It really should be part of the daily habits of every Amazon seller to check messages. We’re not just talking about email, What’s App, social media, and the like – we’re talking about the buyer messages that you’ll receive in the Amazon message center. Amazon messages are the only TOS-compliant way for sellers and buyers to communicate; Amazon discourages buyers and sellers to interact outside of its platform, and will be pretty annoyed if you try it. In fact, Amazon reads buyer-seller messages, and archives them in case of disputes, so it’s really important to stay compliant.
When you communicate with buyers, you let them know that they’re important. Read up on other customer service best practices to help boost your Amazon business.
Understanding the Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging Service
Amazon strictly regulates interactions on its platform to maintain privacy, security, and integrity within its marketplace. You can read the full Amazon message center guidelines here, but this blog will help you understand what’s allowed and what’s prohibited, and how to maneuver around them for success on the Amazon platform.
1. Finding the Amazon Buyer-Seller Messaging Center
Here’s how to check messages on Amazon:
- Log in to your Amazon Seller Central account.
- Navigate to the top right corner where you’ll see a drop-down menu under your account name.
- Click on ‘Messages’ to access the Amazon Message Center. This is where all communications between you and your buyers are stored and managed.
See? It’s so easy. Your Amazon seller account has everything you need. Make sure you regularly check your message inbox so you can stay on top of customer communications, and enforce the best practices with customer service.
2. Why Amazon Enforces Strict Messaging Rules with Amazon Messages
Amazon’s incredibly strict with the types of messages that sellers can send their buyers. You can only use the Amazon message center to send messages to customers – and even then, the types of messages that the center allows are pretty limited.
There’s good reason for this:
- Consumer Protection: Amazon’s policies ensure buyer information remains confidential and secure.
- Trust and Experience: By preventing spam and irrelevant content, Amazon ensures all communications are necessary, enhancing the overall shopping experience.
From a seller’s perspective, this can feel prohibitive, but if you put yourself in the shoes of the buyer, it makes total sense. You probably get promotional, spam, or unsolicited messages in your inbox regularly. Chances are, these go ignored. Amazon wants to ensure that the Amazon marketplace keeps its customers front and center at all times, so the buying experience stays as seamless and enjoyable as possible. That’s why they’re so strict; they don’t want customers receiving unsolicited messages asking them for positive reviews, letting them know they’ll get a gift for this or that reason, or news of upcoming sales.
In short, the Amazon message center allows sellers to read messages from buyers and respond, but customers take the lead.
3. Guidelines for Communicating via the Amazon Message Center
You’re not allowed to send any of the below messages:
- Marketing or Promotional Messages: You cannot use the messaging service for sending marketing materials or promotional messages.
- Asking for Positive Reviews: You’re prohibited from soliciting positive reviews or offering any compensation for reviews.
- Direct Customer Solicitation: Contacting customers directly via personal email, phone, or any other channel outside of Amazon’s system to request reviews or sell additional products is not allowed.
- Sending Non-Order Related Messages: All communications should be strictly related to order fulfillment or responding to customer’s inquiries.
To keep it simple, communications should directly relate to fulfilling orders or addressing customer inquiries. All messages should be sent within 30 days of order completion and must focus strictly on the transaction without any promotional content. You’re also not allowed to link the email to your detailed Amazon storefront or product pages.
Examples of Permitted Messages:
- Order Issues (e.g., stock unavailability): Clearly explain any order fulfillment problems and actions taken like refunds or cancellations.
- Return Inquiries: Only discuss returns when additional information is needed to process a request.
- Proactive Customer Care: Inquire about delivery scheduling for bulky items or confirm custom order details to ensure customer satisfaction. You can also address customer complaints (which are usually about processing refunds and returns, anyway).
Check your messages on Amazon daily. Make it a point to respond to a customer service inquiry as quickly as possible. We get it; email marketing isn’t permitted on Amazon, which is a shame, because of the power of email marketing, but when you communicate that your customers are important by sticking to an efficient, factual, and prompt messaging strategy, you’ll endear yourself to your customers. Respond to messages promptly and politely, with as much communication as possible. When the buying journey is that easy, customers are likely to come back.
Messages a Seller Can Voluntarily Send to Customers
Like most things on Amazon, there are certain guidelines for sending messages through the Amazon Message Center. These guidelines address sending two types of Amazon messages: necessary permitted messages and proactive permitted messages.
Messages for processing order completion or attending to customer complaints are necessary and permitted. For example, you can send messages to customers who have placed an order for products that are not available.
On the other hand, proactive and permitted messages are messages you can send within 30 days after placing an order.
