On this episode, we discuss the common Amazon seller support issues, the best tips for contacting seller support, and whether seller support is the best/only option with Amazon issues. On today’s Lunch with Norm we have two special guests joining us. Marketing professional graduated from The Ohio State University, Talal is an experienced growth hacker and eCommerce professional skilled in Advertising, digital marketing, and social media. Vanessa is the founder of Online Sellers Solutions, a service that helps sellers solve their Amazon problems, born from the passion to solve problems and the excitement from the unsexy part of Amazon. Learn the best way to navigate the sometimes tricky Amazon Support.
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Episode: 223
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Talal Asad and Vanessa Hung – Ecommerce experts
Subtitle: “How to Deal with Seller Support, SKU naming conventions”
Final Show Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_o9sbLQSJ4
Back on Lunch with Norm…On today’s show we have Vanessa Hung and Talal Asad – 2 incredible Amazon experts. They will be talking about the most common reason sellers reach for seller support help, what changes sellers should make to their listing during this time of the year, and best tips for contacting sellers support. Vanessa is the founder of Online Sellers Solutions, a service that helps sellers solve their amazon problems. Talal is an experienced growth hacker and eCommerce professional skilled in Advertising and Digital Marketing.
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Norman Farrar 0:00
Hey everyone it’s Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and Ecommerce podcast.
Norman Farrar 0:20
Okay, we got a great show today we’re going to be talking about something very unsexy. Everybody gets frustrated about it and we’re going to talk about how to work around and deal with Amazon Seller Support. Anyway, anybody who has had to deal with Amazon Seller Support knows what I’m talking about. So we have two really great guests on the show today. One is the founder and CEO of on-seller solutions. She’s also the co-host of wizards of EECOM. I hope I say this right on a spaniel. I’m trying and our second guest runs a brand together as an Ecommerce collaborative style agency. Together they focus on teaching sellers as much needed and often overlooked the unsexy side of Amazon. So both of our guests today, one returning Vanessa Hung, and Talal Asad, so I’ll be getting to them in two seconds. But first, just a quick word from our sponsor. I wanted to give a quick shout out and say thank you to global wired advisors for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm. Global wired advisors is a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please call Chris Shuffling and his team over at globalwire advisors.com. Alright and we’re back. So Kelsey, where are you, sir?
Kelsey
Hello. Hello.
Kelsey 1:54
How are you today?
Norman Farrar 1:55
I am doing well. I’m doing well. Just a little cold. I got to go from a black T shirt to a black sweater or something?
Kelsey 2:03
Yes, it is freezing here in Canada. How is it over where you guys are watching? Let us know in the comment section where you’re watching from. I can see that we already have a good crew Bruin in the comment sections. We’ve got red joining us from Maryland. We’ve got Andy in Michigan, blue into the UK, Simon in the UK as well. And Manny from Germany. So that’s awesome. Great to see everyone. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions, but today we’re gonna be talking to Seller Support and skew naming convention. So I’m sure there’ll be lots of questions. So get them in quick get them in early. Also just want to mention that we’re doing something exciting over at the lunch with Norm Facebook group. We’re doing our little monthly Top Contributor contest. So we’re going to be announcing the winner I believe tomorrow. So go check it out. It’s a lot of fun. And yeah, smash those like buttons, of course. Can I win? No. Okay. All right. You cannot
Norman Farrar 3:09
don’t Okay, so now you can move off the screen. Okay. All right, everybody. So if you have any questions, just throw them over in the comment section. We will get to them. I think we’re gonna have tons of questions today. And it’s time to sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy the episode. Welcome. Welcome. Hey, how are you? Good. I’m doing great. Add a returning while you were just on Vanessa. Oh, you’re muted. I’m sorry. I wish Cassie would be muted. But anyways, yeah.
Vanessa Hung 3:51
I came back just to bring the sunny on the warm from Florida. So
Norman Farrar 3:57
yes. And you know that your show is one of our already more most popular one of the most popular downloads. So just to let you know. Wow,
Talal Asad 4:08
that’s exciting. Yeah. Why do you think I asked her to be here? Norm? Yeah. Trying to think back.
Norman Farrar 4:15
Exactly. There we go. Oh, man. So hello, Vanessa, in case people don’t know who you are. Can you just give us a really brief background on who you are what you do?
Vanessa Hung 4:27
Sure. So I’m the founder and CEO of online seller solution solutions. So we are an agency that takes away the pain to from dealing with Seller Central. So we focus on the unsexy stuff, catalog inventory and account health and the CO hosts of the podcast we serve decom en espanol, you’re getting they’re not getting it. Okay. Yes. And yeah, seller, active member of this community. I love on my son. I’m a geek about it. And we can talk about Amazon All right.
Norman Farrar 5:00
Very good. How about you too low?
Talal Asad 5:03
Sure. Um, so I am the founder of brand together and we focus on working with brands across all of their ecommerce needs, not just Amazon, although Amazon always tends to be the bread and butter of most people. But we have a kind of omni channel solution or omni channel consultancy toward toward the ecommerce, ecommerce side of everything. And we work primarily, almost actually exclusively with with brands that are developing their brands as opposed to just we do not work with like retail arbitrage or wholesale. That’s not our strong suit. But the other big part of it is all the brands know each other within our community. So they also talk with each other and trade advice and stuff that’s might not be Amazon or E commerce related, but sometimes they just need to work with each other. So we believe all ships rise with the tide. And so we try to create like a collaborative community with the different brands that we that are in our in our community.
