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Interested in Walmart customer support tips? Good idea! Keeping customer service top of mind is a smart step toward setting your eCommerce business up for success.
In fact, studies have shown customer support to be a top factor used by consumers when deciding whether to do business with a brand. So, how can you make sure you offer the best customer experience possible? And what Walmart-specific strategies should you deploy?
Here at eDesk, we process more than 50 million eCommerce messages every month. That means we’ve learned a thing or two (or 20) about customer service for each platform and marketplace.
Keep reading to discover our best practices for providing exceptional customer support as a Walmart seller.
What is Walmart Marketplace?
Walmart Marketplace began allowing third-party sellers to list and sell products on Walmart.com starting in 2016. This well-known eCommerce platform enables sellers to reach millions of potential customers.
In fact, research from Zippia shows that Walmart has experienced significant year-over-year revenue growth for the past two years. The retail giant’s revenue in 2021 was $572.8 billion (a 2.43% increase over 2020), and $611.3 billion in 2022 (a 6.73% increase over 2021).
If you’re already selling on another marketplace or platform, selling on Walmart should be a no-brainer.
This is especially true since Walmart enables sellers to add items in bulk from other marketplaces. Plus, Walmart Marketplace offers a host of benefits and support services that we’ll mention throughout this article.
Benefits of Being a Walmart Seller
Being a Walmart seller has many benefits. With the Marketplace, online sellers have access to an expansive customer base that can help them extend their reach and grow their business.
As the second-largest online marketplace, Walmart receives over 110 million website visitors per month. This gives you a tremendous opportunity to sell your own products to Walmart’s huge pool of customers.
Walmart also provides sellers with increased visibility and credibility. Additionally, Walmart offers a variety of online business management and promotional tools. These include an analytics dashboard, an order management system, and access to discounts, coupons, and more.
The Importance of Customer Service
Providing exceptional customer service is key for Walmart Marketplace sellers. Customers want to feel valued, and it’s important to show them that their business is appreciated.
Research shows that 90% of shoppers report using customer service as a deciding factor in whether to buy from a company. Furthermore, 93% of consumers say they’re likely to shop again with a brand following a positive customer support experience. And 86% of customers are willing to pay more for good customer service.
Need more proof? According to the Tempkin Group, companies earning over $1 billion annually can increase profits by $700 million within 3 years of investing in customer service. Note: SaaS brands can see an even bigger revenue jump.
For sellers on Walmart Marketplace, providing outstanding customer service is essential to gaining customers’ trust and ensuring their loyalty. By offering excellent customer support, sellers can ensure customers are satisfied with their orders and likely to make repeat purchases.
Want to knock customer support out of the park without even breaking a sweat? Centralize the customer messaging from all your marketplaces, eCommerce websites, and communication platforms into one smart inbox with eDesk’s Walmart integration. Our customer support software for eCommerce can help you save time and reduce manual effort, all while delivering best-in-class customer service.
From time-saving templates and HandsFree auto-responders to AI-driven message summaries, sentiment analysis, and two-way translations, eDesk enables sellers to improve response times by 4X. Connect through our seamless Walmart integration to discover how much easier and better your Walmart customer support can be.
Tips for Providing Outstanding Customer Service on Walmart Marketplace
There are several ways to offer outstanding Walmart Marketplace customer service. These can include responding quickly to inquiries, addressing complaints in a timely manner, providing detailed product information and support, and offering personalized customer service.
Sellers should also be sure to stay abreast of Walmart Marketplace policies and regulations in order to ensure compliance with all rules and regulations.
Here are our detailed tips and best practices for providing extraordinary customer support as a Walmart seller.
1. Set the right expectations
Set the right expectations by letting customers know what to anticipate from your brand. In order to do this, Walmart sellers need to clearly communicate all terms and conditions upfront, including delivery timelines and any other relevant information.
Not only can this help shoppers know what to expect, it also reduces the number of back-and-forth inquiries you receive.
It’s important to note, however, that Walmart strictly prohibits the following communications:
- Any communications to customers other than those expressly related to fulfillment or customer service.
- Any unsolicited emails or calls to customers, including marketing communications.
- Abusive or threatening language of any kind in communications to customers, Walmart staff, or other Walmart Marketplace sellers.
Communications outside of fulfillment or customer service interactions are prohibited. So, you’ll need to include pertinent details about policies and other info in the body of your Walmart product listings. Or, you can respond to customer queries with relevant information on your policies.
And remember, the choices you make when setting up your Walmart Marketplace account and listings will dictate many of your policies.
2. Respond to inquiries quickly
Responding quickly is essential to providing excellent customer service. Customers want to know that their inquiries are heard and that they will receive a timely response.
