Frequently Asked Questions
Do You Outsource Any Work?
No, all our team members are W-2 employees and work with us in our physical office. We don’t even allow employees to work from home (unless they are sick or something one particular day). We don’t use freelance workers offshore, all your work will be done by our internal employees.
Is It True You Can Train Our Internal Employees?
Absolutely, we train lots of employees on managing the Amazon and Walmart marketplaces. Anything we know, we can train on, you would just need to pay for whatever time we need to spend on you. If your company has team members with bandwidth to manage Amazon or Walmart.com, we can provide whatever training is useful for your long term success.
We’ve done live trainings as well as recorded custom trainings that you can watch at your convenience.
Do I Have To Commit To A Certain Amount Of Hours?
No, you can use us as much or as little as you need. Many clients have changing needs or don’t know what their needs will be. With us, you would just pay for whatever time you actually use.
What Kind Of Special Perks & Discounts Do I Get Access To As A Five Star Commerce Client?
Since we have such a large client base (we’ve been recently pacing about 250 new clients a year), many of the software tools or other services that product brands need offer our clients special exclusive discounts. This often means 10-20% off some of the common software tools or services that a product brand might need. You’ll get access to these once you sign on as a client. In most cases it’s not a huge amount of savings but every bit helps!
For new seller accounts, since we’re part of Amazon’s partner program, we can recommend our clients to get an assigned strategic accounts rep from Amazon. These reps won’t actually do the work for you, but they can be useful to helping get through roadblocks and avoid other issues typical for new seller accounts.
How Do I Get In Touch?
It’s probably best to schedule a call and we can chat about your situation to see if it’s potentially a good fit and/or answer any of your other questions. You can also call our main phone line at anytime (+1 801-876-5406) at it will ring through to one of the reps that’s on-call right now.
When Working With You, How Can I Get In Contact With My Project Manager?
You’ll typically have the email and cell phone number of your account manager and they will be available during business hours. If you ever need urgent help and your project manager doesn’t pick up, or it’s outside of business hours, we have a phone line that dials into on-call reps 24/7 for clients.
What Happens If I Have An Emergency And It's Outside Of Business Hours? (Evenings/Weekends)
We typically won’t check our emails outside of business hours so you’ll want to text and/or call your project manager. If they don’t pick up, clients have a phone line they can call 24/7. This rings through to a couple of our consultants phones. If they first two don’t pick up, it rings some other team members. We’re always ready to help our clients with emergencies.
How Does Billing Work?
When you become a client, you fill out our service agreement with the rates and the terms, we get your payment information on file.
As we work for you, we use a time tracking tool called “Harvest” to track our time and track how much you owe. Our billing periods end at the beginning and the middle of the month. At the end of each billing period we send you an invoice with the time logs and the balance owed, then we charge your billing method two business days later. You only pay for the time that you’ve actually used.
We have some slides that explain this process that we typically send to all potential clients after we do an info call with you. It’s also described again in our Welcome Packet for new clients.
Is Five Star Commerce Part Of Amazon's Service Provider Network?
Yes, Five Star Commerce is part of Amazon’s Service Provider Network. We’re also Amazon Advertising Partners and Creative Services Partners. We’ve worked with 750+ product brands over a course of 6 years.
How Quickly Can You Get Started With A New Client?
Unless you catch us on a particular busy day or week, we can often get started the same day or the next weekday. Typically we like to talk on the phone a little bit to get to know you and make sure both sides think it’s a good fit. Then we send a form over to fill out to become a new client.
Once that is filled out, we send you a link that you can use to schedule a kickoff call with your new project manager. Depending on the time you sign with us, you can often select a time that same day.
For large projects, it may take a few days to really get the project moving as there can be a lot of specific details that have to be worked out (getting access to the seller accounts etc.).