What Sellers on Amazon Should be Aware of When Dealing with Negative Reviews

Amazon is significantly different from other e-commerce platforms, but sellers on the platform have the same issues with negative reviews affecting their sales revenues. Your product might be finally be getting a healthy volume of sales after months of hard work and an unexpected negative review might single-handedly neutralize that positive sales momentum. A listing that had units sold in the hundreds might suddenly drop to double-digit results or even no orders at all. Amazon sellers who have had negative reviews already know how daunting can this become.

While there is no magic wand to erase negative feedback, it is important that sellers attempt to convince customers to remove negative reviews. This can become complicated as Amazon does not allow access to their users’ e-mail addresses. However Amazon does provide a platform for communication with your customers and it should be used to reach out to them. Firstly, it’s important to acquaint yourself with Amazon’s rules for sellers when dealing with negative feedback:

Don’t Lure

In the process of finding a resolution with the customer, the Amazon seller should not state refunding as an offer to change or remove a negative review. Amazon strictly prohibits sellers from luring or conditioning removal of feedback with financial compensation. This could easily lead to your seller account being flagged and banned for misconduct. If the customer requests this out of his own will, then there is no problem in issuing a refund.

Don’t Contact Too Often

Amazon always places customers above everything else. When dealing with customers that left negative feedback, keep the frequency of your outgoing messages at a reasonable level. Even if customers aren’t replying, bombarding them with messages every day will be detrimental to your account’s reputation. Should a customer complain to Amazon about frequent messages from a seller, it will lead to reputational punishments on the Amazon platform and could even come to termination of your account. Amazon expects sellers to respect customer’s privacy.

Effective Communication

Upon receiving a negative review, you should first understand why it has come to this. If the review wasn’t fabricated, it means that customers are indeed dissatisfied with the product. Communication is vital in finding a solution to alleviate customer’s complaints and maintain a good reputation on the Amazon platform. In the end, it’s important that the customer feels like his complaint was acknowledged and will be accordingly remunerated, either via a refund or substitute of the product.