Your first Amazon negative reviews will feel super terrible. It is bound to happen, especially if you’re at start. After you recover from the disappointment and surprise of negative reviews on Amazon, you must be able to take the necessary positive action for your brand. Having a further plan ahead of time to deal with it could make the difference in how consumers perceive your public image and brand.
Reviews don't simply have the capability to impact consumer decisions. It could also strengthen the credibility of your company. Reviews have the power to acquire customer trust, and they motivate buyers to engage with your company. Customer interaction essentially results in enhanced profits for businesses.
Three Ways of Dealing with Negative Customer Reviews
Dealing with negative customer reviews on Amazon does not need to be difficult. Below there are the three ways, which could help you to cope with it.
1. Ask for a Revision or Removal by the Customer
Do you think the negative review is unwarranted? Then you must make contact with the reviewer immediately. The way you prefer to handle the issue is up to you.
Often, you might wish to contact the reviewer immediately. That could be time-consuming, though. You might have a hard time identifying the person.
However, sometimes buyers publish reviews under their real names. Then this data can be compared with the information in your orders and try to contact the person directly.
Ensure the tone of your message is polite and friendly. Harassing them will only get you into trouble.
A good start is by apologizing. You can consider offering the buyer a refund. Nonetheless, take note that Amazon stated in their policy that rewarding or forcing a buyer to eliminate or modify a negative review is in contradiction to their policy.
That's why, you cannot directly request removal or modification of a negative review. You can only suggest eliminating the problem in the expectation that the buyer will change the review. Politely explain the situation, say that you are sincerely interested in resolving the issue and offer, for example, full compensation or a quick exchange for a similar quality product.
In the majority of cases, customers remove or revise their negative reviews by themselves, especially when they get a quick and acceptable response from the seller.
But what if the reviewer doesn’t like to do Amazon reviews edit or revise it? The only thing you can do is to request the removal of a review in support of Amazon, which will be discussed next.
2. Removal by Amazon
Every buyer should comply with the guidelines set in place by Amazon when sending a product review. The e-commerce store understands that there are cases where irritated customers will write negative reviews for sellers because of some confusion.
Therefore, Amazon has designed its own Amazon reviews policy. It is composed of a list of scenarios where they will offer Amazon reviews delete. The review will be deleted from your page, meaning its effect will also be deleted from your entire review ratings.
Amazon will only eliminate negative reviews for the following cases:
- The review is composed of identifiable data such as full names, email address, contact numbers.
- The review contains feedback on the work of the seller.
- The review used abusive words, obscene language.
- One-word review.
Submit a request to remove feedback on Amazon only if you are absolutely sure that it violates their policy. Otherwise, your request will not be satisfied.
However, be prepared for the fact that even if you believe that the review contains the specified information and should be deleted at your request, this may not happen. Sometimes there are situations when such reviews are left anyway. This is because Amazon employees are not always able to pinpoint whether such a review is consistent with their policies. And in this situations, they usually take the side of the buyer, not the seller.
Report Abuse
You can write a complaint using the special link next to the review. Here’s what you need to do:
- At the end of the review, click the Report abuse link to contact Amazon Support.
- Write down why you think this review is not valid and why you need to delete it; it is important to clearly state the cause according to Amazon recommendations.
- Click the orange Report as inappropriate button.
Then just wait for a response from Amazon. You will be notified if the review will be deleted.
E-mail to Amazon
You can contact Amazon support directly by writing to community-help@amazon.com. In the letter, indicates the ASIN of the product, the name or the nickname of the buyer who left a negative review, the date and time of writing. Try to describe clearly why you think this review violates Amazon policy. This will increase your chances of a quick solution to the problem.
You must understand that Amazon customer support is rarely remove reviews. At the same time, it should contain obvious violations of the company's review policy. However, if you are sure that the review was left illegally, send a request to delete it.
3. Comment Publicly
If your reviewer decides not to delete or revise their review or the Amazon wasn’t able to remove it through their policy, you still have one option. Amazon enables sellers to respond to every reviewer on the product page.
In this way, you can mitigate the negative impression that potential clients may have. Write how you tried to solve the problem, what did you do to ensure that the client was ultimately satisfied.
With this method the negative customer’s review will still be visible and your rating will not change for better. However, buyers will certainly appreciate your attempts to solve the problem.
- Open a negative review and click on the Add a comment button below it.
- Write an apology comment and describe the actions that you took in order to mitigate the negative impressions of the buyer and satisfy his claims.
This technique won’t influence your general review ratings. However, this isn’t the best way to deal with negative reviews. Still, take advantage of this method to convert a negative review to a positive one.
Why Negative Review Isn’t Always Bad
Always remember that Amazon's negative reviews are not your enemies. That’s because they offer you the necessary feedback you can utilize to enhance your business.
Are you noticing lower-star reviews for some of your items? Do all your reviewers present a similar reason for the poor comments? You might begin to think that the problem is with the item and not with the product reviewers. You must be able to accept that feedback as an action item to enhance the item.
Do what you can to make your customers as satisfied as possible while you are taking the time to enhance the product. Do this so when they return, you have something better to provide.
Another positive aspect of negative reviews is that they add credibility to your product. The fact is that when a product has all the positive reviews, it causes some suspicion. Indeed, for all, it cannot be ideal. Therefore, if there are 1-2 negative or neutral reviews, this is not critical. But if there are too many such reviews, this will certainly harm your rating and seller’s reputation. And this problem needs to be addressed.
How to Track Reviews on Amazon
Any Amazon review with three star ratings or less could be considered as a negative review. But negative reviews on Amazon are essential for sellers to operate a business. That’s the main reason why tracking Amazon reviews are crucial. A review tracking tool might benefit you track Amazon reviews. Use TopBSR to receive real-time notifications of new product reviews and seller feedback. With the help of this service you will be able to respond to troubles in time, therefore you will provide excellent service to your customers.
Bottom Line
Do not allow negative reviews to descend your online marketing efforts. As an alternative, make sure you respond to them effectively by reaching out to every reviewer. If that still fails, try the other options we mentioned above to solve the problem.