The success of your Marketplace relies on your ability to not only proactively recruit a large number of sellers, but also maintain the quality of these partners. After all, they are an extension of your company’s brand and stewards of your organization’s promise to customers.
Your Marketplace buyers expect a positive and consistent customer experience, regardless of who is fulfilling the actual purchase.
Based on our experience working with hundreds of organizations to run successful third-party Marketplaces, the team at Mirakl recommends three important things you can do to preserve your brand integrity with Marketplace sellers:
- Inspect sales performance indicators: it’s necessary for your Marketplace team to inspect your sellers’ sales performance in addition to their level of service. Depending on how you structure your team, either your Business Development or Account Management employees may be in charge of this effort. They should be tasked with tracking specific level of service indicators to continually help sellers improve their performance.
- Audit sellers – and suspend if necessary: the Mirakl Marketplace Platform offers powerful tools to audit sellers, a feature our customers rely on to maintain consistency within their Marketplace. At times, this means suspending the activity of a seller if necessary. Service indicators can be configured to automatically suspend a seller in accordance with your requirements. Your Marketplace team is alerted of these suspensions immediately, allowing them to take action as soon as possible.
- Build transparency: transparency is key to establishing trust and credibility with customers, especially in the realm of online shopping where there is no human interaction. As a Marketplace operator, customers put their trust in your ability to select credible and high-quality sellers. Being transparent with these customers means making sellers’ information available, including name, address, shipping conditions, shop and seller ratings. (Related reading: Why You Need Seller Ratings in Your Online Marketplace)
Give your buyers what they need to better understand the dynamics of your Marketplace, and make the best purchase decision based on their expectations.
Your sellers are one of the cornerstones of a Marketplace strategy. As you recruit sellers, expanding your Marketplace product selection, be sure to make resources available to manage and track their quality of service. Your Marketplace team should make the effort to both proactively and reactively identify, qualify, and finally, prioritize your sellers. Doing so could mean the difference between preserving, or risking, your brand.
Learn more about Mirakl, the global leader in online Marketplace platforms.
