You’ve just completed a sale and your buyer said your service was awesome — but the item itself was less than stellar. What do you do now? Well, if you’re really dead serious about improving on that aspect, then follow these handy tips courtesy of FeedbackExpress.
Know What Your Ultimate Goal Is
When faced with a negative product review, the first instinct is to make it go away. However, that can be a super long process — and not always with a good success rate. Instead, and as cheesy as it sounds, place your focus on trying to improve yourself so it doesn’t happen in the future. If the best defence is a strong offence, then your ideal tactic is to set up a frame in place so you just don’t get negative feedback in the future.
Where You Want Your Feedback to Go
There are two ways you can get a hold of your buyer:
- Email them directly
- Post a comment on their Amazon review.
There are pros and cons for each, so let’s take a look.
- Email: You can talk about sensitive info without it being made public, but it might not be as easy or fast to communicate with them.
- Comment: You get to show other buyers that you’ve taken that negative feedback to heart and want to change, but you can’t get into a back-and-forth to discuss details and you most certainly can’t use it as an opportunity to slam the buyer. And also, if you choose this route, you have to make sure you’re actually associated with the product or else you’ll be in violation of Amazon’s rules.
Related: How to Track Negative Amazon Reviews
The Mindset You Want to Take
No matter how the buyer worded things, put your ego aside. If you need to not look at it for a few hours to remove emotion from it, then do so.
Once you’ve done that, the first thing you’ll want to do is offer a mea culpa. Your buyer is obviously miffed about something, so use the first sentence of your message to acknowledge their feelings. After that, reword their issue to show you understand them.
In the second paragraph, you can address their concerns one-by-one, if you truly believe they’re mistaken. If there’s even an ounce of ambiguity, ask them to clarify matters. And for every word, sentence and paragraph, make sure you have their review open in another tab so you’re as accurate as possible.
Lastly, end off the message with a proposed solution. It’s sort of like haggling: you put forth an offer, wait for them to counter-offer, and then find a middle ground that works for both of you.
Final Thoughts
Having a negative Amazon product review come across your desk is never fun. It instantly drops your mood, gives you a new problem to work through, and can affect your rating and future sales. But if you deal with it in the right way, it’s as simple as making your bed in the morning. And if you get FeedbackExpress to do it for you, it’s like having your own butler make that bed for you. All you have to do is get your free 30-day trial today!
*A version of this blog first appeared on FeedbackExpress
