"Listening to both data and emotion"

The PowerSeller Panel with Executives was charged with a lot of emotion, as have been some others sessions this year. In a way it was a continuation of the Town Hall from earlier in the day, with almost the same panelists:

• Lorrie Norrington - President of eBay Global Marketplace Operation
• Stephanie Tilenius - General Manager for eBay North America
• Brian Burke - Director of Global Feedback
• Monroe Labouisse - PayPal Director for North America Marketplaces
• Dinesh Lathi - Vice President of Seller Experience
• Greg Fant - Vice President, Buyer Experience
• Jamie Ianonne - Vice President, Global Search

Griff, hosting as usual, went straight to Q&A. Some highlights:

One PowerSeller advocated (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Detailed Ratings for Buyers. He remarked that buyers weren't communicating with sellers as much as they should, thus making it difficult for sellers to understand how they could improve the buyer experience. He suggested these "buyer ratings" should drive eBay's couponing programs towards buyers -- thus providing an incentive to buyers to communicate better with sellers. His comments were greeted with delighted chortling from sellers sittng near me -- many sellers have felt that the DSR system is lopsided in favor of buyers.

Brian Burke took the question seriously, however. He pointed out several steps eBay had taken to enable sellers to restrict bad buyers from their listings, including a 7-day block that prevents buyers from leaving negative Feedback for sellers. Sellers can also use Buyer Requirements to select the kind of buyers they wanted to attract to their listings. Brian urged sellers to continue reporting bad buyer behavior to eBay so we can strengthen Buyer Requirements. But Brian also noted that one of the big takeaways for eBay from this year's eBay Live! was to improve buyer-seller communication.

unclejoeadamson asked eBay to review the new links policy, which prohibits linking to any external websites. He found it ironic that most of his educational content (for which he was awarded a Community Hall of Fame  award this year) was for helping the Community through educational content such as reviews, guides and blogs, much of which is off-eBay. unclejoeadamson's suggestion that eBay should find a way of identifying and allowing relevant content was well-received. Brian Burke promised to come back in July with another update about the direction we're taking.

A question about making neutral Feedback count against sellers raised many people's hackles. The seller's question was why neutrals had been counted retroactively from January. "Why punish us for buyers we can't do anything about?" The word "punish" seemed to pierce many of our execs to the heart. Both Griff and Lorrie made impassioned appeals to the audience, reassuring them that our intent was not to "punish" sellers but to help differentiate between high and low performing sellers. Brian promised to take a look at the negatives and neutrals left before January.

At this point Lorrie talked about the difficulty of making decisions (such as the retroactive Feedback) purely based on data, vs. also taking the emotional factor into account. She admitted that sometimes eBay's decisions were made on the basis of mostly the former, neglecting the latter. She said that the eBay In Person program, through which eBay staffers visit buyers and sellers in their own towns, will be one of the key ways eBay can gather emotional input from our customers.

The next questioner criticized eBay for being uncommunicative about the slew of changes taking place on the site, and unresponsive to sellers' attempts to seek clarity. "Why does eBay think it knows better than us about what our customers are saying?" Griff stepped in to quell a few boos of agreement that came from some sellers. He talked about how changes in the e-commerce landscape were forcing us to adapt really fast. Talking about an "exodus" of buyers recently, he pointed out that buyers today have more options, have become more sophisticated, and have more demands from their sellers, whether on eBay or elsewhere on the internet.

But Lorrie's response was also emotionally charged. "When data and emotion come together, we need to listen to both." She then asked our Community to give the company "a fair shot," especially considering that much of the company leadership is new in their roles. Lorrie then said, "I don't know what the past was like. I'm sorry for the past, but come join us for the future."

There was a brief pause, and then thunderous applause filled the room. Perhaps it's a new beginning for everyone.