Telephone Numbers

[amberwoodottawa]

A little while ago, I expressed my feelings about being upset in an earlier thread about eBay making my phone number available to someone who was not a customer, who had not completed a transaction with me and in fact never did.

I realize that we all operate different types of eBay businesses. Some operate from an office, some a store, some from their homes.

Regardless of how I operate my eBay business, I prefer not to have my phone numbers publicly displayed on my 'About Me' page or even given out in emails when requested by customers.

I have several reasons but generally I think I can sum them up by stating that I started an e-commerce business (no store front, no store employess, no switchboard) and as such am fairly well equipped to handle a considerable volume of daily emails however I am not equipped to handle phone calls from prospective customers who wish to ask questions, many of which are already answered in my listings.

On two or three ocassions, my number was given to a prospective customer and I found that I would get 3-7 telephone calls from each of them with ongoing questions about the product, about the delivery, about the warrantees, about how to pay etc etc.

I have had a customer this evening send me 9 emails as he is considering to purchase something. He keeps asking for my telephone number however I know that would only result in 9 or so telephone calls well into the evening and into the week as his pattern is to ask something and then 10 minutes later, he thinks of another question.

He already told me that he can phone me for free from his home in Calgary so it would be nothing for him to place a dozen calls.

Am I the only PSer taking the hard line with phone calls from customers or potential customers?

Malcolm

[your-chic-shopper]

My phone # is in Every listing . For me it's part of customer service .

[muminlaw]

I prefer to keep mine private also. It's tempting to change my eBay profile to put in my cell phone number - I hardly ever have the cell phone turned on but people would just get a "that user is away from the phone or out of the area" so they couldn't accuse me of invalid info. When we had our b&m store the published telephone number was a necessity but with today's ebusiness ... naaaahhhh.

We hardly ever get calls, but if they started I'd think seriously about the cell phone trick. I'll answer any and all emails, but I don't like being at the beck and call of a telephone. I'm old enough that I can remember when not everyone had a phone and life was peaceful -- when I was a teenager I loved having one, but that's the last time!

Glenda

[amberwoodottawa]

I know that with email, I can get the right answer for the customer and reply affirmatively and when it is convenient whereas with the telephone I may be left with taking the question and having to telephone back the answer. Not only the extra time but the extra expense in long distance charges.

My customer tonight sent a total of 15 emails. Several of them I was able to answer together in one emailed response and in the meantime, I cooked a few large racks of baby back ribs, listed several more instruments, prepared an invoice for a commissioned rep I now have in the Ottawa Valley and probably accomplished a 1/2 dozen other things.

Taking 15 telephone calls would have been totally disruptive to my schedule tonight and I feel that it would not have been any more productive. As it was, his 15 emails only took me a total of 10 minutes to address and he has emailed payment for the instrument.

I do agree that if one is able to handle the telephone calls with their business, that is clearly the optimum way to provide total customer service.

I also wondered what would happen if eBay ever called and sure enough they did a week ago and my son/partner answered the business line and I took the call, so at least eBay knows they can reach us on the number we provided them with the full complement of the Shopline.ca team at their disposal.

Malcolm

Please do not click on the above link, it is not intended to be a link, it is our legal trading name and has not been used for the purpose of soliciting any business from fellow PSers
(this is for those who thought I had given up my fight)

[treasure-pot]

I also use a cell phone number. I check for calls sporadically - maybe a couple of times a week. On the other hand, I usually respond to emails within hours.

Bill

[itrecovery]

Phone # listed helps to get more sales for sure. You can not hide from customers if you are in sales.

Although, I prefer and faster with e-mails.

[amberwoodottawa]

I get emails 24 hours per day. Those that come in when I am in bed, in the middle of the night get answered hours before the person who sent them gets up. (Usually around 6:30am)

If I were to get those same people leaving messages on my answering machine instead of via email, I would either wake the people up when returning their call or have to leave them a message on their answering machine.

Personally the only thing I hate more than spammed emails is voice mail which I dont feel is servicing the client.

When a person emails, they expect a response within a reasonable amount of time. When a person telephones, they expect someone to answer the phone and attend to them immediately.

That is the very nature of emails and telephones.

I choose to to provide extremely good and timely email replies over substandard telephone service.

Malcolm

[ospreylinks]

I have my phone number listed on all of our listings as well as my about me page.

One of my real concerns with doing business on Ebay is that the majority of sellers are legitimate, but there is certainly an unscrupulous number of vendors as well.

I want to do everything possible to show that I am legitimate and if anyone wants to communicate with me, certainly in this realm, email is probably preferable, but for those who want to talk to me, have the opportunity to reach me by phone.

By calling our listed number, during the golf season they get the clerks in the Pro-Shop. In the off-season they get our answering service.

Malcolm, I too have had customers who email everytime a new question pops into their head and over a short period we receive a multitude of emails (so you are not unique in this respect), but honestly, my phone number has always been posted and these same people have had the opportunity to call me as many times, but they don't. I probably get one phone inquiry for every 200 email inquiries we receive.

Jeff

[amberwoodottawa]

Jeff
1/200 emails. For me that could be about 3 calls per week. Further we are not seasonal so our volune of sales is pretty much consistent with only slight increase and decreases (10-15%) from month to month (Chrsitmas being the exception).

Your business is not set up primarily as an e-commerce busines. That is not to say you are not set up to run as efficiently or more than mine is, however your business is set up to handle customers in the following order: (1) walk-in as a pro shop (2) phone in (as a pro shop to the local market and (3) e-commerce with eBay and your web site.