If you sell on Walmart, customer service inquiries will come in through your Message Center. In keeping with its reputation for great customer care, Walmart requires sellers to respond to queries within 48 hours (including weekends, days off, or “operational outage periods”).
3. Have all the information you need
Make sure you have everything you need to answer customers’ questions accurately and completely. This may require asking the right follow-up questions when responding to customer queries, consulting with other members of your organization on tough or specialized issues, and having access to pertinent order details.
This is another area where eDesk helps immensely. When a Walmart customer inquiry comes in through the eDesk system, you will be able to see all customer and/or order details on the same screen, thanks to our 360° customer view.
Order details, tracking numbers, and the like show up right alongside the ticket (message). No more having to click around or switch tabs to find the information you need to answer customer questions.
4. Offer personalized customer service
Customers appreciate being treated with respect and care, so it’s important to offer personalized Walmart customer service.
This could include using customers’ first names in customer service responses, providing personalized product recommendations based on a customer’s question or shopping history, and more. Remember, though, to adhere to Walmart’s aforementioned communication guidelines for sellers.
eDesk’s customizable templates and auto-responders make customer service personalization a breeze. You can easily and automatically insert customers’ first names, order numbers, tracking numbers, and more into messages.
Our AI-powered help desk will even recommend templates and snippets based on the customer’s message that you can automatically insert into responses at the click of a button. This way, each shopper receives individualized service and attention, while your team saves time and effort in the process.
5. Provide detailed product information
Customers want to know exactly what they are buying, so providing detailed product information is essential. Shoppers should be able to find all the information they need about a product or service before making a purchase decision. This means Walmart sellers should create detailed product descriptions, including high-quality product images and videos, whenever possible.
Conduct keyword research on your product so you can optimize your listing with the terms customers are searching for. Make your product descriptions easy to read, with clear language and short sentences/taglines. Scan your text carefully to eliminate any typos or mistakes.
You should also try to think of your listings from the customer’s point of view. If you were browsing for this item, what would you need to know?
And, as always, adhere to Walmart’s rules and policies. Here’s some information from Walmart about how to create a great item listing.
6. Get to know the needs of your target audience
If you want to be successful on Walmart Marketplace, you need to get to know your target audience. By understanding the needs and wants of your shoppers, you can ensure that you are able to meet or exceed customer expectations.
This means paying attention to what customers are buying, and what they’re asking for. While it may seem difficult to track such things, the right software makes it a breeze. For example, with eDesk’s powerful reporting and analytics, you can keep up with which products sell the most, which items result in the most queries and/or returns, and more.
This enables Walmart sellers to stock inventory that shoppers want, address problematic items, and delight customers.
You can also do some research into Walmart shoppers in general. For example, the average American Walmart shopper has an annual household income of just over $76,000. This could affect the items you sell and/or how you price them.
Furthermore, this guest blog written by Jungle Scout and published by Walmart shows several key shopper statistics. For instance, a large percentage of consumers report shopping at Walmart due to ease of returns. And when it came to life events that led customers to shop at Walmart, 20% of customers reported having gotten a new pet, 18% started a new job, 18% moved into a new home, and 12% set up a home gym.
7. Encourage more reviews from customers
A huge benefit of delivering excellent customer service is that it leads to glowing customer reviews. This, in turn, lets more shoppers know they can trust your brand.
According to data from Walmart, 95% of customers look for positive reviews before they’ll even consider purchasing a product. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on your Walmart Marketplace items by providing speedy delivery, fair prices, and, of course, great customer support.
You might also want to consider the Walmart Review Accelerator program. Offered by Walmart, this program offers shoppers incentives in exchange for leaving authentic customer feedback. Learn more about Walmart Review Accelerator here.
8. Fulfill orders through Walmart Fulfillment Services
To make order fulfillment a bit easier, Walmart sellers can use Walmart fulfillment services.
Walmart fulfillment services allow sellers to have their products stored and shipped directly from one of Walmart’s many fulfillment centers. By using this service, sellers can save time and money, while still providing great customer service.
Additionally, fulfillment services allow for faster shipping times and better tracking capabilities, which can help to ensure customer satisfaction.
And if you’re using eDesk, we pull the last 24 hours’ worth of Walmart orders into your eDesk system every hour.
That means you’ll have the order details and tracking info available inside every eDesk ticket, regardless of the fulfillment methods you use.
9. Analyze your competitors’ Walmart customer service strategies
Want to know how to provide the best customer service in your industry? Check out what your competitors are doing right, and what they’re doing wrong, so you can put together a winning strategy.
By understanding the strategies that other successful sellers are using to engage with their customers, you can gain insights into what works and what doesn’t. This can help you determine which customer service tactics you should use for your own business in order to stand out from the competition.
