Have you been selling through Amazon FBA? If yes, you probably know how many ongoing tasks you need to manage efficiently to keep your business running smoothly & successfully. Especially if you decide to do everything on your own, managing all aspects of FBA can become overwhelming and difficult to handle. Despite that, many sellers are reluctant to hire additional resources- keeping budget constraints in mind. 

Virtual Assistants are the ideal solution to this situation. They are affordable resources with multi-dimensional skillets that can be used for multiple purposes without extending a seller’s workload. Outsourcing Amazon store activities to a VA will also allow you to pay more attention to planning and growth strategies without jeopardizing the performance of your Amazon business.

However, when planning to hire an Amazon virtual assistant, you should decide their responsibilities in advance. Though Amazon FBA allows sellers to delegate some of their tasks to Amazon, like order shipment, packaging, customer support, etc., there are several other job roles that can be assigned to VAs. These tasks may include marketing, content creation, administrative tasks, and so on. To get the most out of your VAs, sort your priorities accordingly so you can hire the right resource.

Let us take a look at the tasks that can be outsourced to an Amazon virtual assistant for smooth business functioning.

1.  Product Listing Creation

Creating accurate product listings for all your products can be a highly tedious and time-consuming job. One needs to accurately add all the relevant product data, including product titles, descriptions, features, price, product images, etc. This is where Amazon virtual assistants can help. Here’s how: 

• Follow Amazon listing guidelines to add new products to the catalog 
• Carry out product keyword research to use the most relevant keywords for listings
• Help in bulk uploading of products on the marketplace, using listing tools 
• Assign accurate categories to the product 
• Check product data accuracy- product descriptions, prices, titles, product images, etc. 

Other than ensuring that your product data is accurately uploaded to the platform, experienced Amazon listing experts ensure that your product upload tasks are completed within a quick turnaround time. 

2. Listing Optimization 

Simply creating Amazon listings is not enough. To make your products visible on the platform, performing Amazon product listing optimization is essential. Cost-effective yet skilled Amazon VAs are well-versed with Amazon’s ranking algorithm and top optimization techniques that help you enhance your brand presence, attract more shoppers and boost sales & conversions. 

Here’s how an FBA Amazon VA can help with Amazon listing optimization– 

• Add relevant product specifications like size, color, availability, etc. 
• Optimize product images- ensuring the right image size, high-quality pictures, perfect background, etc. 
• Research primary & backend keywords and further ensure that they are accurately used in listing content such as titles, descriptions, features, etc. 
• Optimize titles by writing clear, precise, and informative titles
• Create compelling, unique, and engaging product descriptions enriched with relevant keywords. 

While adhering to Amazon guidelines & standards, virtual assistants help you optimize product discoverability to boost traffic to your listings & bring you better profitability in the marketplace.

3. Product Photo Editing 

While selling on Amazon FBA, the importance of having high-quality, perfect product photos cannot be ignored. After all, having a compelling set of product images is the key to faster conversion since dull, poorly lit, low-quality images can turn away the shoppers. This is where virtual assistants with photo editing & retouching skills can help. 

Amazon VAs are attuned to the image upload guidelines and image formats put forward by the marketplace. These experts can help in the following ways- 

• Edit & enhance images using the advanced photo editing tools 
• Crop & resize images as per requirements without distorting them 
• Adjusting colors, lightning, brightness, and image exposure
• Change, modify and remove image background 
• Remove shadows, watermarks, or other distractions in the image 
• Image masking 
• Convert images into required formats- PNG, JPEG, TIFF, etc. 

Virtual assistants can also help you create pictures of 1000 pixels or larger in height and width to enable the zoom function. By turning your product shots into high-quality, enhanced, and attractive images, VAs inspire sales and better conversion across your listings.   

4. Managing Orders

If you use Fulfillment By Amazon, Amazon will handle the order management on your behalf. While that takes away a lot of headache for the seller, tasks like reviewing order status, checking multi-channel fulfillment progress, and tallying payments with the ‘fulfilled’ orders remain with the seller. Devoting time to each can become impossible while handling other business-related tasks. 

In this situation, VAs can lessen your burden. They can manage several FBA-specific order-related tasks, such as overviewing order status, searching and filtering orders, reporting any discrepancy, and keeping you in the loop while also updating customers on their orders in cases where such communication is required.

In addition, VAs can perform other tasks, such as:

• Updating entries for orders in seller’s logs
• Updating inventory as per FBA order status
• Sending invoices to customers
• Delivering customer support

5. Reimbursement Policy

Amazon FBA provides a reimbursement policy to businesses in case of damaged or lost products. The process requires businesses to fill up a reimbursement claim in such circumstances. The process involves diverse steps, which might differ if a product is damaged, as opposed to when it is lost. 

To get the product reimbursed, one needs to follow a detailed process & should meet the eligibility criteria as per the FBA policy of Amazon.