On the other hand we are set up in the following order:
(1) e-commerce (2) e-commerce and (3) e-commerce.

As such ALL of our potential customers have access and use their computers to search for products and purchase online. If the methodology is established between us and the customers to use computers, we dont see the need to change that by adding in a telephone connection as an option.

Malcolm

[zarzuella]

Interesting timing - I just got my second ever phone call from an eBay buyer .
Turned out to be an older gentleman on the east coast, this is his first eBay purchase and he was a little nervous about sending money to someone he didn't know. Unfortunately, he called at 11.30 in the evening. I can see both sides of this debate!

Ann

[ospreylinks]

I realize that we have more of an infra-structure in place to take phone calls as they arrive, however they don't arrive......

In terms of seasonal, yes our retail operation is, but our on-line business has actually had the most active quarter yet. (check out our feedback - although we have been here for 4 years, better than 25% of our transactions have taken place this past 6 months).

And 3 phone calls per week doesn't seem like a large number (as per our conversion rate). I get more solicitations from Telemarketers at meal time in a week than I do from Ebay customers in a year.

The comment from Zarzuella just reinforces my arguement. Ebay especially (as compared to an on-line store), lends itself to abuse. New and suspecting customers welcome the availability of contacting you if they should feel they have to, but it rarely happens...again just imposes a comfort level.

To me it is not an issue, posting a phone number only legitimizes and makes sense to me.

Jeff

[amberwoodottawa]

Jeff
If the same person who phoned Ann (Zarzuella) called your number at 11:30pm, would he get to speak to speak to you to be reassured or get an answering machine at your pro shop.

If he got an answering machine, how would you have assured him at 11:30pm that it was safe to send money.

If that person phoned me at 11:30pm, the telephone line would ring in 2 separate business offices within my house on defferent levels of the house waking the entire household.

I personally have a problem with any customer that calls an eBay seller at 11:30pm as well as those that would call hours after that and that is also why I dont post my number.

I also feel that by putting something in writing, there is no misinterpretation and little room for someone coming back and saying "But you told me ..."

I save my emails and at the end of the auction I check if the winning person ever emailed me before requesting information about the product or shipping or other areas of concern.

Had I spoken to someone on the phone and given some information, I would have no record of what I said, no proof, and no record of who made the ealier telephone inquiry and if they eventually became a winning bidder on one of my auctions.

I suppose it is my extensive legal and financial background that I am a glutton for having a paper trail and everything well documented, something I cant do on the telephone which also leaves too much room to interpretation.

Malcolm

[ospreylinks]

Malcolm,

We get calls at all hours at the golf course. It is really surprising when someone calls at 1:30 AM to make a tee time for the next morning. They don't expect anyone to be there, but they do expect to be able to leave a message.

The same thing with Ebay customers. Yes sometimes they do call at awkward hours, and no, there is no one there to take their call, and yes they have to leave a message. But again, I say the number of calls from Ebay customers is very small. And the number of Ebay callers who do call at awkward hours is a very small percentage of the small percentage of ebay customers that do call....

Again, I get more calls from people dialing wrong numbers than I do from Ebay customers...

In terms of callers calling and waking up your household... again you probably get more off-hour wrong number callers than you will Ebay callers... and in this case here is a suggestion. Call Bell and have call answer put on your line, set it to 0 and then the enbedded answering service answers before it rings into your home. You can turn it off and on....

I am not going to win this discussion (by having you post your phone number on your listings and that is your choice) but all I say is that by posting your phone number, I don't believe your will be opening the flood gates to a zillion phone inquiries, but I do think it will translate into more sales and in my opinion that is what it is all about.

Take care.

Jeff

[amberwoodottawa]

Jeff
I certainly am not about to convince you to reomve your phone number off being posted on eBay.

But if someone emailed me Saturday night at 11:30 pm and I wasnt able to answer it at that time, they would have an answer at the latest Sunday morning before 7:30am.

That means I beat out all the other eBayers with shops and messages sitting on their answering machines since Satuday night that wont get checked until Monday morning.

Given the infrequency of telephone calls you receive from ebayers, I doubt you would loose any sales by not having your phone number listed on eBay, so for your business it really seems to be a non-issue whether you list it on eBay or not.

I doubt I would get any more sales from listing my number even though I anticipate a much higher volume of telephne calls, but I know for certain that I would be giving up more time to answer calls none of which would provide me any return for the convenience given to a few eBay customers.

As I said before, if you are fully set up to handle telephone calls from customers then by all means extend that service if it adds to your business' bottom line either through increased sales or goodwill.

However if you are not able to provide good, timley telephone service, not just voice mail that gets answered 2 days after it has been left, then you should evaluate whether in fact it is a service that is adding to your business or one that is having a detrimental effect on your business.

I am not as well equipped to offer that service as I am with providing 18/7 email response so why would I advertise a service which might reflect poorly on my business and in fact cost me sales?

eBay is after all an e-commerce business so it is not as if the potetial customers do not have access to a computer. It is only because they have access to a computer that they find out who most of us are and what we are selling.

As far as I am concerned, suggesting that eBay clients call your business by telephone is not unlike an author owning a computer yet writing their next book using a typewriter.

Bottom line is if I owned a retal store, my phone number would be listed on my About Me page primarily for the conveninece of eBayers that are local to my store however as I do not operate from a retail store, it make no sense to me to post my telephone number for customers who are using computer technoloy including email, to conduct business.

Malcolm