday, a seller wrote, “IF you do not get the last say in customer messages, your message response rate is going to go down. You end a message and the customer responds “Thank you”, you might want to respond again or else lol.”
Message to Etsy :
We are busy running our businesses. We don’t have so much as one second to waste on this nonsense.
Etsy, obviously does not support American Artists.
Etsy is mentally ill.
This is a stupid metric as it leaves out one very important factor – what if a seller does not receive any messages from a customer? If you are not selling customized or personalizd items and you are not have shipping issues, it is very likely that customers don’t contact you. They do not contact me, but they leave a 5 star review. I once again failed to qualify based on the response rate metric – they could not assign a response rate to me because there was nothing to respond to.
Couldn’t be more idiotic. This “metric” forces every seller to respond to messages that require NO response. When a buyer thanks me after resolving an issue or after already offering a definitive answer to a question and receiving an “OK” from a buyer, I don’t need to stop what I am doing in order to make sure I have the last word in order to satisfy some bogus metric.
I follow many jewelers who sell new pieces as soon as listed; at prices $300+, while buyers give raving
5-star reviews and say that shipping was fast…
YET….these sellers are not considered “Star Sellers”. Etsy is run by a staff with mindsets of children; with no real world experiences that matter in the world of retail.
But quite honestly, I don’t believe this Star Seller Badge is gonna matter to the average consumer. Quality review ratings coupled with the products they want, will be all that matter to the average buyer.