No, not the Amazon rain forest in South America, but Amazon.com, located in Seattle. As Abt’s manager of e-commerce, I just returned from participating in Amazon’s second Seller Summit, an event where only their top 100 internet retailers are invited. Abt became a partner vendor with Amazon back in February, which enables us to sell our products through Amazon.com’s network.
The summit was held at Amazon’s new headquarters, located in the PacMed building (formerly a hospital) just outside of downtown Seattle. For two days (2nd day with no air conditioning due to a power outage) the main focus was on seller performance to improve the customer’s buying experience on Amazon.com. This was a great opportunity for partner vendors like ourselves to voice our ideas on how it can be done, using things such as marketing tools, monitoring reports, and most of all better support from the Amazon.com staff when a problem arises.
Outside of the seminar, Amazon.com gave us the opportunity to speak to individuals working for the Technical Account Manager (TAM) for guidance on current issues we were experiencing, such as customer AZ claims/chargebacks (when a customer feels the product is not up to expectation) and merchandising errors due to Amazon’s product matching process. The purpose was to discover the best way to handle errors seamlessly, without customer aggravation.
Abt Electronics has been in business for over 72 years and is well known for superior customer service. However, it is going to take some time to match Abt’s customer service philosophy through Amazon.com channels, but we are ready to face the challenge. Amazon.com understands they are not perfect, and they are willing to listen and gather ideas on how they can improve to make their partners more effective.
On a side note, Seattle is a city with a lot of character, making it a great place to visit. I had the opportunity to visit the famous Seattle Space Needle, Pike Market Place, and taste some great seafood at the Pink Door Restaurant. If you plan on visiting Seattle, remember to bring some comfortable shoes because the city has A LOT of steep hills.—by Ken Au
No Comments