Norman Farrar 5:59
Alright, I just know that I sync with the tide. But anyway, I am really interested in this topic today. I’ve had horror stories, tons of horror stories with Amazon. I know Neeraj and I are working on a horror story right now. But before we get into it, because I remember this, we have a giveaway today and tell why don’t you explain the giveaway?
Talal Asad 6:22
Sure, yeah, um, I’ll be more than happy to do a full free, what I call skew review console. So we’ll look at all of your different naming conventions, from your skews to how you send in your shipping plans, to how you do your removal orders and your fulfillment, your fulfillment, you know, your off Amazon fulfillment orders as well. And we can kind of talk through like, all of the different logic behind it and help you maybe clean clean it up a little bit to make things a lot easier.
Norman Farrar 6:48
Alright, very good. That sounds great. So if you’re interested in that, just hashtag we’ll have Kelsey, I know you guys aren’t used to me saying this 10 minutes in, but hashtag we’ll have Kelsey, if you want an extra entry, just take two people and have them comments. So why don’t we just dig into this? Why is Amazon Seller Support such a pain? Right? Any any thoughts? We’ll handle?
Vanessa Hung 7:16
Okay, well, I’m still trying to find out that, I’d like that answered. So this is the thing on we need to start always on. When I when I talk about Amazon, I always talk about like, what are their goals, and what’s their purpose and where they’re coming from. So when they would, when this idea of seller super doesn’t work for anything, they they are a mess, or blah, blah, blah. So you need to understand that Amazon tries with efficiency, they try to be as efficient as possible. And their teams are sometimes not as efficient, especially. And this is where we need to answer the questions or what can we do to not fall into that category of not so super doesn’t work for anything. Actually, I think they do on on, like, I have proof that they can actually work with you on for you if you know how to deal with them. And that’s, and that’s the key, because we use them as the Okay, it’s it’s a support, like kind of a robot, they don’t have they’re not a person, they don’t have feelings. So we need to start the interaction of like, okay, you’re talking to a person. And I know that when sellers getting to the phone or writing an email, they are like freaked out or frustrated or stressed because there is an issue, of course, the first step is to step out from the situation a little bit, and try to focus on explaining the situation in a really simple way. So my approach with the team is always like, you need to explain to Seller Support your case or your situation in less than five sentence, and you need to write it for a 12 year old that knows acronyms. So it’s it has to be simple. And in that way, you shift this notion from they don’t work or they don’t they’re useless to they can work with me and for me if I explained better my situation on the other part is that when somebody from Seller Support, pick up the phone or open an email, they don’t know what kind of seller you are. And this is extremely important. Why? Because they are some sellers that go to Seller Support and said like for example, I hopefully seen that a supress fix. I mean, that’s a super broad situation, you really need to find out what’s the root cause, to explain to see, to try approaches. So in those kinds of situations where sellers In a cases like that, they will most of the times, get back on automatic answer, like something like, you can list your products here, that’s useless, right? And you get frustrated because he says they don’t work. They don’t do anything or they they’re useless. But that’s not the real reason why they reply like that. It’s because they could not understand what you’re saying, or they don’t know, what are the things that you’re facing specifically. And we, as sellers are the, they’re the ones that know the most about our account. And we know what is happening. So we need to explain that to them. So in that way, they come from this, this notion of they’re useless to now they work for me and with me to solve issues. And, and I feel, I don’t like to say that Seller Support is useless. They’re very useful, we just need to learn how to use them. And that’s about everything, like spaces like this, to talk about it, it’s educating ourselves, and how to approach them.
Norman Farrar 11:10
Right, so and this isn’t Amazon, this is a credit card. But even today, I had a credit card from yesterday, from a few days ago, I found out that was declining because of a suspicious transaction, which stopped a couple of payments come through. Now I was really ticked cuz this is the second time in about two weeks has happened. And, you know, you could yell and scream at the other end. But what why, you know, it’s not going to help you out any better. You know, by going in there, you can say that you’re frustrated, and you’d like to put in a complaint or whatever. But that person on the other end, and this is what I like about what you’re saying, it’s a person. And if you do get a chance to talk, if you get a chance to talk, the last thing you want to do is scream and yell. If it’s not working out, I usually if again, this is if you can talk, I usually will say if I know that they’re not on the right page with me that there’s somebody at the door, I got to hang up, and then I’ll try to, you know, get somebody else. And that way, what I’ll do, and this is just a trick that we have in our company, is that anytime we have an Amazon issue, we write it down. So we’ve got this ongoing list of issues. And when we find somebody good, we get them to work with us. And what we’ll find is that that one really great person, they’re into their work, they want to help you out. And anyways, and it all comes down to you can scream, you can yell you can make feel somebody feel really horrible. But it just at the end of the day, it doesn’t work. So go ahead,
Vanessa Hung 12:55
I’m trying to understand one thing, the purpose, or the mission, the goal that they have, when you open a case is to close it is to close it like no matter if they give you the right or the wrong answer is to close it. So when you talk with them on the phone, they want to stay there less amount of times with you on the phone. So that’s the thing, you you need to understand those kind of like metrics that they have in the backend, that’s how they work. And they need to be efficient. So one tip here, and and that that you mentioned is awesome that you write down all the situations or all the issues you’re having. When you open cases which are super, and I see this a lot sellers that have an issue, open the case. And in the case or while writing the email or going back and forth. They start researching the situation, they don’t have all the facts, they don’t have all the proof. So for example, if you’re talking to them on the phone, and they say like, Okay, can you please send us the invoice? And now the seller is like, Oh, let me see, let me ask my distributor, I don’t have a law so that that’s not efficient for you as a seller, that’s an efficient and for them. It’s not also so they will try to come the fall and they will try to close the case. And that’s where you lose them. So think us put put yourself in their shoes, they want to be efficient. So you need to be as efficient as possible. Getting the proof getting all the situation laid out in a way that is super simple to understand. So when you approach them like that, they said like okay, I want to work with this seller so I can help the seller versus the reactive one that just screams and and, and demands that the problem needs to resolve when they really don’t have that sometimes they don’t even have the power to solve those problems.
