Messages Didn't Merge

[Msquared3Dprinting]

We got dinged for message non-response and will now probably lose our star seller for August. Etsy's new thing as of June 30th is all messages from the same customer merge into one conversation. It randomly didn't on this order and it penalized us for not responding to the customer the same way twice. Any ideas on how to fix?

[UniqueGiftOrnaments]

You can contact Etsy. In the meantime, just put that message into spam and your percentage should come up.

[telahmarie]

It usually takes a little while for all the kinks to get worked out with changes like that. I would let Etsy know. I don't think moving it to spam after the fact will make the percentage go up but it's always worth a try.

[PersonalizeStation]

It does change it within a few days unless it's 3-4 days before the end of the month. That's because it seems to take too long to update. Even then, it changes but for the following month. 

[TonsOfPaper · Accepted solution]

Hello there,

Messages from the same buyer will now be consolidated into fewer threads. However, when a buyer reaches out via the Help With Order request, a new thread will be created. These types of message threads need to be responded to in 24 hours to be counted positively toward your Star Seller score. New threads will now have notification badges showing if a message is a buyer’s first time contacting you, or a new help with an order request. 

For more information about this, you may check out the Message Response rate section in this Help Article.

Thank you very much!

[ToshiandBobETSYSHOP]

for some reason buyer messages are showing up in multiple threads again on both apps and the web 

[BagmakerSupply]

I think that is is safe to say that ALL new messages still have to be replied to with 24 hours regardless if it is a new person or a repeat buyer. Or more correctly a new or repeat account. We have a number of repeat buyers who purchase from two or three different Etsy accounts and even sometimes as a guest. To us it is the same purchaser, to Etsy it is not.

[HtoHdesign · Accepted solution]

Hey There,

The new change on the messages that will combine messages of the same member to a single thread was take effect July 1st. You’ll still need to respond to initial messages from buyers and sellers within 24 hours—but you’ll see fewer message threads from the same member. The only exception to the single-thread rule is when a buyer reaches out via the Help With Order flow, at which point a new thread will be created and clearly labeled as such. You can learn more about this and some other exciting changes here.

To get a closer breakdown of your messages that were counted as late, you can download a CSV by going to your Shop Manager dashboard > Star Seller dashboard page > selecting the Message response rate tile > selecting the Export link next to Message breakdown.

Thanks!

[JustArtinAround]

This isn't actually accurate. I still have customers sending messages through multiple threads. This happens daily.

Additionally, this metric is terrible. We receive and reply to hundreds of messages a day. Of those messages, only a handful are part of this metric. The reality is, this metric is missing the entire customer service experience. As a seller, I could receive a star seller badge by responding to only the new messages within 24 hours, but then I could take 2, 3 or 4 days to respond to the hundreds of other messages.

I wish Etsy would just simplify this metric and maybe learn from other channels. The metric should be based on all messages. It should also take into account our business hours. I'm so tired of working 7 days a week to respond to messages over the weekend. Could I put the autoreply on for the weekend? Yes, but then when I return, I have to scroll up on every single message. If Etsy employees are not working 7 days a week, why should sellers be working 7 days a week?

Lets breakdown how bad this metric is for sellers. If I receive 200 messages a day, and I reply to all of those messages within 24 hours, then they should count toward the metric. With this new metric, during a 3 month period only about 400-600 messages of the 4,100+ message will be considered. What this change has done is hurt sellers even more. I know it was intended to help sellers, but it actually has had the opposite effect. The math proves this. Because the denominator in this metric has been decreased, sellers are now penalized even more for missing just one message. For us, we can make it back from the sheer volume of messages but for other sellers who are responding to almost all their messages within 24 hours, just a handful of missed messages could prevent them from meeting the metric. I really wish the product owner would think through the consequences to these changes before pushing them out.