Author | Zhang Yi reports | TOP e-commerce
"Refund only" has been in controversy since it was launched on major e-commerce platforms, although only refunds fully protect the interests of consumers, but some merchants have also been taken advantage of by some opportunists who take advantage of system loopholes because of refunds only.
In order to maintain a fair and reasonable business environment and balance the interests of merchants and consumers, Taobao, as the "big brother" of the e-commerce industry, took the lead in making adjustments to the unreasonable refund-only process.
Recently, TOP e-commerce observed that Taobao officially launched the experience score, which is directly linked to the store and product traffic, and the higher the experience score, the better the store's traffic will be.
What's more, the launch of Experience Points also plays a significant role in optimizing refund-only. This is because the Taobao platform will give merchants more autonomy in after-sales scenarios such as refunds, appeals, and abnormal delivery based on the experience score during the after-sales process, reduce or cancel the platform's intervention, and the merchants will negotiate with consumers independently.
This means that unreasonable, "one-size-fits-all" refund-only refunds will become a thing of the past on Taobao.
Taobao online experience points,
Give the after-sales autonomy to the merchant
Experience score refers to Taotian's new merchant scoring system that has been fully launched recently, mainly covering "store experience score" and "product experience score (PXI)", which will be fully applied to store operation scenarios such as hand-Tao search, Home guess what you like, Alimama related advertising, and event registration.
The new rating system will completely replace the previous Seller Service Review (DSR) system. Previously, the store score was directly linked to GMV, but after the experience score was launched, various indicators of merchant service consumers were added, such as praise rate, customer service response time, logistics timeliness, etc., and the experience score was directly linked to the store and product traffic, and the experience score increased, and the traffic would also rise.
In the view of TOP e-commerce, the impact of the launch of this experience score on Taobao and Tmall merchants will be huge.
On the one hand, the experience score is directly linked to the search recommendation traffic, which will motivate merchants to improve their service levels to obtain higher experience scores and increase store traffic.
In the process of communicating with merchants, TOP e-commerce learned that "if the experience score is about 60 points, there will be a similar traffic fault, and if the product experience index is optimized to 90, basically the traffic can increase by about 20%." ”
It is understood that the experience score has been tested for a period of time before it was fully launched, and many merchants have reported that after the experience score is improved, the store traffic has also begun to increase significantly.
For example, a sunscreen bucket hat in a clothing Taobao store has been significantly improved by optimizing the delivery timeliness to reduce consumer complaints and help-seeking problems, and the product experience index (PXI) has increased from 64 points to 85 points, and the corresponding traffic of goods has increased by 42.7%.
On the other hand, the impact on merchants is reflected in the fact that merchants will have more autonomy in after-sales, and merchants with high stores will have more after-sales autonomy, such as appeals, abnormal delivery, etc.
Especially in terms of "refund only" that many merchants are concerned about in recent times, TOP e-commerce has learned that starting from August 10, for merchants with a comprehensive experience score greater than or equal to 4.8 points in the store, Taotian will no longer actively intervene to support consumers to only refund after receiving the goods, and adjust it to be handled by merchants through negotiation with consumers first.
In other words, the launch of experience points can be "loosened" to a certain extent and only refunded, and unreasonable refund-only will be gradually reduced on the Taobao platform.
Experience points "loosened" only refunded,
Balance the interests of merchants and consumers
The original intention of the launch of refund-only is to protect the rights and interests of consumers and improve the user experience, but the excessive favoritism of refund-only to consumers has allowed some opportunists to take advantage of system loopholes to hurt the interests of merchants, making more and more disputes caused by refund-only refunds.
Some time ago, a seller only refunded 9.9 yuan short-sleeved, and did not hesitate to cross thousands of miles to find a buyer on the hot search, which attracted a lot of attention;
And at the end of March this year, a merchant drove 300 kilometers to find a refund buyer to confront him face to face, because a buyer placed an order for a 220 yuan pet cat, obviously received the goods but successfully applied for a refund only on the grounds of "not receiving the goods", and found that the buyer was a sixth-grade elementary school student.