Norman Farrar 14:55
Any faster than this tool.
Talal Asad 14:58
Oh, yeah, I mean, I second a lot of Have Vanessa’s opinions on that, as well, um, it’s a matter of, of scale. Um, you have Amazon has millions of sellers and of all varying levels of, I would say skill. A lot of the times, and you’ll notice this when you’re, especially in the Facebook groups, if you’re in the Facebook groups, it’s really like the same six people always post an issue that they have an Amazon sellers worthless. And here’s what they did. And it’s the same problem. And another problem, another problem, and almost every single one of those problems is solvable if they were just a little bit more skilled at Amazon. And then on top of that, you can tell like, probably, they just are combative with the seller support people. So try really hard not to take it personally, I know Vanessa has been coaching me through that, like, not taking it personally through Seller Support. Um, and the same thing is just making sure that you’re able to research all the problems. I’m on top of that, though, coming back to what you said, how you said, like, you write down the names of the people that have fixed your problems for you, where I found that that works really well is the once in a while where you get the brand registry support person who actually solves your problem. I’ve started like putting in my case, please, if you are unable to fix this, please ping and then I put that person’s name. Oh, and then I, I don’t know if it’s been working 100% yet, but like I have seen problems that were closed two or three times have been starting to work, because that person I know can solve this one problem that? Yeah, I don’t know if it always works. But I think it’s everything you can give them I feel like can, you know is worth a shot.
Norman Farrar 16:35
Right? So let’s talk about some of the reasons and like, I can see that there’s some really seasoned sellers here. But there’s other sellers here that are fairly new, can we go through just a really quick checklist of why you would reach out, and why you would not reach out to Amazon Seller Support. That’s out to any of you.
Vanessa Hung 16:59
I think there is no reason why you shouldn’t not go there on our speakers. In the end Seller Support is there to support sellers. So even if you have a very basic question, and you and you don’t feel confident to go into a Facebook group, and ask or going to Google and you don’t take the time to read the policy, you definitely can open a case on us that that’s not a problem. But the mistake is trying to solve the issues just using Seller Support. So you are basically giving all the responsibility of managing your account to that team that is not even an expert in your account or in your products. So in that regard, I feel that we need to get educated on how to do things on on an RN, to see what works pay attention. Some sometimes, or I think the most amount of learning that I had had been because I listened to what the Seller Support is saying. And they walk me through processes, for example, or they tell me like no, these this issue is solved through this or, or that me. I wouldn’t discourage anybody to not open a case. If you feel you need it, you should do it. But do it in a very polite manner. Understand what’s your situation. And if you don’t understand, you need to translate that to them. So you need to say like, look, I don’t know what the issue is, I don’t know what the problem is. And maybe that will take you more time to solve. But if you pay attention of what they say back or what they tell you, you like with practice, and if you keep selling and selling and selling more, you will get savvy enough to then just open a case and say like, this is what I need. And you do it. And that’s it. So I don’t know, I feel that. The other part is we we have a very bad Perception of and this is a question I always get asked is, oh no, but there is one special thing. There is one special country this is one not It’s not like that. And people say like for example, the people in India, they’re useless. I don’t think so. at all, I feel that you can work with anybody that that obviously gets on the phone or gets in the email that give you some kind of help. But it’s just the way we asked for things. So if that change I think our whole result like all the results that we’re gonna get moving forward like if you today take action moving forward of getting the proof that you need, laying out the information, explaining things in a very simple way and not being reactive and taking your emotions out of the case. You will have a vast amount of success that I cannot even. I mean, everything will be successful, they will solve every single problem. Okay, too long.
