Making Lemonade Out Of Negative Reviews
Amazon sellers have a love-hate relationship with their product reviews. Positive reviews are the lifeblood of a product page, promoting the product and positively influencing buying decisions. Negative reviews, unfortunately, can lead directly to a drop in sales, along with a lower visual star count that can be tough to bounce back from. As a seller, you naturally want to avoid this and wonder: what can I do?
First and foremost, DON’T PANIC. While seeing a negative review pop up on your listing can feel heart-stopping, make sure you take a breath before you start rage-texting via the comment box. Instead, flip your thought process and remind yourself that product reviews are feedback directly from your target market: your buyers. If you use them right, negative reviews can be a launching pad to make your product easier to use, your listing more clear, and the buyer experience better overall.
While we don’t suggest that you take every single negative review literally (maybe the reviewer was just having a bad day), we do strongly suggest you look for repeat patterns within your reviews. Are multiple buyers saying the size runs small? Maybe you could add a size chart to your listing. Are two buyers both saying they received a blue one when they ordered yellow? Maybe you’ve got some inventory mix-up you need to sort out. If you use a negative review to fix an issue and prevent it from happening to a future buyer, you’ll save yourself time, money, and a giant headache down the road.
Regardless of how helpful you consider a buyer’s negative product review, always make sure they are PLAYING BY THE RULES - Amazon’s rules, I should say. Amazon’s Community Guidelines have a pretty clear “don’t be a jerk” tone, meaning that while a buyer is encouraged to share their truthful experience with your product, Amazon draws the line with things like harassment, profanity, or false content. Instead, they encourage product reviews to be helpful, relevant, and respectful.
As an Amazon seller, you should familiarize yourself with the Community Guidelines because even if a negative product review is true, if they violate Amazon’s Community Guidelines you may be able to get it removed. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s always worth a try. If you think a product review violates Amazon’s Community Guidelines, you can click the "Report abuse" link under the review or email community-help@amazon.com with the details.
If the negative review doesn’t end up being a rule-breaker and is here to stay on your listing, get in the habit of SEARCHING FOR CLUES within the review. Your goal should be to match the negative review with one of your buyer’s contact details so you can attempt to connect with them and offer a fix (generally a refund or replacement, depending on your product).
The product reviews offer us quite a few opportunities for clues to match with a buyer. First, the product review is already connected to a specific ASIN, so if you sell multiple products, you can begin your search by filtering for buyers of that specific ASIN only. Make sure you take a look at the name of the reviewer (which is not necessarily the same name of the buyer on their account, by the way). If they’ve reviewed your product with what seems like a legit first and/or last name, you may have hit the jackpot. Otherwise, get creative with your buyer search based on what could be a nickname or initials. You can also sometimes score the reviewer’s location if you click on their name and they’ve shared that on their profile.
Other major clues can be left for you within their review itself. For example, if they say something like “I bought this for the first time in February and loved it, but this one is too loud”, you’ll know you are looking for a repeat customer. If their review offers a product description such as “The green color in the listing looks very different from what I received”, you’ll know you can search for green product buyers only.
One other thing to note: Amazon allows buyers to review your product even if they have never purchased it. If you notice that “Verified Purchase” is missing from the product review page, it’s likely going to be difficult (ok, impossible) to match that review with one of your buyers, since they probably haven’t actually purchased from you at all.
Trying to match a reviewer with a buyer can sometimes feel like a needle in a haystack, but if you make the connection, you’ve got a chance of turning that buyer’s experience around (and hopefully turning that negative review into a positive one, too).
We all know what happens when we assume...and none of us want to look like an ass. So when it comes to negative product reviews, if you want to assume something, make sure you ASSUME THE BEST of your buyer. That means if they tell you their product never arrived, believe them. If they say they only received one but they ordered two, trust them. We’ve found that a majority of buyers are, in fact, telling the truth and not out to scam you.
We know that can be easier said than done. It’s not always easy to take a complaint - aka a negative product review - and turn it into lemonade, especially when the complaint is something you know isn’t or can’t be true. But trust us when we tell you it isn’t worth arguing with a buyer because you almost certainly won’t win. And by ‘win’ we mean flip the review to 5-stars or get a repeat customer out of the situation. Instead, as you pay (again) for that shipping even though it already shows ‘delivered’, think of it as a small investment that will hopefully result in big rewards!