Product Reviews and Seller Feedback

Every seller wants to know how to get good reviews on Amazon. When selling on Amazon, there are two distinct types of feedback that you need to be aware of: product reviews and seller feedback. Both product reviews and seller feedback adds value to your business, but they serve two very different purposes in building a brand and a seller’s reputation on Amazon . Make sure you understand the difference and know how to manage both when building your reputation. Delivering proactive customer service at just the right time can help you get reviews, ratings, and feedback.

Seller Feedback

Seller feedback is all about you as a seller. Amazon allows the customers to leave their feedback about sellers within the 90-day window of their order date. Customers can provide ratings to the sellers and leave comments, which is optional. The seller feedback metric is used to measure the quality of an Amazon seller. It acts as a report card, indicating the quality of the customer experience you provide. Shoppers are encouraged to rate their experiences with a seller by leaving feedback based on shipping and communication. Using the five-star rating system, buyers can leave their feedback after the purchase. Both your feedback score and total review count matter. Amazon’s algorithms will consider each when deciding where to place your products in search results. 

Seller feedback has to do with a buyer’s experience of the seller, such as with issues like:

• How quickly and thoroughly the seller answered questions about the product.
• Product packaging and shipping time plays a major role
• What the shipping process was like, i.e. did it arrive by the expected delivery date, was the item well-packaged, what was the customer support like and how (or how fast) did the seller respond to concerns.
• How well do you respond to the buyers and acknowledge their post-purchase concerns.
  
  

Benefits of Amazon Seller Feedback

• Improve your Amazon SEO
  Having a good seller feedback influences your product ranking on Amazon. It has a great impact when it comes to your product listing optimization. If you improve and maintain good feedback, the chances are likely that your product SERP improves significantly. This will help you to get more customers and increase your sales.

• Increase your chances to win Buy Box
  There are many ways to win a Buy Box, and having great customer metrics and seller feedback is one of them. As mentioned, Amazon wants to create an exceptional buying experience for its customers. Therefore, having good seller feedback implies that you are providing excellent customer experience, which ultimately improves your chances to win Buy Box. Besides, we have other metrics such as account health, positive reviews, reviews received during a specific time. All these take part in improving your chances of winning the Buy Box. 

• Get eligibility for Seller Central coupons
  Back in 2017, Amazon introduced seller central coupons to help wholesalers and retailers to increase their sales on Amazon. Besides, there are other ways for sellers to boost their sales like discount codes, free shipping, giveaways, buy one, get one, and others. 
  
  However, the other opportunities are not as visible as Amazon seller central coupons. These seller central coupons have a dedicated page on Amazon and appear on the Gold box page, Amazon search results page, and product details page. Besides, sellers who are not brand-registered have access to them. However, you need to be a professional seller with a good seller feedback rating. Once you are eligible, you get to enjoy the benefits such as better visibility and, thereby, more sales. 

• Amazon penalizes sellers with poor seller feedback
  Amazon regularly uses seller feedback to re-evaluate your performance. Poor seller feedback has enough chances to put you out of the competition. Amazon aims to ensure a superior consumer experience. 1 or 2 stars rating depicts bad customer experience. 
  
  Certain parameters affect your seller feedback, such as order defect rate, refund rate, perfect order percentage, and other factors. If you don’t keep track of these metrics, then Amazon will most likely suspend or take action on your seller privileges. Therefore, maintaining good seller feedback ensures you to stay ahead of the competition.

If you suspect that a customer has accidentally left a poor product review on your seller feedback page, contact Amazon to get the entry removed. Amazon will generally remove feedback if:

• The order was Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
• The feedback contains obscene language or personal information
• The feedback contains promotional content
• The feedback content relates more to product quality than your service as a seller.

Don’t sleep on this, as a negative feedback of 25% will put you at risk of getting your seller account removed or suspended. Keep in mind that seller feedback is unique to each of your Amazon marketplace accounts, so if you sell in multiple countries, you’ll receive multiple seller feedback scores.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are the ratings and reviews provided for a product you sold. Unlike seller feedback, product reviews are all about your products, and not about the purchasing experience, customer service or shipping. Product reviews are a core element of the Amazon shopping experience because they help potential buyers make educated purchasing decisions. Since shoppers can’t physically see or touch products on the Amazon Marketplace, they rely on previous shoppers’ experiences to provide them with crucial information. These are the reviews that most customers will see before making a purchase. They have a big impact on your conversion rate and, in turn, your product’s ranking in search results. They appear on your product detail pages. 

Product reviews, on the other hand, tend to do with things like:

• A testament to product quality and the usability of the item
• The accuracy of the received product based on how it was described in the listing.
• The authenticity of your items, like battery life or whether an item’s true-to-size.
• Social proof for the customers to see how your product performs.