Talal Asad 20:10
This is where I might have some disagreement with Vanessa. I’m on, I think on two things. One is, there is a lot of resources out there that are like first tier resources where you should probably be Googling or asking in a forum before opening the case with Amazon, I think the sheer reason why Amazon Seller Support is, quote unquote bad is because if everyone who has any question always asks Amazon instead of tries to solve the problems themselves, um, you just end up having a ton of cases that are open, so then Amazon has to hire a ton of people, and then they don’t really have the time to, you know, train and get those people up to speed. And so with the influx of just sheer, you know, the sheer economics of it of 10s of millions of sellers needs hundreds of 1000s of support people. And I think like, there, there are a lot of resources out there that would help you. So like, for example, I wouldn’t just open a support ticket for the sake of, you know, like, how do I do X before even like looking at it in the help files before asking in the forums before asking in the in the Facebook groups, because nine times out of 10, someone has already made that issue and can solve that problem for you. I feel like when you’ve exhausted all of your issues is when you should probably open up, open up that case as well. But that’s, that’s just me. Um, then the second, the second part is in terms of like the different regions and the different Seller Support, like there is definitely like a seller support tier one or tier zero that all they really can do is relay problems. And I think one of the best examples of this is in a bin check. Um, there’s only like the FBA team that can really do the big checks. Um, and a lot of times you’ll call in and they’ll say, Okay, we’ll do it for you, thank you, we’re gonna open it, and then they’ll hang up on you. You have to stay on the phone with them to open because when a big cheque is being opened, it’s not as easy as if someone solves your big cheque problem in a couple seconds. They didn’t do it. All they did was they wrote to an internal team, who will then close it out. Been checks need to be opened at every single FC your product is in. And so for example, this is a good example A week ago, we have a product that’s in 63 FCS, it’s literally distributed across the entire United States. And there’s 1500 units of it. And it was a problem with an expiration date. I had to stay on the phone. The first two people hung up really quickly. They said, Okay, we’re done. We’re done. And I’m like, I know that that’s not the case. So I made sure to get to the Costa Rican Philippines, the Costa Rican FC, FBA team, who knows how and they have the internal tools to set up the benchmarks for you on the phone. And I sat with the guy for two hours on the phone while he opened all 63 Like he tried to get me off the phone and I was like, No, I’m I’m here all day, let’s hang out. Because if you don’t do that, they will cut corners, like Vanessa said, they’re incentivized to close cases, they have a close percent rate that they need to hit and, and time to resolution. If the time to resolution is always like done, and no one ever leaves those like one star polls for them. That’s basically like a good a good outcome. And so just staying on the phone, being really polite with them, I joke with them and like, and usually then they find things a little bit more pleasant. But that’s that’s me when it comes to just like finding the right team is and the way that maybe you’d said when you find a resolution or you find the right person. Keep that in mind for the next time you try to solve things. So you don’t have to go through like the long version of it.
Norman Farrar 23:33
Okay, so how did you get directly to the team that you wanted?
Talal Asad 23:37
Um, like you said, politely hang up and call again until until it works. If you if you notice that if you notice there’s a breakdown in communication, like if you notice that they’re not doing what you want them to do. That’s when you just politely say, oh, you know, I’m sorry, I can’t I have to, you know, answer this call. I’ll call back thank you and then just close it Amazon’s
Talal Asad 23:56
door. Yeah, they
Vanessa Hung 23:59
do their thing on a normal limit. Let me add something here. So to go to the Help page, and to get help, now you have a dashboard that if you write down the system itself will tell you to what department Your problem will be directed to and and using that exact mistake. So you should go down and find the the tree guide like the menu with all the options. So in in the options in the Help section you will have. The team that helps you with listings are there they activated the team that helps you with reimbursements. The team helps you with FBA issues, the team that helps you with account issues and each of them so if you go through that, but you will get directly to the person that you need to speak to and not how do you
Norman Farrar 24:51
how do you get to that page? Sure.
Vanessa Hung 24:53
So you go to help. In the right corner, then you see the section complete As you scroll down, and in the middle, it says need support question mark, and on the bottom there says get support, okay, then it will tell you what kind of support you need to sell on Amazon or for ads. And that’s another thing. If you have issues with your PPC advertising all this stuff, the second option is yours. If you have issues with catalog inventory or account health, go to the first one that says selling on Amazon. When you click there, you will see in the left side, a whole menu of options. And each tab will redirect you to the specialized team in that department. So that’s extremely important, especially because what Hello said, not everybody can do a bench check. And if if you already go through that, you will get to the person that’s specifically allowed to do it, not with the regular Seller Support that just like gets on the phone and say sets, whatever I redirect you with others.
Norman Farrar 26:02
Okay. So, you know, we started out with asking people to give us their horror stories. But I’m kind of curious, too. If, if one of the Seller Support really went out of their way to do something incredible for you? Why don’t we see you know what that look like? Because there’s definitely some really great things that people have done for sellers that are just kind of unexpected, and I think we should cover that here too. But before I forget, we’ve got a great giveaway today till all is doing a skewer review consultation. It’s it just it’s a bunch of stuff. Anyways, it’s gonna be awesome. So if you’re interested is hashtag we’ll have Kelsey entered, Enter, or tag two people and get them to comment, hopefully, and you’ll be entered twice. Now, Kelsey, just going into our next segment. Can we just get a word from our sponsor, please? Maybe Thank you, Z CO for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm? Are you looking to take your ecommerce business from local to global, you can with the help of z and their brand new app. That’s right. You can track live shipments with push notifications, get detailed lead times for each stage of your shipment, and store all compliance and vet reclaimed documents in the palm of your hand. All while listening to lunch with Norm. Ready to expand your E commerce empire. And take your Amazon FBA business global. Use the link in the description to learn more about Z’s new app that’s now available on desktop and mobile. That’s z.co z e dot C Oh. Okay, so let’s talk about getting to the right department. We touched on this, you’ve talked about a help. But I hear people say, Oh, you got to go to this email or that email or this email? Or how do you contact them directly? How do you get to all these hidden gems that everybody’s talking about? Is it just through the drop down menu that or the the help page? Or are there a list of emails that you can get not directly to people, but to the departments? So you’re going to the right department? And is there a number? I know there’s a lot of little tricks that you can do to get to a phone number? To call? Yeah, to call. So a lot of the times like oh, you won’t see the option? You know, and people think, Oh, I’ve got to do an email and they just keep doing emails when they could actually call.
Vanessa Hung 28:49
Well, I don’t I haven’t had that experience to call
Talal Asad 28:53
them directly liquid liquid, an 800 number.