You can send a proactive message to:
- Confirm the specifications of a custom order
- Send your customer an invoice
- Settle problems that arise during the order process
- Request any additional information that you need to complete an order
- Ask questions about product returns
- Request honest reviews from customers (so, nothing leaning towards asking for a positive review)
- Plan order deliveries in bulk
When sending permitted messages, do not include the following:
- External links that are not secure or necessary for order completion
- Website links or logos leading to your website
- Attachments not related to the order
- Phone numbers and email addresses
- Images not related to the customer’s order
- Private information (whether text or images)
4. Automated Amazon Messages
Amazon’s automated messages help customers understand where their order is and when they can expect it to arrive. Don’t duplicate these; buyers will likely get confused or irritated.
Shipping Updates
Once you confirm the shipment of an order through Amazon’s Seller Central, Amazon automatically notifies the buyer via their email address. This shipping confirmation email includes important details such as the expected delivery date and a tracking number, if available. This allows buyers to monitor their package’s progress and provides a clear timeline for when they can expect their order to arrive.
Refund Processing
When a refund is initiated, either by the seller through the Manage Orders feature in Seller Central or automatically by Amazon due to issues like order cancellation or stock unavailability, Amazon communicates this to the buyer. The buyer receives an email notification detailing the refund amount and the reason for the refund. This transparency helps maintain trust between the buyer and Amazon’s marketplace, reassuring the customer that their financial interests are protected.
Importance of Shipment Confirmation for Facilitating Amazon’s Indirect Communications
Shipment confirmation plays a crucial role in the efficiency and reliability of Amazon’s indirect communication with buyers. By promptly confirming the shipment of an order, sellers enable Amazon to send accurate and timely shipping updates to buyers. This not only enhances the customer experience by keeping buyers well-informed but also helps in reducing inquiries and potential complaints regarding order status.
Furthermore, shipment confirmation feeds into Amazon’s logistical and customer service frameworks, allowing the platform to maintain high standards of customer satisfaction and operational excellence. This confirmation acts as a trigger within Amazon’s system, ensuring that all subsequent automated communications related to order delivery are based on the most current and accurate information.
5. What Happens When a Buyer Blocks Your Amazon Messages?
Each customer is assigned an anonymous email that sellers can use to contact them, and each contact email remains the same for that person. However, customers can opt out of receiving unsolicited messages from sellers, in which case your message won’t be delivered. Naturally, that makes communication between sellers and buyers a bit tougher.
Yet, Amazon will still allow you to respond to customer inquiries even if they’ve opted out, in the following scenarios:
- Completing Transactions: If additional information is required to fulfill an order.
- Responding to Active Inquiries: Directly address any specific questions or concerns raised by the buyer.
Best Practices for Using Amazon Messages Effectively
Remember, Amazon reads and stores all Amazon messages! The platform is pretty strict with what goes on inside the Buyer-Seller messages section, and that’s because they want to protect customers from receiving unsolicited messages. We don’t want to spam customers and take away from an otherwise pleasant buying experience on the Amazon marketplace.
So, send only compliant Amazon messages to ensure that your customers have the best buying experience ever, and that Amazon doesn’t get annoyed that you’re engaging in sneaky practices in order to gain the loyalty of your customers.
Amazon takes its communication policies seriously, and violations can result in severe penalties, including:
- Warning: Amazon may first issue a warning and remind the seller of the communication policies.
- Messaging Privileges Revoked: Continued non-compliance can lead to Amazon revoking a seller’s privileges to use the Buyer-Seller Messaging Service.
- Account Suspension: In severe cases, or if unsolicited messaging continues after warnings, Amazon may suspend or even permanently ban the seller’s account.
Here are the best practices for the Amazon message center:
- Prompt Responses: Reply to messages promptly. It communicates that you’re a dependable brand that takes customer service seriously. Try to respond as soon as you receive messages – or at least within the span of a few hours.
- Clear and Complete Information: Provide thorough answers and anticipate potential follow-up questions to minimize back and forth.
- Proactive Engagement: Regularly update buyers on their order status, especially if there are unexpected delays or issues.
- Use Amazon’s Templates: When possible, use Amazon’s own messaging templates designed for specific types of communications. These are compliant with Amazon’s policies.
- Train Your Team: If you have a team handling customer communications, ensure they are trained on Amazon’s policies and understand the importance of compliance.
- Monitor Communications: Regularly review the messages sent to customers to ensure they comply with Amazon’s guidelines. This is especially important if you use automated systems or third-party services to manage customer communications.
Go ahead and personalize your email responses with their name, your brand voice, and more. But keep your messages brief and to the point.
Leeway with Your Amazon Messages
Okay, you get it. You’re not allowed to send any Amazon messages with promotional content, asking them (directly or indirectly) to check out your product detail page or storefront, or advise them of any upcoming sales.
But you can get a little creative and direct the customer to external pages for things like installation instructions, an eBook for best practices, or a site where they can get their warranty, provided:
- Necessary for Order Completion: The links you provide in your messages must be necessary for the completion of the order. In other words, the links must be relevant to the purchase.
- Secure Links Only: Any link you include must be secure, meaning it should start with “https” rather than “http”. This ensures that the information being transmitted is encrypted and secure.
