Customer service is king.

Now that eBay have detailed seller ratings (DSR's) meaning customers can rate every part of the service they receive from you from item description to dispatch time I would advise you run your eBay business like a real business and always try to provide the best service possible. Your Detailed Seller Ratings are displayed along with your feedback.

Here's my Detailed Seller Rating

The DSR is actually good for business as the better your ratings are the higher your listing will be displayed at the top of the search results. It's almost impossible to keep this at 5.0 but if you can keep it above 4.80 you will be fine. My ratings stay above 4.90 as I try my very best to provide the best possible service I can.

Also, do your best to reply to any questions you receive within 24 hours. If you have the time check your emails as often as you can as a potential customer will only look somewhere else if you don't respond quickly. If you do reply after 24 hours start your email by apologizing for the delay. If you can set up an auto responder letting your potential customer know their email has been received.

Start communicating as soon as the sale is made.

As soon as my customers pay for an eBay item I send out an email to them. I always have it look something like:-

Hi FIRSTNAME,

Thank you for your order. It will be shipped by first class post within 48 hours.

Please allow at least 72 hours for UK delivery and up to 10 days for international orders.

If you have any questions or problems please don't hesitate to contact me.

Once again thank you for your custom and I hope we can do business again in the future.

Regards,

John

P.S. If you have not checked out my eBay store why not take a look as I have many more quality products for sale.

(enter the link to your eBay store here)

Notice how straight away the transaction is off to a friendly start?

I feel this politeness only encourages the customer to leave me nothing but positive feedback. Also, they have been made aware to contact me first before leaving any feedback if there are any problems or concerns. Notice how I have thanked them for their custom and hope to do business again.

This encourages the customer to consider further purchases. Perhaps even clicking on the link to my eBay store and buying more products.

From time to time you will get awkward offensive customers but try to rise above any war of words and stay calm. If you have to reply always always always be polite. No matter how rude and offensive they are. I know it can be hard but if you stay polite while someone else is losing it you will feel better once the dust has settled.

There will always be one awkward eBayer who leaves a negative, this will happen no matter how good your service is and in my experience I have found it's normally the newbies who are most likely to leave you a negative, this is also normally done without contacting you first and it can be very frustrating, but don't let the odd negative comment get you down as it happens to us all.

One or two negatives per 500 or so sales won't hurt anyway and if you keep your percentage above 98-99% you will have no problems.

If you do receive a negative comment try to address the issue with your customer, again be as polite as possible and you may find that the customer will be prepared to revise their feedback and withdraw the negative comment via the Feedback Revision process. This is why it is crucial you are polite at all times as if you abuse your customer you will find getting feedback removed harder.

Remember this and you will always have good feedback: