Managing negative feedback on Amazon

It’s a PR exercise

The first thing you have to do when you get negative seller feedback is take it with a big gulp of humility. That’s difficult to do, especially if the feedback is personal (we’ll discuss this point later) but you have to keep calm and not immediately contact the customer with an angry response. Remember, you’re running a business so you need to remain professional. Don’t agitate the situation by angrily contacting the customer.

A proactive step to take when handling negative feedback is to offer a direct apology to the customer. If the product is damaged try and offer a replacement. If the product hasn’t shown up, send a new product to the customer. However you approach and handle your apology, you need to be sincere. If a customer feels that you are truly sorry for any inconvenience caused they’re far more likely to remove negative seller feedback.

Amazon seller policies are very clear about the way in which you can contact customers. You cannot email customers directly. You should keep your customer interactions within Amazon’s site. Contacting (or hassling) customers via email with bribes to remove negative seller feedback can lead to your account being suspended. That’s not worth one negative piece of feedback.

If you are unable to get rid of negative seller feedback, you’ve still got one last card to play to resolve the situation to the best of your ability. You will need to leave a response to the negative seller feedback. Leaving a response to feedback is all about damage limitation. Through the response you can show your appreciation for the feedback, explain what you have done to resolve the issue and show that you’ve taken on board the feedback for future improvement.

A response is like a PR statement. Don’t leave an insincere or sarcastic response, make it genuine. “We’re deeply sorry for any inconvenience caused – please note as a result of your feedback we’ve changed the way we operate to ensure this won’t happen again”. There’s one example but I’m sure you can think of an even better response.

Just note that sarcasm, denial, making accusations against the customer, and ‘general ignorance’ within your response is as damaging as the feedback itself. It doesn’t reassure the people reading the feedback that you’re a good seller!

Don’t Forget Your Seller Rights…

Some negative feedback is completely unfair and this is where Amazon can come in to help. Any negative seller feedback that focuses on the product can be removed by Amazon. For example, if you receive negative seller feedback because the customer thought the product was ‘rubbish’ then that is not a reflection on you as a seller. Therefore you can request for Amazon to remove it.

In addition, any seller feedback that is abusive can (and will) be removed by Amazon. As a seller Amazon doesn’t expect you to take abuse from customers. If you happen to be the unfortunate recipient of abuse, don’t react, just contact Amazon and you should have no issues removing the feedback.

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