A few easy real-world ways you can study competitors include reading reviews on similar item listings, checking out social media complaints/comments, and even shopping with competitors yourself.
When analyzing your competitors’ customer service strategies, it is important to pay attention to how they respond to inquiries, address complaints, and interact with their customers on social media. You can also evaluate the level of personalized customer care they offer and the quality of product information they provide.
10. Utilize resources from Walmart Seller Center and stay in compliance with Walmart policies
Utilize resources from the Walmart Seller Center to smash your customer service. Walmart Seller Central provides a variety of resources to help sellers manage their businesses, including:
- The ability to add items in bulk from other marketplaces
- Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS)
- Activity Feed dashboard
- Insights and analytics
- Orders dashboard
- Much more…
And remember, if you connect through eDesk’s Walmart integration, any emails in your Walmart inbox will be automatically passed through to your eDesk smart inbox. That means you’ll be able to see all your Walmart messages in both places.
11. Stay on top of Walmart Marketplace policies and regulations
Staying on top of Walmart Marketplace policies is key to providing extraordinary customer service. It is important to follow all of the rules and regulations set by Walmart so that your seller’s account remains in good standing.
For example, as a Walmart Marketplace seller, you’ll pay a Referral Fee for each item sold. This fee is determined by an item’s “Contract Category” (or “Product Type”). Learn more here.
Walmart also enforces brand restrictions on various product categories, pricing rules (items that are deemed to be “unfairly priced” will be removed by Walmart), a Marketplace Seller Code of Conduct, and plenty more policies. Explore Walmart’s help pages on rules and regulations for Marketplace sellers.
You also need to stay up-to-date with any changes or updates to these policies, so your store remains in good standing with the marketplace and customers receive the best possible service.
12. Maintain a friendly, helpful demeanor
No matter how busy your Walmart customer support team gets, it’s important to approach every customer interaction with a friendly, helpful demeanor. Let shoppers know you appreciate their business and the opportunity to answer their questions.
It’s no secret that handling customer service can get hectic and stressful. However, if you’re using eDesk to save time, reduce effort, and boost response rates, you can make it much easier to keep your cool.
Key to remaining friendly and helpful under pressure, especially when dealing with clients across multiple sales channels, is developing a strong customer service mindset. This type of demeanor is one that finds solutions to customer problems and communicates those solutions clearly and effectively to customers.
More Ways eDesk Makes Walmart Customer Support Easier
We’ve already mentioned a centralized smart inbox and a host of AI-powered features, but here are a few more details on the ways eDesk makes Walmart customer support easier…
- Manage all sales channels seamlessly: With eDesk’s 250+ integrations with various marketplaces, platforms, and tools (including Walmart, Amazon, Shopify, Mirakl, and more), you can connect the customer messaging from all your marketplaces, platforms, and communication channels into one smart inbox.
- Get at-a-glance message summaries: Thanks to eDesk AI, you can see an at-a-glance summary of a customer’s query before even reading the whole message. This lets you know what the customer needs more quickly and easily.
- Know customer moods before you talk to them: eDesk AI also analyzes messages and provides a sentiment analysis. This means you’ll know customer moods before you even read messages.
- Save tons of time with HandsFree auto-responders: Upon researching 60 million+ eCommerce messages, we have discovered that up to 46% of customer queries can be handled adequately by our AI-driven HandsFree auto-responders. Use eDesk AI to reduce the time and effort your team spends on customer support, all while improving response rates by 4X!
- Two-way message translations: International sellers can take care of customers around the globe with ease thanks to eDesk’s AI-powered two-way message translations. These translations are even smart and nuanced enough to glean the context of messages, rather than just translating word for word.
- Never out of step: All incoming and outgoing messages show on both eDesk and Walmart Seller Center automatically, so you never have to worry about missing a thing.
- Orders, tracking, and tickets in a single view: Tracking numbers are surfaced directly on eDesk tickets so you don’t have to search for them. You can also automatically insert them into message templates in order to personalize your Walmart customer service.
Providing Exceptional Customer Support on Walmart Marketplace: Final Thoughts
Being a Walmart seller gives you an incredible opportunity to expand your customer base and increase sales. However, to truly stand out from the crowd, you need to provide exceptional customer service.
Follow our tips and best practices above to give yourself a massive advantage over your competition. And if you really want to take your eCommerce business to the next level without breaking a sweat or the bank, use eDesk to level up every aspect of your Walmart customer support.
For more strategies on enhancing your customer service, check out our guide on mastering eCommerce marketplace customer service.
Not currently a Walmart seller? You can sign up using the links below
Ready to elevate your customer support? Book a Demo today to see eDesk in action.
