Feedback is important and valuable to any business wanting to make their great products or services even better. Customers also rely on feedback and reviews before making purchases so, without a great rating on Amazon, sellers won’t get a customer’s trust. So, what counts as negative feedback? Basically, one and two-star ratings are considered as negative while a three-star rating is considered as neutral. Four- and five-star ratings are considered as positive feedback.
Some of you may or may not know, the Order Defect Rate (ODR) is a key measure of a seller’s ability to provide a good customer experience. There are three major components of ODR which include negative feedback rate, A-to-Z guarantee claim rate, and credit card chargeback rate. We will delve deeper into managing the negative feedback rate in this blog post.
According to Amazon, sellers need to maintain an ODR under 1% in order to sell on Amazon, and failure to do so may result in the removal of your Amazon selling privileges. However, there are three options you can take to get rid of negative feedback and keep your account in good health.
Feedback Manager provides customer feedback to your business and insights to help you remove negative feedback. You can also view your seller rating metrics, including detailed feedback entries within the Feedback Manager dashboard. To access Feedback Manager, navigate to Feedback under the Performance tab in your seller central account.
Pro Tip: For FBA sellers, Amazon will take care of the product storage, packaging, shipping, and customer service. FBA sellers aren’t responsible for these tasks, so any negative feedback related to these can be removed easily. On the other hand for FBM sellers, negative feedback related to these tasks cannot be removed because the sellers are responsible.
In the Feedback Manager, you will see a list of customer feedback, dates, ratings, and a dropdown box with options for actions. Keep in mind that customers can ONLY submit one feedback comment per order to keep them from abusing the system. These three options include contact customer, post a public reply, and requesting removal.
Contact Customer
If you select the option to contact the customer who left negative feedback, Amazon will prompt you to send an internal email to try and resolve the issue. It is important to keep the email short, professional and avoid violating Amazon’s rules by offering coupons or money in exchange for feedback removal.
Here’s an email template you can use:
Being straightforward with customers and not second-guessing the reason for their complaints is the best way to approach negative feedback. Normally, you will receive the answer and possibly convince them to remove the negative feedback because their concerns were acknowledged. Don’t ask for feedback removal immediately because if you do so, then you will give the customer an impression that you don’t actually care about their problem.
Pro Tip: If customers respond back asking for a refund or discount coupons, you can escalate the issue to Amazon and they will take care of it.
Post a Public Reply
The second option is to post a public reply to address the customer’s concern. Posting a public reply to negative feedback will provide insights for other customers when they are researching about you before making a purchasing decision.
Here are a few important notes about your responses:
- Do not provide any private or payment information about yourself or the buyer. (i.e. names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, etc)
Leaving a response will not impact your feedback score.
- Once submitted, your responses can be removed but not changed.
Do not ask the customer questions or start a dialogue because they cannot respond to your public reply.
- If the customer feedback is removed in the future, your response will also be removed. Negative feedback hurts and at times it can be cruel. It is natural to get upset and angry but it is wise not to get emotional when replying to negative feedback. It is important to apologize and sympathize when replying because people dislike businesses that have a huge ego plus there are plenty of other people who will read what you write. There will also be times when the customer is at fault, apologize anyway. Here’s a simple message you can use for product related negative feedback:Try to avoid using the exact same response or any other cookie-cutter responses that do not address the issue. Be genuine and as specific as possible about the issue and explain how you and your business will make things better in the future.
Request Removal
The third option is to seek help from Amazon support team and have them remove the negative feedback. If the negative feedback is deemed ineligible then Amazon will remove it immediately.
Here are four Amazon rules for what counts as ineligible feedback:
Obscene or abusive language.
- Seller-specific personally identifiable information. Amazon does not allow feedback that includes any personally
identifying information of Amazon’s users. - The feedback comment is a product review. There is no need for any product reviews to be submitted as the seller
feedback.
Strikethrough feedback if it is regarding fulfillment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon. As
mentioned above, FBA sellers are not responsible for responsibilities fulfilled by Amazon.
What About Positive Feedback?
Positive feedback and reviews are certainly great and give you a sense of satisfaction. So, do you respond to them? Yes, of course! It is natural for us to say thank you and show gratitude when we receive compliments.
Apart from having gratitude and manners, replying to positive feedback is a great way to build better branding for your business, inspire customer loyalty, and promote your great customer experience.
You can share the positive feedback with your team to thank their effort and encourage them to keep up the great work. It is also evidence on what makes a customer happy. You can also take a screenshot of the positive feedback and share it on your social media channels to increase conversion rate and drive more sales.
Final Thoughts
Having negative feedback is not the end of the world. Although it is important for sellers to maintain a healthy seller feedback score, feedback also plays an important role in helping your business improve and grow.
Keep in mind that receiving negative feedback is not always final so double check to make sure the customer’s feedback doesn’t breach any of Amazon’s regulations. If it doesn’t, then look to resolve the situation and request the customer to remove the negative feedback.
Pro Tip: Request for negative feedback removal as soon as you notice one as Amazon only allows feedback to be removed before the 90 days period. You will receive the following message if you send a request after 90 days:
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