- No Promotional Content: The content linked should not be promotional in nature. It should strictly provide information necessary for the use or warranty of the product purchased. Links designed to promote other products, services, or to capture customer data for marketing purposes are strictly prohibited.
- Direct Relevance: The linked content must be directly relevant to the purchased product. Amazon is particularly strict about ensuring that all communications enhance the customer’s experience and are directly related to the item they bought.
Why Compliance to These Rules Matters
Following these guidelines not only ensures compliance with Amazon’s policies but also prevents potential penalties such as warnings, suspension of messaging privileges, or even account suspension. More importantly, it cultivates a professional and trustworthy seller reputation.
Many an Amazon seller has complained about the guidelines that Amazon offers within the Buyer-Seller Messaging Platform, but these guidelines exist for a reason. Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging is supposed to enhance the experience. The idea is that the customer already bought from you, so it’s not the time to convince them to buy more, especially not when their purchase is still en route.
The good news is, you have many more tools to use to build a relationship with your customer, and engage in email marketing off-Amazon, but you must be careful how and when you do it.
Read up on product inserts – this is another great way to get your customers to keep in touch with you.
Make Sure to Check Messages on Amazon in Every Language!
When you’re selling on a global scale, Amazon messages develop another area of complexity, especially if you don’t speak the language you sell in. Consider hiring an Amazon virtual assistant to help you out.
It’s also crucial to localize important messages for enhanced customer experience – when customers feel understood and valued, they’re more likely to become loyal customers. Furthermore, localized communications reduce misunderstandings, decreasing returns and negative feedback.
Here’s how to localize Amazon messages:
- Language of Preference: Always communicate in the customer’s preferred language, as indicated by their Amazon account settings.
- Cultural Adaptation: Adapt messages to reflect local customs, greetings, and etiquette, enhancing relevance and reception.
- Technical Translation: Employ professional translation services for accuracy, particularly for instructions, warranties, and legal content.
- Currency and Measurements: Convert measurements and currencies to local standards to avoid confusion.
- Legal Compliance: Ensure your messages comply with local consumer protection laws and regulations.
- Amazon’s Tools: Use Amazon’s multi-language support for email templates, which automatically translates messages based on the recipient’s language settings.
- Feedback Loop: Continuously refine your communication strategy based on feedback from international customers.
Best Practices for Localizing Messages
- Brand Consistency: Keep your brand’s voice consistent across all languages while making necessary cultural adjustments.
- Quality Assurance: Regularly review and update translations to maintain quality and relevance.
- Responsive Adaptation: Quickly adapt messages in response to global events, cultural trends, or new regulations.
Don’t worry. YLT Translations handles the translation of follow up emails. And all of these are done by native speakers, so you can expect output that truly resonates with your target market, wherever they may be, no matter what language they speak.
Conclusion: Use the Guidelines for Buyer-Seller Messages for Success on Amazon
When you sell on Amazon, customer service is paramount, particularly because Amazon makes it a point to provide buyers with the best possible experience. Amazon Messages are just one of the tools that can help sellers build relationships with customers, and indirectly encourage repeat sales, through effective customer service.
That said, Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging center is filled with Do’s and Don’ts:
Do’s:
- Check Messages Regularly: Make it a daily habit to check your Amazon message center for buyer communications.
- Use Amazon’s Messaging Center Only: Stick to Amazon’s messaging system for all communications to stay compliant with their Terms of Service.
- Respond Promptly: Reply to buyer messages as quickly as possible to demonstrate attentive customer service.
- Maintain Professionalism: Keep all communications professional, clear, and focused on the transaction or addressing customer inquiries.
- Use Amazon Templates: Employ Amazon’s templates for specific types of communications to ensure compliance.
- Localize Messages: Ensure messages are in the customer’s preferred language and culturally adapted to enhance understanding and connection.
- Follow-Up on Important Messages: Utilize permitted message types for necessary follow-ups related to order completion, custom order specifications, or troubleshooting issues.
Don’ts:
- Avoid External Communication Channels: Do not use personal email, social media, or any non-Amazon platform to communicate with buyers.
- No Marketing or Promotional Messages: Do not send messages that contain marketing material or promotions.
- Don’t Solicit Positive Reviews: Avoid asking for positive reviews or offering incentives for reviews.
- Steer Clear of Non-Order Related Messages: Do not send messages that aren’t related to fulfilling orders or responding to customer inquiries.
- Exclude External Links and Attachments: Do not include links or attachments that aren’t necessary for completing the order or directly related to the customer’s inquiry.
- Avoid Personal Contact Information: Do not share your phone number, personal email, or physical addresses within Amazon messages.
- No Unnecessary Follow-Up: Refrain from sending additional follow-up messages that could annoy the customer or seem intrusive.
- Skip Duplicative Updates: Avoid sending information that duplicates what Amazon’s automated system already provides, such as shipping confirmations.
We hope this helps – share with us your experience with Amazon messages, and let us know if these guidelines work for you! Cheers to your success on Amazon FBA!