How much customer contact do you get?

[Charlies_Mom]

I have just started a Zazzle store, coming from a reasonable amount of success on another platform, and would like to get an idea of how much customer contact Zazzle store owners get. One of the reasons I am changing platforms is that I will be going back to work and won't have the time to customize designs or even answer customer queries, so I'm looking for a more hands-off platform. Also given the small amount of money I'll be making per sale on Zazzle compared to the other platform, it will not be economically viable for me to provide customer service to the level I am currently providing. I also like the idea of not having to deal with the production and shipping questions I currently get, as I have no control over those things (I'm using POD).

Can current store owners let me know approximately how many customer interactions you have per week on average, what they're generally about and the type of products you sell?

Thank you so much.

[dbvisualarts]

I rarely ever hear from customers. In the 18 years I have been here maybe 5 customers, but I am not one of the big sellers or popular ones.  So they may have many more interactions.  We are not given the information to contact buyers so unless they message you, you will not have contact.

[Jadendreamer13]

I never hear from customers. I purposely purposely don’t sell in the wedding niche because it tends to require frequent customer interaction.

[Baylee]

I usually get one or two a week. You'll find it really varies from store to store, depending partially on how popular your products are. I'd say I'm probably in the mid-range of sellers in terms of sales. We do get questions about shipping and production but it's easy enough to prepare a template reply that forwards them to customer support. You could always put a remark in your 'about' section that you're unable reply to queries or custom requests (or something to that effect) if you don't want to deal with them at all.

[Cat]

Wedding niche here. I used to average 3-4 customer messages per day - more during the busiest season. But after Zazzle launched the ambassador program which effectively halved our royalties, I changed my policy and am no longer offering to assist customers with their designs. I post this info graphic as a cover image with all of my products (well all that I've made covers for because this obviously can't be the primary cover.)

I also changed all of the messages to customers that Zazzle allows us to customize (on chat and the ones that are shown to customers when they make a purchase) to indicate that I don't handle fulfillment and I don't do custom work.

I still get an average of around 3-4 messages per week - though it fluctuates wildly. I have a document filled with boilerplate responses tailored for different questions - all of which basically say "I can't help you, contact customer support" in different polite ways appropriate to the context. Usually the questions are about shipping or someone wanting to make a change to an existing order. It doesn't take too much time to cut and paste my responses, but it still does require checking in at least daily so that I don't leave someone hanging.

Every once in a blue moon I get someone asking for a matching product - usually on new designs where I haven't fully flushed out a suite with all of the necessary items. I'm generally happy to do those as long as I can just create a templated public product to publish in the marketplace. I no longer do one-off designs or help people with customization - I just point them to customer support. It's really not worth it when you only make a dollar or two per sale.

Please feel free to copy my little info-graphic if you think it would be helpful.