Now You Can Pay Amazon to Deal with Your Customers

Now you have the option of paying Amazon to deal with your customers – but should you? That depends a lot on the type of selling you conduct on the marketplace.

Amazon announced Customer Service by Amazon (CSBA) at today’s Accelerate seller conference. Sellers who fulfill their own orders now have the option to have Amazon manage their customer inquiries, refunds, and returns on self-fulfilled orders.

The optional paid service is targeted at US sellers who sell internationally, and the company said in some cases it would be offered for free or at a discounted rate, “depending on the seller’s customer contact volume.” Keep in mind that Amazon already provides customer support to customers of sellers who use its FBA fulfillment service.

“Customer Service by Amazon reduces the burden of providing quality customer service across geographies and in multiple languages,” the company explained in a press release today. “Customers can contact the more than 130 customer support sites via phone, chat, or email, day or night, and receive help in 15 languages. It is available now and open to all US sellers.”

Sara Caleffi, Amazon’s Director of International Seller Growth, said in a presentation this morning that it would help sellers offer high quality support, thereby reducing claims, order defect rates, and negative reviews.

CSBA offers live channel support through phone, Instant Messaging, and email. And of course, the benefit for sellers selling in multiple geographies – it offers multi-language capability.

The service has actually been available in Japan since 2018, Caleffi revealed.

Amazon also announced other services for international sellers at today’s Amazon Accelerate conference, including the following:

• Marketplace Product Guidance (“takes the guesswork out of which products should and can be sold internationally”).
• Global Inventory Viewer (“provides a one-stop experience for sellers to monitor inventory supply and demand across all stores in a consolidated manner”).
• Global Listing (“enables sellers to list products on Amazon once and sell globally”).

You can find the services described more fully in a press release on the AboutAmazon.com website.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.