Providing excellent customer service is crucial for success on the Walmart Marketplace. As a seller, understanding and adhering to Walmart’s customer service policies, particularly regarding response times, directly impacts your seller performance and account standing. A key aspect of this is the expectation around Walmart Customer Service Hours, specifically your responsibility to address customer inquiries promptly. This article outlines the policy and guidelines you need to follow to ensure you are meeting Walmart’s standards for customer communication.
Walmart mandates that sellers respond to all customer and Walmart Customer Care inquiries within 48 hours of receipt. This applies to inquiries received through email, phone, or your Seller Center Inbox, and includes weekends, holidays, and any operational outage periods. This strict 48-hour window is a critical component of maintaining a high Seller Response Rate, which Walmart requires to be above 95%. Your Seller Response Rate is calculated as the percentage of inquiries you respond to within this 48-hour timeframe.
Failure to meet this 48-hour response window can lead to serious consequences. Walmart reserves the right to take actions such as canceling unshipped orders, refunding shipped orders to satisfy customers, imposing category restrictions on your seller account, or even suspending your account entirely. It is important to note that order cancellations or refunds issued due to a failure to respond within 48 hours are not eligible for dispute.
To ensure you are providing effective and compliant customer service within Walmart customer service hours guidelines, consider these additional guidelines:
| Required Customer Service Practices | Prohibited Customer Service Practices |
|---|---|
| – For US transactions, all customer support must be provided in English. | – Including marketing or promotional materials, or links to websites outside of Walmart.com. |
| – Voicemail must be available when a live agent is unavailable. | – Providing inaccurate or invalid contact information that directs to another business. |
| – A greeting message is required before placing customers in a waiting queue. | – Using automated responses that necessitate multiple follow-up inquiries from customers. |
| – If call recording is in place, customers must be notified. | – Making misleading statements or overpromising resolutions. |
| – You must identify yourself as a separate entity from Walmart when providing customer service for Walmart.com purchases. | – Initiating contact via phone or any method outside of your Seller Center Inbox (unless a customer contacts you directly via your listed phone number). |
| – Ensure accurate and up-to-date contact information is provided in Seller Center. | – Including advertisements within greetings and voicemail messages. |
| – Regularly check your spam folder and whitelist Walmart addresses to avoid missing customer inquiries. | – Using Google Voice or any internet telephone service as your primary customer service number. |
| – Using personal residential phone numbers for customer service. | |
| – Sending unsolicited text messages, emails, or phone calls to customers, especially for marketing. | |
| – Using abusive or threatening language towards customers, Walmart, or other Marketplace sellers. |
Remember, proactive communication isn’t always necessary. Walmart automatically sends order status updates to customers at each stage of the process. You only need to provide additional updates if a customer directly contacts you with a specific inquiry. By prioritizing timely and professional customer service within the stipulated Walmart customer service hours, you can maintain a healthy seller account and contribute to positive customer experiences on the Walmart Marketplace.
