Orders & customer service

Good service on a handmade marketplace isn’t a script — it’s responsiveness and honesty, backed by tools that keep the routine parts routine.

The order lifecycle

Orders land in Seller Studio → Orders. The standard flow is simple: new → shipped → done, with refunds and returns as the exceptions. Buying a label through MakerMade marks the order shipped and emails tracking to the buyer automatically, so for most orders your only jobs are make it and pack it.

Custom statuses

Made-to-order work rarely fits “new → shipped.” You can define your own in-between statuses — “In the kiln,” “Drying,” “Ready to ship” — and set them on orders, so buyers see honest progress instead of a week of silence. For anything with a lead time, this is the cheapest customer-service tool you have.

Refunds

You can refund any order from the order itself — full or partial. Partial refunds cover the small stuff gracefully: a shipping overcharge, a minor flaw the buyer is happy to keep at a discount. The buyer is emailed automatically when you refund, and the amounts flow through your payout ledger so the accounting stays straight.

Returns

When a buyer requests a return, it shows up for you to approve or reject. Approving refunds the order in the same step. Two principles keep returns rare and painless:

• Prevent them with facts. Most returns are expectation gaps — dimensions, colors, textures the listing didn’t make clear. Every return reason is a listing edit waiting to happen.
• Decide quickly. A fast yes costs less than a slow argument, in both money and reviews. Your stated policies are what buyers agreed to — write them the way you’re willing to be held to them.

Messages

Buyers can message your shop and you’ll get an email notification; replies happen in Seller Studio → Messages. Three habits cover almost all of it:

• Reply within a day, even if the reply is “great question, checking.”
• Put the answer in the listing too. If one buyer asked, ten didn’t bother.
• Keep custom-order agreements in the thread — scope, price, timeline — so both of you have the same record.

Reviews — and responding to them

After a purchase, buyers can leave a review on the listing. You can post a public response to any review of your work. Use it sparingly and warmly: thank the glowing ones occasionally (not all — it reads as noise), and answer critical ones once, factually, without litigating. A measured response to a bad review is read by a hundred future buyers; the review itself is read by ten.

If your shop came from Etsy, your imported reviews work the same way — they’re yours to respond to.