There are two types of reviews that customers can leave on your Amazon account:
- Product Reviews
- Seller Feedback
In the short-term, product reviews are probably the most important, as they can often make or break an Amazon product's potential that you've already made a monetary investment in.
Your long-term seller feedback will reflect how your customers feel about both you as a seller & your products for sale on Amazon.
It's important to maintain positive feedback in all regards, whenever possible, & this article will provide suggestions on how to do just that - including how to get negative feedback removed when warranted.
How To Respond To A Negative Review On Amazon
If you receive a negative product review, it can damn a product on Amazon. It can rob an amazing product the opportunity to succeed before it ever gets a chance to take off - seriously.
ESPECIALLY if it's the first review on the product!
My first recommendation is to stay on top of your product reviews!
Checking your product listings daily to monitor reviews is incredibly tedious. That's why I use Efficient Era, which sends me email alerts when I receive new product feedback - regardless of if it's negative or positive.
(I also use them to solicit feedback from customers via their automated customer emails - read more in my Efficient Era review)
Here's an email alert for a recent product review:
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I don't pay too much mind to positive reviews, but negative reviews (3 stars or less) usually warrant some my attention.
Unfortunately you can't get negative product reviews removed by Amazon (even if they're reviewing the wrong product which happens more often than you'd think), but you can respond to the customer on the public forum underneath their review.
This is a great opportunity to show future customers that you care enough to both respond to the criticism, improve the product, & do right by your customer.
Anker is a top Amazon brand that does a great job of responding to every negative feedback.
They use a templated response to all negative customer feedback that mimics this structure:
Dear [NAME],
We are sorry to hear about [YOUR PROBLEM]. Please help us better understand [YOUR PROBLEM] in order to better our product in the future.
Be assured that [BRAND] takes customer experience as a top concert and we really want to help. [PROVIDE CUSTOMER SERVICE INSTRUCTIONS]
[INSERT LINK TO CONTACT YOUR SELLER ACCOUNT]
Please be assured that we provide 30 days money back guarantee for any reason and 18 months warranty (replace or refund) plus lifetime technical support.
[BRAND] Customer Support
As you can see, they do their best to exceed customer expectations by taking into account their feedback, owning & learning from the mistake, and offering to replace or refund them.
As a result, I'm sure they've helped to change many customers minds about leaving a poor product review resulting in the customer changing it to a positive one.
We'd be wise to mimic their approach in this case in hopes of keeping our product feedback as positive as possible. I have personally had to close certain listings due to negative feedback, as it can prevent products from ever realizing their full potential as many customers won't click a listing from search results if the feedback isn't 4+ stars.
No matter how confident you are in your product, you have to be realistic: bad things can and will happen at times. That could mean your supplier messes up 0.5% of your order, or 1 in 100 shipments get damaged in transit. It happens to everyone!
One last thing-
I also use Efficient Era's negative feedback page to stay on top of 3 star & lower reviews posted on my products. This is an easiest method of managing & responding to customer feedback (as oppossed to regularly checking your product listings or keeping the review alerts in your inbox).
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You can click the linked review text to view it on Amazon's website, where you can post a public response.
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Remove Seller Feedback
I also use Efficient Era to monitor my negative seller feedback:
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You can also just log into Seller Central & click the link in your Performance tab to view your recent feedback (or click this link).
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You should check your seller feedback bi-weekly in my opinion, or once a month at the very least.
In my experience, every so often a customer will leave feedback that has nothing to do with you or your product, or they'll leave negative feedback related to shipping on a fulfilled by Amazon product, which is grounds for removal.
How To Remove Negative Amazon Seller Feedback
To get feedback removed, simply click where it says "choose one" under "Actions" on the right-hand side & click "request feedback removal".
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Often times, Amazon's automated system will instantly remove the negative feedback.
Otherwise, you can try going through Seller Support to get it removed.
