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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Bill Cobb’s revealing letter to customers

The news today is full of reports that eBay is rolling back some of its price increases and beefing up its customer support. The changes come after customer uproar over the heavily-reported fee increases. A an eBay customer myself, I got the e-mail from Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America. What struck me was the importance Cobb assigns to listening to customers.

Cobb, who has been with eBay only since December, uses the capital “C” when talking about the eBay Community, elevating it to a defined, named space. He credits the hard work of the Community with eBay’s success, then gets down to business, explaining changes the company is making based on Community feedback.

eBay has a fantastic Customer Support team, but Meg and I agree we haven’t invested enough in giving our CS reps the flexibility and tools they need to really take care of you. So, to start, within the next 90 days, we’ll shut down most of our automated email responses. Our users will get a “real” e-mail response to their questions - you’ll hear from a human being who will try to help you with your problem or question right off the bat. We will only use auto responses to acknowledge receipt of spam or policy violation reports.

The letter lists other changes, including a credit to eBay store owners and a fee reduction for average sellers (still leaving the company with higher fees than before).

Then Cobb advises customers that he’ll host an online meeting in order to obtain more feedback, and concludes with this: eBay has never stopped listening to our users and we never will.

I know many of you already have Meg’s e-mail address and frequently send her messages about things you care about. I hope you will do the same with me. My e-mail address is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). I promise I’ll read every e-mail. And most of all, I’ll listen.

That’s one helluva commitment to make, reading every email, but the guy seems sincere. It strikes me that most of the case studies we see of companies embracing the social customer are ones of pure success. In eBay’s case, some practices and decisions have raised customer ire, but the company still recognizes the value of the social customer and practices engagement with the audience. You don’t have to be perfect every time to reap benefits from participating in the conversation. You’ll still do better than those organizations that don’t acknowledge the conversation even exists.

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