• The product must be FBA-registered at the time when it got lost or damaged
• The product should not be defective or damaged by a customer
• The product should comply with FBA product requirements and restrictions
• The exact details of shipping items and quantities must be shared in the shipping plan
• The selling account should be in normal status while filing a claim

Ideally, a seller will first need to ensure that the damaged or lost item qualifies for a reimbursement claim. Then, they’ll raise the concern and bring it to the notice of Amazon’s support team, track its progress, provide whatever documentation and reports Amazon demands, and ensure that the case is resolved. On the contrary, you can hire an FBA virtual assistant and get all of it done at a fast pace.

6. Handling Exchanges

Returns or exchanges are such customer requests that need immediate attention. If a customer is not happy with the product and then gets disappointed because their replacement or exchange request wasn’t handled well, there is a higher chance that you will lose them for good. 

With FBA, Amazon offers order fulfillment services and manages returns and replacements. However, its policy states that a merchant will get their money back only if the product was damaged under the customer’s care or Amazon’s care. Both these scenarios are hard to prove for sellers because most Amazon rules favor the customer, and a seller has limited control over what goes on in an Amazon warehouse. 

To handle such issues with exchanges, sellers need to sort out fraudulent claims and talk to Amazon about them. Even then, certain issues can come up. 

• The customer never returned the product. 
• Amazon never gave you the owed money. 
• The seller does not know if the product was damaged. 

In all those cases, proper follow-up, constant nagging through official communication, and prompt action on submitting requests and recovering customer complaints for verification are required from a seller’s side. This is where a virtual assistant will prove very useful. They will handle everything dedicatedly and produce results without wasting your time. 

7. Email Management

Going through a few emails might seem to take only a few minutes. However, if conducted for a dedicated seller account on a regular basis, this task will take up a significant amount of time that could have been dedicated to other productive causes.

There are various tasks in this category that can become difficult for sellers to manage, such as:

• Calendar management
• Deleting old emails
• Responding to emails and creating drafts for approval
• Managing contact list
• Email marketing tasks
• Finding and verifying the email addresses of prospects
• Setting auto-responders
• Scheduling appointments
• Checking customer responses 

Hiring skilled Virtual assistants can scale up your task. They can check and respond to mails (inquiries), manage spam, and forward the most important mails to you. They know how to utilize auto-responders and save valuable time. Additionally, they also take a follow-up, as required. VAs can handle all email communications in the right manner.

8. Maintaining PPC and Ads

Generally, PPC and Ads are the paid marketing methods used to create brand awareness. By promoting brands, businesses can improve sales. However, this requires great effort and effective strategies for keyword research, ad conceptualization, bid setting, ad improvement, monitoring, and so on. 

In this case, relying on a virtual assistant can help you handle an Amazon PPC campaign in many ways. They will handle several activities, such as:

• Setting up ad campaigns
• Campaign analysis
• Keyword research
• Budget reports

Holding in-depth knowledge of marketing services (including sponsored and product ads), Amazon VAs can create ads according to the requirements. VAs can publish ads and observe the performance on multiple platforms.

9. Social Media Management

A vast online presence helps businesses reach more customers. However, managing your brand’s account on multiple social media platforms while handling the business on Amazon will undoubtedly get overwhelming. 

Understanding the importance of social media, VAs can easily manage your business page on diverse social media pages. They can manage & update stories regularly and create events to stay connected with customers. New products can be launched through social media platforms by providing detailed information to customers. A virtual assistant will also answer all customer queries, engage them with updates, and encourage them to place more orders.

To maintain the reputation of the business, VAs can serve unhappy consumers as a priority with prompt resolution and attractive deals to mitigate the chances of negative feedback or turn it into a positive response. 

10. FBA Shipment Plan

Making an FBA Shipment Plan includes several steps. To save time for different activities, you can outsource the service. Amazon VAs can manage the task efficiently at each step. The professional can help in:

• Setting Quantity
• Preparing Products
• Labeling Products
• Previewing Shipments
• Preparing Shipment
• Viewing Summary

An Amazon VA can make the process easy and assist in dispatching goods to Amazon warehouses. After preparing the FBA shipment plan, VAs can send shipping labels and inform the warehouse address where the products have to be delivered.

Closing Lines

These are just a few activities that Amazon VAs can take up. However, you can hire them for other activities as well, including-

• Amazon A+ content writing
• Competitor research 
• Product pricing management 
• Multi-channel content feed management 
• Product research and sourcing 

Hiring skilled and experienced virtual assistants is all you need to succeed as an Amazon FBA seller and take off your business to new heights. With seamless support in listing copywriting, enhancing product images, and managing orders, among other tasks, you can be assured of running a business successfully. 

Whether you are planning to set up your FBA store or looking forward to enhancing your performance, getting skilled VAs from a reputed Amazon SEO agency can help you manage day-to-day store activities in a stipulated time frame without exceeding the budget.

Guest article written by: Jessica Campbell is an eCommerce consultant and a keen blogger. She holds eleven years of experience in SEO, eCommerce PPC, online website, marketplace & store optimization, and performance management. She is currently engaged with Team4eCom in the USA. She has written articles and contributed posts to several websites. Her most-written niche includes eCommerce store setup, SEO, social media marketing, listing optimization, marketplace-specific content like Amazon data entry and marketing, eBay account management and Walmart marketing.