Norman Farrar 28:57
Yeah. So what we’ve done in the past, and what we’re doing, is that yeah, with the I’m, I’m trying to think of the exact way that we’re doing it, but when we’re going in and creating a ticket, what does Vanessa do? Anyways? Kelsey, while we’re on here, can I
Vanessa Hung 29:19
can tell you norm so in that way, if you asked me, okay, my option I went to menu, and there is no option to call what I normally do, because I really need to get them on the phone is to find a similar department like in the same area. So for example, if we are talking about inventory, I have issues in FBA. I’ll try to go to another department that have the call option, call them and request maybe a transfer or maybe they can help me with that. But some in the cases where you try to talk to them. So yes, there is a there is a phone number to call for support. But the problem with that phone number is that is the first layer of, of Seller Support, meaning that you won’t you won’t get any anybody specialized in that number. It’s like customer service. For customers. It’s similar. So they really don’t have the tools to solve problems. They can guide you, but not going directly. Okay, I need I call that number and then I’ll get to stellar performance. That doesn’t work that way. So yeah, that that will be my approach, if you don’t find a call bottom in that specific area that you want to fix.
Norman Farrar 30:40
Okay. And I’ve just got Vandana, I said, Then, Vanessa, there’s too many V’s. So I just I have my, my VA, like Senior Project Manager, just writing something out here. And I’ll tell you how we do it this little trick. Okay, now, what about going to the right department? So you hear some people saying, Oh, you got to get to the catalog department, you got to get to this department got to get to that department? Is there a list anywhere of the emails.
Talal Asad 31:12
Um, there are some emails that I have, um, I don’t, I don’t know if I want to throw them out publicly, but I will talk to whoever’s in the skew review on them on some of my on some of my, like, direct handles that I use, um, but the big, the big thing to always keep in mind is they change emails, frequently, right? Um, and, you know, whenever there’s something like an Amazon accelerate, or Amazon is doing a lot more webinars themselves, I would always go on to those because they always bring up like a secret email that just kind of pops up here and there. The ones that I have are kind of stale. Now. I haven’t noticed much. But there was one in accelerates last year, which was like FBA, inbound@amazon.com. And it was a direct email to inbound team. So whenever there was a major inbound issue, don’t quote me on that exact address, I’ll actually I’ll find it for you. It was something like that, um, and I’ll send it to you normally, if you want to, if you want to send it out. But there was a direct email to the inbound team. And it was amazing, because they were able to research issues that happen directly, and they get back to you immediately.
Norman Farrar 32:12
Okay, I’m just thinking that then I hear, okay, so here’s our little trick that she does. She goes into the support window, she opens up. Other issue, okay, in support, she selects other. And then she selects from that call me. So it’s just something that she does all the time. And she talks to tech support or Amazon contacts, Seller Support through that. That’s the that’s the starting point. And yeah, you’re right, it’s, it’s probably at a tier one level, but you get directed to the right department, and you’re talking to a human. So anyways, that’s the way that she, I knew we had a way of doing it. And like there was so easy before, but now it’s a little bit more challenging trying to find that number. But that’s how we do it.
Talal Asad 33:06
Totally. And that’s, that’s always that’s, I would say 80% of my cases are actually opened using the other in within the department. So there’s usually a catalog and an other and then there’s like an FBA and in other like every single one of those major categories has an other. Another, I guess another little trick that we like to do always is, recently, Amazon has been letting you name your cases from inbound, but it’s not on every one of my accounts yet. But I always like to open an account in an email and then reply to it with the call. And that way you’re able to instead of having if everyone always calls, you have this thing where it says like case created from inbound. And then if you open like, you know, a dozen cases a month, everyone looks exactly the same. So when you want to go back, you have to literally open every single case to try to remember what happened. Um, what we like to do is we always like to open it first in an email, and then reply to that email immediately with a call and say calling or just to discuss and that way, you can name it. So you have a subject, and there’s a history of exactly what the problem is.
Talal Asad 34:09
Yeah, great idea. Okay,
Vanessa Hung 34:11
that’s why that’s why I tell all these sticky enough conventions needs to keep things organized. It’s true. Like if you if your account gets to a level where you open cases daily or every week, it’s hard to keep track of it if you don’t have convention.
Norman Farrar 34:29
Right. No, I absolutely agree. I think Kelsey, if he, you know, comes on he will say that I am He hates my file structuring and naming protocols, everything because we got a lot of things going on the go but just to keep it organized. It’s so important. We’re getting into Black Friday. We know that there’s a lot of bullying that goes wrong with unethical suppliers or sorry unethical sellers. Let’s say that you have a copyright infringement. Or let’s say that something happens where somebody gets onto your listing, is there anything that you can do rather than than just sending off an email saying, hey, some hijacker just replaced all my images with adult images or something like that?
Vanessa Hung 35:21
Well, we we talked about that in the, in our last conversation about preventing those issues. So honestly, yes, that can happen. Your your task here is putting yourself in a position where that’s less likely to happen. In the case it does, you really need to be patient, and this is something going through the holidays. And if you start getting issues, or you’re wanting to make changes, I highly recommend you to consider doing them like after the BCBC holiday season, which is goes maybe from Black Friday to one week before Christmas. That’s where they are all invested in just running. They don’t really like to so if you open a case, for example, just asking, I need to change my image because my my hero image is not the one that I want, I have a new better I want that is for holidays, or something you can get stuck in that on the system is it’s every time we go into holidays, the system behaves really slow. And the thing is with Seller Support, especially is that they hire people to help like extra people to help, then they’re not a specialist, they’re not trained, they don’t really know how to solve the issues. So you will get answers that are ridiculous. Now, like in this days, just because the people that are answering are not trained enough. So consider that going a specific into the somebody changed my listing, try as much as possible to fix the stuff in your end before trying to open a case or before needing their help. Because sometimes if you use flat files in you have everything correctly. If nobody’s into your listing, you have brand registry, you can have a no more approaches than just opening a case or writing an email. On Yeah, you really need to be patient, on on. Yeah, that protection is everything is about prevention. It’s like you don’t want to get cancer and then ask me like, How can I fix it not a lot, you eat healthy, and you don’t get cancer or something. So let’s focus on that what we can prevent instead of being reactive to the issues.