Even if a buyer didn’t purchase the product on Amazon or buy from your store, they can leave a review from your product detail pages. If you receive a review that either looks fake, is actually seller feedback or violates Amazon community guidelines (profanity, links to an external site to buy the same item, etc.), you can report abuse. However, you must have strong evidence to support your argument. Bad reviews are very hard to get removed.

How to Get Feedback and Reviews

• Get specific in your product listings. While your feedback score isn’t specific to your product, customers will attribute any misconceptions about your product with your trustability as a seller. Avoid accidentally misleading customers. It may be tempting to soup up your listings with bold, exciting language—but there’s a fine line between selling and overselling. Stay away from hyperbolic language or obscure wording in your product descriptions. Be direct and use plain English when describing the benefits of your product. Be honest and detailed in your product specifications.

• Be responsive and deliver on your promises. Make sure to respond within 24 hours if a customer sends you a message via Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging service. If you promise that an item is in stock or fast shipping, you need to deliver on it. Be professional and thorough in your message. Do not try to upsell customers in your communications.

• Offer a good return and refund policy. Amazon is always working to make the returns and refunds easy for its customers. It also wants sellers to keep a tab on the return and refund policies regularly while providing full product returns without hassle. Customers are more likely to leave feedback after a negative experience than a positive one. Aside from offering a generous return window, promptly replace any defective items. Following these policies will aid your buyer-seller relationship on Amazon.

• Be polite and ask for feedback. Use buyer-seller messaging on Amazon to send a request to review your products on Amazon once the order is delivered. Amazon’s Request a Review button can help you with that. ‘3-emails strategy.’ 
  
  (1) Send a thank you message after they’ve placed their order and send an email to your buyer post-delivery of your product. 
  
  (2) Follow-up with them after a couple of days. Email them to say thank you again for their purchase, say you’re there if they have any questions or concerns, then politely ask if they could leave a review. 
  
  (3)If they haven’t left a review, email a third and final time a week to 10 days after the delivery date, repeating the second email but using different language.
  If you receive a positive product review, you can follow up on the same email asking for seller feedback. This process boosts your chances of getting more product reviews and seller feedback at the same time. However, Amazon allows buyers to opt-out of unsolicited messages from third-party sellers, which includes buyer-seller messaging service too.

• Do not purchase reviews. While reviews are important to drive future sales, you must not make the mistake of purchasing them. In recent years, Amazon has taken strict actions to curb these fake reviews and ensure that all the testimonials that accompany a product on its marketplace are genuine and honest. Needless to mention, it is also against Amazon’s policy to solicit reviews. Make sure to avoid the following:
  
  • Incentivising reviews to buyers.
  • Using a third-party service to garner positive reviews.
  • Having family members leave reviews.
  • Trying to offer a refund to a buyer if they remove a negative review.
  • Directly asking for a positive review.
  • Trying to divert unhappy customers to a different review service than the one on Amazon, and leading happy customers to Amazon’s feedback service.
    
    

Dealing With Negative Feedback

As an Amazon reseller, you want to provide exceptional customer service and meet and fulfill their expectations. You want to give priority to your customers and always work to boost their shopping experience. In return, you are expecting them to leave a good review and positive feedback. However, due to some circumstances, you will encounter some negative reviews, comments, and feedback from your customers.  No need to even mention the impact of it, it not only demoralizes the spirit of a seller and question-marks the efforts and brings down the trust of a seller but it also affects the seller’s rating given by Amazon. As a seller, you need to be cautious while contacting an unhappy customer. You need to take specific measures to improve their buying or product experience. 

• Ensure that you follow all the guidelines provided by Amazon before contacting your customer. However, Amazon allows sellers to reach a buyer only for customer service.  Do not put pressure on customers to modify or remove their reviews, as it is against the Amazon policy.

• Do offer any incentives to your buyers in exchange for reviews. No compensation should be offered as a credit to delete or edit the review. Otherwise, you can come under the case of bribing customers. Amazon can flag or suspend your account if you choose to opt for this method. 

• Never provide a refund to your buyer to remove negative feedback. Amazon can also suspend you for that.

• Remember that unhappy customers get more impatient as time passes without them having a resolution. And you have only 60 days to address their issues and get them to remove their feedback. So, make effective use of this time and plan accordingly.

• Keep your responses crisp and to the point. Apology, how can you improve their (buyer’s) experience, and proposed solution. You can also comment publicly so that other customers can know about each phase of your product. Mention the regret for the inconvenience that customer had to face while buying your product and at the same time mention the solution and approach that you will take to solve their issue. Public comment can help you to put the right aspect of your product if it is misinterpreted in the review.

• If you find the comment is not valid, you can have them removed by Amazon. Inappropriate customer comments include offering promotional links or comments to other websites, suppliers, or sellers, abusive or inappropriate language in the content, and personal information of other Amazon sellers or customers.