Author-Client Interaction Rules
1. General Business Etiquette
All TemplateMonster.com authors are required to maintain a professional, courteous, and ethical approach in their interactions with clients. Any form of disrespect, rudeness, or personal attacks is strictly prohibited. Authors must always adhere to business etiquette.
2. Required Communication Standards
- Professionalism: Always use polite and professional language in written and verbal communication.
- Clarity: Provide clear, concise, and well-structured responses to client inquiries.
- Deadline Compliance: Respond to client inquiries within 24 hours on business days, as per the established rules on the TemplateMonster marketplace.
- Neutrality: Avoid emotional reactions, sarcasm, or defensive language, even in cases of client dissatisfaction.
- Respect: Never belittle, insult, or blame clients. Maintain a calm and solution-oriented tone.
- Transparency: Provide accurate and honest information about products, services, pricing, and policies.
- Offer comprehensive product documentation. The more detailed instructions you provide the less support your buyer will require from you. Make sure your documentation is simple, clear and covers all aspects of your product.
- Include adequate product description. Add information related to the CMS version and server compatibility (if you sell a CMS product like WordPress, for example), the software required to edit your product and available source files, (like images). If you used a commercial plugin, or your product requires some paid account, make sure you let your buyers know about this before their actual purchase.
- Use online translation tools. You are not obliged to provide support in any language other than English, but translating the request and replying in English is always a good move. Don’t ignore requests submitted in different languages. Use online tools to translate them and the customers will definitely appreciate your efforts.
3. Prohibited Communication Practices
- Rudeness and Disrespect: Any use of offensive, aggressive, or derogatory language.
- Personal Attacks: Any comments directed at a client’s characteristics.
- Threats, Intimidation, Blackmail: Any form of coercion, blackmail, or implied threats. (Example of a bad author’s response to a client: “I’ll help you with a product, but you have to give me a good review.”)
- Misleading Information: Making false or misleading claims about product functionality or policies.
- Unprofessional Behavior: Getting into arguments with clients, using inappropriate humor, or showing impatience.
- External Communication: Directing clients to contact authors outside of the TemplateMonster platform for purchases or support. All client-author interactions occur through the TemplateMonster ticket system. In cases of certain exceptions, the TemplateMonster team should also participate in these communications (as added to the copy of the correspondence).
4. Consequences of violations
Violation of the above rules will result in the following penalties:
- First violation: the commission for the sale related to the violation will be confiscated.
- Second violation: temporary suspension of the author’s account (possible hiding of the author’s assortment from sale, freezing of the possibility of withdrawing funds), freezing of the possibility of placing new products
- Persistent violations will result in the termination of cooperation, specifically the closure of the author’s account and the subsequent removal of the entire assortment from sale.
5. Escalation and Resolution
In the event of a dispute between the author and a client, it is recommended to resolve it professionally and refer unresolved issues to TemplateMonster support, rather than entering into direct conflict with the client.
The TemplateMonster team makes every effort to resolve any disputes that may arise.
Becoming an author at TemplateMonster, you acknowledge and agree to abide by these communication standards. Failure to comply may result in account penalties and potential removal from the platform.