Norman Farrar 37:52
Alright, so just in case you have not heard Vanessa’s last podcast with us. She went into detail into flat files and prevention. And a one of those things, by the way, about doing it on a regular basis. I had no idea. So we’ve just talked to our whole team saying you got to do this more often. And so we changed the way that we were do based on what you were saying on the last podcast. So it was just a couple of weeks ago. So if you haven’t checked, check it out. It’s it was really cool. Alright, so we touched on naming conventions and skew naming conventions is the second ago. All right, tell all I hear you’re the expert.
Talal Asad 38:37
I think so. I mean, I hope so that that’s quite an honor to be called an expert in anything really I just want to piggyback on one thing Vanessa said right before we jump into that, which is I always tell all my clients, we have a moratorium on pressing the Save and update button or are uploading a flat file. Now, so anytime, like two weeks before, because as we all know, like anytime you press that button, you’re inviting the robots to crawl it again. And if there’s a word that you kind of were skirting by, for example, like in a pesticide type word like anti microbial, let’s say you’ve never got knocked out for it, and then you press Save today, you could very easily re invite that crawl and get knocked off for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And so what I always advise everyone is if you this week, if if it’s not an absolutely mission, critical change that you need to make to your listing. Don’t touch your listing until after Cyber Monday. And especially if you’re a seasonal product, and it’s you don’t have a mission critical thing like I wouldn’t even touch it until, you know sometime in December. I’m just because at this stage, like you said, getting through to Seller Support and trying to get and navigate like they’re so backed up now that fixes could take. I mean, I’ve had I’ve had now a fix that’s been going on maybe like 100 hours and we still haven’t been able to fix it like 100 Real hours like four or five days. We haven’t been able to fix it um Just because something someone hit save a little bit too late in the in the season.
Norman Farrar 40:05
Okay, all right. Okay, so now let’s talk about naming protocols or naming conventions.
Talal Asad 40:12
Sure, it’s not nearly as sexy as selling stuff in my world, you don’t see it. Um, so the, the big thing that I love to do is make sure that you have a convention that works for you. I think that’s the number one. That’s kind of like the number one thing to think through. And not every convention is one size fits all. And we you can conventionalized a lot of things on Amazon. So the number one for sure is your skews and how you name your skews. If you’re adding a new product to Amazon and you leave the seller SKU thing blank, I’m sure a lot of people have especially when you first started, Amazon will auto assign this like 10 character, you know alphanumeric like x 394, dash nine, three B, and then you’ll never know what that product is. Or if you download like a child asin reporter, if you’re downloading any report that has that has your your metrics on it. And it’s by SKU like you have to remember that and that that just doesn’t work. So I always like to say that the SKU has to work for you. But then it should also be something where you can immediately look at that SKU and know exactly what the product is. The second piece of that is not only you as the seller should know what the product is. But if Vanessa jumps into my account, she should never have to ask, what is the SKU because you decided to work on some like obscure coding. So I know another thing a lot of people do the two other things people do a lot with their excuses. They’ll either put their UPC as their SKU, or they’ll put like their internal model number as a SKU. So if you say my school was a 109, a, I know 109 A is my you know, SPF 13. sunblock three pack, like, cool, you know that as the seller, because you know everything about your brands, but norm if he jumps on your account, Vanessa, if she jumps on your account to fix things, they don’t know that and so if they have to look up, you’re only all you’re doing is you’re really giving Vanessa a lot more billable hours while she has to go and research your products. So when you are naming my favorite naming convention is always to put the brand abbreviation at the beginning. And then I like to put one of the following either like the product, the form factor, the pack size, the quantity, and then at the very end, I always append it with an either FBA or FBM. So if you create like a shadow SKU, and you need an FBA version, or an FBM. The other thing is if you’re doing one with Amazon barcode versus versus merchant barcode, I always do dash UPC, if it’s going to be your merchant barcode or dash, that’s where I use FBA. If it’s going to be Amazon barcode, sometimes people do dash fn SKU, that’s, that’s cool, too. Um, and so a reason for all of that is if you do have three, or four or five different skews for the same product across all these different types of options, and like, let’s say you have a small and light versus an FBA, then I’ll always do SNL for small and light. And that way, you just know which SKU is what and you’re able to keep track of everything. And the bulk of that SKU is what the product is, and then you append it at the end with kind of like the selling I call it the channel, the selling channel for it. Um, and I can put, is there a way that I can put something in the chat, I can actually like, put the convention in the chat somewhere,
Norman Farrar 43:34
yeah, just go, I believe you have comments. Or you could put it up into private chat, and Kelsey can post it.
