The third day of eBay's convention kicked off with
eBay executives on the hot seat. Conference attendees
had an opportunity to ask questions of seven of eBay's
top executives, including Meg Whitman, President and
CEO.
Henry Gomez, eBay's VP of Corporate Communciations,
inroduced the panel consisting of Bill Cobb, Sr. VP of
Global marketing, Rajiv Dutta, Chief Financial
Officer, Chris Hejelm, Sr. VP of Technology, Mike
Jacobson, Sr. VP and General Counsel, Jeff Jordan, Sr.
VP and General Manager of eBay.com, and Maynard Webb,
eBay's Chief Technical Officer.
The session, called eBay Power Panel, kicked off with
a video presentation. An emotional story of eBay users
connecting was followed with a success story of an
eBay seller. The video concluded with a surreal
sequence in which eBay called itself "the people's
most efficient and abundant marketplace," with a goal
of "creating a global economic democracy" and ended
with the tagline, "eBay: The People's Market."
Attendees had filled out cards with questions for the
executive panel, and Gomez began reading the cards.
The first qusetion was, "Why aren't there icons for
Power Buyers, we are compulsive buyers?" Bill Cobb
fielded the question and called it a good idea.
Other questions had to do with checkout features,
PayPal options, rewarding Powersellers for quality
versus quantity, making new eBay employees use eBay,
making the site safer, and providing eBay sellers with
metrics and sales data.
At some points during the Q&A session, the audience
broke into applause, such has when Whitman stated that
she was committed to trying to make sales and
performance information available to sellers.
One audience member said that it seems that eBay
employees have limited experience with eBay, and why
not have new emplyees do eBay as a requirement. Bill
Cobb said everyone in marketing is required to earn 10
feedback points. Meg agreed that all employees should
trade on eBay every day, every week, and said that
must go beyond the Marketing Department.
Cobb said the marketing group had instituted another
rule that all employees in his group must engage an
eBay Trading Assistant. "Trading Assistants" are
experienced eBay users who sell items for others on a
commission basis. eBay created the program in
February.
Some of the questions were answered with standard eBay
responses. When someone asked why it is difficult to
get an answer from customer support, and that many
large companies have live phone support, why not eBay,
the room exploded with applause. eBay's Maynard Webb
said that eBay has introduced chat capability. He
failed to mention that the feature is only for help in
using eBay features, and not with customer support
issues. He also said that they are reviewing a phone
support model, but the cost of such a plan must be
weighed agains the high number of transactions with
low values. "We are judiciously considering it," he
said.
Attendance at the 9 o'clock Sunday session was less
than half of the previous day's Keynote address. Today
sessions and classes continue, and the exhibit hall
remains open until 4 pm. The conference is being held
at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim,
California.
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