These unreasonable refund-only refunds are making merchants miserable, and merchants are increasingly calling for improving refund-only refunds.
However, it is not sustainable to harm the consumer experience to protect the interests of the merchants, and to harm the interests of the merchants to protect the consumer experience. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a new set of judgment standards, so that good businesses that operate normally can get due protection, and at the same time, merchants are still under the supervision of the "refund only system" to continuously improve their services.
The new version of the experience subsystem is an important initiative to solve this problem. As mentioned above, the higher the experience score, the more after-sales autonomy will be obtained, which means that the merchant has a greater right to dispose of the "refund only" application when facing it, and the merchant has the right to reject the application in the face of the wool party's malicious "refund only".
In addition to giving more disposal rights, Taobao will also provide a number of after-sales service plans for merchants to choose from, guiding merchants to continuously optimize after-sales service and reduce disputes and capital losses caused by "refund only".
In addition, Taobao has also optimized the refund-only appeal link. After the merchant initiates an appeal, the platform will ask a third-party testing agency to conduct a random inspection of the goods, and if the test is passed, the platform will compensate the merchant for the loss.
In the view of TOP e-commerce, it is not only the common appeal of merchants to return only refunds to reasonableness and fairness, but also the direction that Taotian is working towards.
Taotian's move proves to us that improving the consumer experience does not have to sacrifice the interests of merchants, and not only that, experience points can also motivate merchants to serve consumers well with the platform and create a fair and reasonable business environment.
Create a fair and reasonable business environment,
Taobao has been working hard
Creating a fair and reasonable business environment has been the direction of Taobao's efforts for many years. Since the beginning of this year, Taobao has not only optimized a number of business rules to ensure consumer experience, but also introduced a number of cost reduction measures for merchants to improve their operating efficiency.
From a consumer perspective, the platform has made a number of changes to smooth the shopping experience on Taobao and Tmall. For example, the pre-sale time of clothing products is shortened, and the delivery time of most shoes, clothing, bags and bags such as daily women's clothing is up to 15 days; Comprehensively update the "Tmall Market Management Specifications", and optimize and adjust the false transactions of merchants and store deposits.
From the perspective of merchants, in order to help merchants, especially small and medium-sized businesses, reduce operating costs, Taobao has started from many aspects to release dividends to merchants.
The first is that a number of business tools are provided to merchants for free. In March 2024, Taobao and Tmall will switch important business tools for merchants such as business advisors, dianxiaomi, customer service robots, and picture space from paid to free.
In April, it launched a new business tool of "site-wide promotion" to merchants to help merchants achieve new growth. According to data, on the first day of 618, tens of thousands of merchants achieved an average growth of 701% month-on-month through site-wide promotion, and brands such as Timco, Dreame, and TCL harvested a number of single products with transactions of more than 10 million with the help of site-wide promotion. During the Tmall 618 period, the whole site promotion brought 105% of the traffic increase for merchants, and the increase in product transactions reached 43%.
The second is the subsidy for platform operation. For example, Taobao updated the rules of freight insurance in March, and in the case of consumer refund in transit, freight insurance can directly compensate for express interception fees. This means that for freight insurance orders, the platform can link logistics to automatically intercept goods in transit, and merchants do not need to bear express interception fees. Taobao also promised that the platform will fulfill the responsibility of supervising the completion of the interception and performance of logistics, and support the merchant to claim compensation against the logistics company if there is a failure to intercept and other situations that lead to the loss of the merchant's assets.
Finally, from September 1, 2024, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee (hereinafter referred to as the "annual fee"), and new merchants who will settle in from September will not need to pay; For merchants whose business turnover from January to August 2024 reaches the annual target, Tmall will refund the annual fee in full; The rest of the merchants will return the annual fee for September ~ December 2024.
From DSR to PIX, it can be seen that Taobao has been working hard to create a fair and reasonable business environment, returning to users but not forgetting to protect the interests of merchants.
In this way, merchants can be encouraged to serve users well with Taobao and promote the development of the e-commerce industry in a healthy and benign direction.