Talal Asad 43:45
Yeah, I don’t see where I can put it in common. So I’ll put it in the in the private chat and have Kelsey post it. So the top part is the convention. And the bottom part is like an example of that convention. Okay. And then here, I know, when he does posted, I can just like walk through it real quick. But that that kind of tells you when you see it, it’ll be like the brand abbreviation, then you know, the internal model number, if this brand wanted to do it by their internal model number, so someone in the brand can know immediately what it is. And then like nylon, and why l and then like the colors orange, black, blue, green, red, so a OB kgr makes me know, okay, that’s like these colors that are in this product. 32 Pack FBA. So that’s just one example of it. But of course, that middle part of it allows you to append or I guess it’s pretty extensible in that, like, you’re able to do whatever you want in that middle part as long as it works for you. And it’s consistent. Oh, and that’s number three, consistency. So I need to be able to know what it is. Vanessa needs to know, know what it is. And then you need to be really consistent and make sure that you apply that across everything. And that really allows you then to be able to, you know, jump in and out of different conventions without having to like if you keep changing your conventions. Let’s get end up happening is without the consistency you’re gonna have like a lot of, you know, a lot of issues with people not knowing exactly what’s why internal or external to your company, right?
Norman Farrar 45:09
Oh, that’s great. Okay, so Kelsey is posting it right now for you to take a look at.
Kelsey 45:15
Yeah. I’m not sure how the format is with here to kind of old jumbles together. So I broke it into two. So this was the example of with it laid out. And then this is the actual example, with the numbers and the abbreviations.
Norman Farrar 45:34
Okay, very good. Okay, so
Vanessa Hung 45:37
on this fire of the conventions are not only for the catalog, right? Oh,
Talal Asad 45:45
oh, yeah. I mean, this is sorry, what do you mean by that?
Vanessa Hung 45:48
You know, that we, we always talk about like, Ah, you can have a convention in your SKUs. You can have a convention in your shipments to FBA, your ads, the ads, the ad part for me is like mind blowing, like you need to organize those stuff. So this translate to all the areas that Amazon have to put information. Right,
Talal Asad 46:10
exactly. So here, I’m actually putting in the chat right now, an example of if you were, here’s my favorite one to do it after SKUs is in your inbound shipments. So I just put that in the chat too. And this is this is, in my opinion, life changing if you haven’t been doing this, because you know, if you put an inbound shipment and you just leave it blank, it will say FBA sta and then like dash a FC and then a date. And then if you send in a shipment every day, or three, you know, three or four a week, which is like pretty normal on a normal volume account, you just have a list of shipments and you don’t know what’s in each one of those shipments. Um, this is a way for you to know exactly where and especially if you have multiple, three PLS, or you have multiple locations that you’re shipping things in, in from or sorry, in from Yeah, this way you can differentiate the origin, you can know exactly which FC it’s going to go to, and then you know, what’s in it. And so if someone’s like, can you check all of our, you know, chocolate pack, eight ounce? Where are those, you can just like search for that convention, go in and know exactly where those shipments are. So you don’t have to click 100 different shipments.
Norman Farrar 47:17
That’s, that’s great. So, Vanessa, do you have anything to add to that?
Vanessa Hung 47:24
No, I think it’s, it’s amazing. I seen the change when When sellers start investing in this kind of organization and conventions, it helps their business to be more efficient. And they can focus less hours in managing and more into growing or are looking for more products. So I seen the results. And this also actually works. It’s not something fancy to look at your dashboards and make it pretty. It’s not just for that. And as far as, yes, you can have outsiders but also if you download your reports, you can customize things like so you are not as dependent on software’s, for example. So you can download your reports and really like trace down a kind of produce or a warehouse or a type of keyword in your in your ads. And that for me, it’s amazing. I love to download reports. And just to check the information that I was on half there instead of 100% real lot reliant on on what the software does, or what, you know, third party software do so. I mean, I love it. I think it’s it’s genius. And I really encourage people that are listening to start doing that, you can do it right now. So if you don’t have your catalog as 3d or you don’t have a convention and you want to do it, just do it step by step, I do recommend you not to do it during this like holiday season. Don’t do that. Yes, but start making those changes. So you can create one SKU then let the old one run out of inventory and then start sending with the new SKU. Stuff like that little by little doesn’t have to do make a shock, like not everything at the same time. But it’s really important for for the sellers that do multi multi channel, so they do many channels. This is super from you selling all the platforms. So you need to have the same SKU in your Walmart in your Shopify in your ad C or market favorite whatever. It will got so many hours just by doing this simple change. So it’s exponential the results.
Norman Farrar 49:43
Okay, very good. Yeah, that is a great I love what Marina says that yes, this is life changing. So
Talal Asad 49:51
no Ray had a good point too. She put up first of all, thank you very much for complimenting on my beard. I know it’s not quite normal level yet. Um At an array about the the text limit for the shipment name, that’s when you have to go back to that middle part of like, what you’re naming the products and finding good abbreviations that work for you. And that way you can at least abbreviate what you’re putting in there. And that should really help. The second thing is, and maybe a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but I feel like I’ve been burned way too many times with my inbounds. And it might not even be feasible for a lot of people who are importing stuff. I recommend to all my clients that literally you should put one SKU in each shipment. And, and it’s kind of crazy if especially if you’re sending in bulk packs of many different sizes and stuff. But, um, again, I know it’s really onerous, and it’s it but I’ve just had so many times of mislabeling at Amazon side. If you do mix pallets or mixed skews at most, maybe you know, too, if you have to, but I try really not to hold put a lot of things in one single shipment and, and spreading those shipments out because you can wipe out an entire season of selling with one really bad mislabel, especially if you’re sending in 1000s of units and having to wait for Amazon to even check and they get those big checks wrong a lot of times so if you’re sending in your number one products you even let’s say your like your top 10 products all of all, every single time I recommend just sending in one, one product at a time. Once agree.
Norman Farrar 51:24
Yeah. So Kelsey, do we have time for a couple of questions and over to we’ll have Kelsey, I know we got a hard cut off at one
Kelsey 51:34
oh yeah, we can see where it ends up. And here we go. So the first one is from Simon I have a UK and pan EU account brand registered but having trouble with opening and verifying us accounts. Seller Support has acknowledged issue but no solution for several months any ideas
Vanessa Hung 51:59
I am facing the same situation but the other way around an account that is up in the US and its needs to verify on the European marketplace. So I wrote an email to sell performance. So seller performance in the UK in that that’s my cape. So that’s it will be server performance seller Dutch performance@amazon.com. And I explained to them all the situation and send us an attachments all the documentation for the business and they will call you or if that was my case when I when I solve this they call you and ask for questions. They call the seller on us like two or three questions and they were able to reactivate that I don’t know where what are the steps that you have taken especially if this been going on for several months but the email directly with seller performance don’t go to Seller Support they are not able to change anything from there and that needs to be like escalate to the seller performance team that does my experience in that case.
Norman Farrar 53:13
Okay, next question Kelson then we can go to the wheel.
Kelsey 53:17
Okay, let’s do it from a boo. My account has been approved for a few months again, I go inventory received and now the deactivated My Account went through verification again, twice, approved but still not reinstated. Any pointers.
Vanessa Hung 53:35
Oh, wow. So this is happening alarm, I thought I thought the case that I work was just an outsider. Same thing goes with seller performance. They see in their back end your accounts still pending for verification. So even though they were there were they verify you on they send you an email that your account is active in the backend not so I probably you receive your inventory and now it is a stranded because he says that he’s spending for our country vacation. Again, sending solar cell performance email directly to them with all the information of your business asking for verification and activation in the front end. So really, you really need to take time to write this email to explain that because if you say like please verify my account and send the information they won’t move. They won’t do anything. Just need to set in the front and my account. It looks like that is not activated. But we already went to the verification process here. So our documentations here is the email that we got when the when account was active. Can you please through like research on fixed?
Norman Farrar 54:52
Okay, so let’s get to the wheel of Kelsey.
Kelsey 54:56
Oh, here we go the wheel
Norman Farrar 55:12
Okay, tell all this is the first time you’ve seen this Vanessa, you’re a pro at this. It’s time.
Kelsey 55:19
Yes. Just a second. I just want to make sure I got everyone to do. Just one second. Okay, we’re good to go. Alright, here we go. We’ll shuffle these up. This is for the ski review 321 If you are the winner please email me Kay at lunch with Norm calm. And the winner is Bronwyn.
Norman Farrar 55:46
All right. There we go.
Kelsey 55:50
All right, congratulations, Bronwyn. So email me, Kate at lunch with Norm calm, and I will connect you
Norma Farrar 55:57
look at that till it’s one o’clock. We did it. You’re off the hook.
Talal Asad 56:04
No, perfect. I’m sorry, I do have to step off. But I did send in the private chat, the inbound team that helped. And so this is a super cool email address that worked at least nine months ago. I don’t know if it works anymore today. But hopefully, that can help you and they don’t help with like, please don’t email them with like, my stuff is you know, checked in and it’s only been a month like this, this this thing is for when there’s a major major inbound problem that you have not just like, Where’s my stuff? Why isn’t it checked in yet because check in time should take anywhere from, as we know, five days to seven weeks in.
NormaN Farrar 56:44
Okay, so Kelsey, put that in the in the lunch with norm group. We don’t want to public chat, just out there for everybody. Okay, so just make sure you, you put that into the group. And that’s it. So till I know you have to go Vanessa, thank you for coming back on. And we’re going to be doing a club house very soon, too with you. Yes. So looking forward to that. But anyways, I’d like to thank you have a happy Thanksgiving Okay, everybody, I think that’s it for today. Okay, there we go. Um, thanks a lot for coming on board. We do have one. A quick word from our sponsor. Kelsey. Do you want to just get that going? Thank you, solarize for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm solarize is your comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs. Everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon business is just one click away. For more information, contact demon his team over at solarized calm and remember solarize is with one our. And I don’t know how we did this. But this Friday, Black Friday. Mr. Kane, Kevin King is going to be joining us. And anyways, I don’t know how Kelsey, you talked him into doing it. But anyways, he’s going to be coming on we’re going to be talking just about a bunch of stuff. It’s always great talking with Kevin. So this Friday, we’re gonna be talking with Kevin about that. Cows anything else?
Kelsey 58:29
Just if you enjoyed today’s episode, smash those Like buttons. If you’re watching from YouTube, you can hit that big red subscribe button down below. Subscribe to the channel. So you can follow us on social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a bunch of other places as well. So Happy Thanksgiving to our American viewers to Jessica Rabbit, my stash. This is day 24 of the stash. So just really absorb it. It’s going to be gone within a week from now too. So thank you guys. Thank you everyone who tuned in today. I see you that we did get a bunch of new viewers too. So this is a podcast that we do every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Eastern Time. And we do weekly or every episode we do giveaways as well. So definitely tune in. Check that out. And that’s it.
NormaN Farrar 59:27
All right, because you stole my line. I’ll say it again. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you everybody for watching. Thank you for being part of our community. We couldn’t do it without you. Enjoy the turkey and enjoy the rest of your day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
