Why Private Label Sellers Must Monitor and Respond to Product Reviews

Product reviews are the single most important metric customers use to gauge whether or not to buy your product on Amazon. Customers love them, as they provide real and valuable insight into your products, and Amazon loves them because they use positive reviews to help determine your Best Seller Ranking. The higher your Best Seller ranking, the more likely Amazon customers are to find and purchase your product.

Amazon has made a point of publicly standing behind and defending the authenticity of its review process. They work to make sure that reviews, good and bad, come from genuine users and are not paid for or manipulated. While you can trust in Amazon’s system, it does not mean that you can ignore these reviews. As a private label seller, it is doubly important for you to monitor and respond to all product reviews. Here’s what monitoring product reviews can do for you:

Protect Your Brand Name

When you are a private label seller, your name is one of the most important things you have. Obviously your product and its quality are important but if potential buyers come to associate your brand with negative product reviews, they are unlikely to buy anything from you based on your reputation alone. It would be impossible to avoid all negative reviews, someone, at some point, is going to be unhappy with something. By monitoring product reviews you can know right away when unfavorable reviews arrive and when you engage with that review, it can make all the difference. As much as Amazon has cracked down on fake reviews, shoppers are smarter and know that reading the negative reviews can tell the story of your product. If your negative reviews can in turn bring a positive experience due to good customer service, it brings a priceless value to drive sales to future customers.

Prevent Sabotage

Unfortunately, not everyone in this world is honest and so it stands to reason that some of this dishonesty would spill over into the online marketplace. Malicious sellers may use all the tricks available to them to knock you down and steal your customers. These tricks can include leaving bogus negative reviews on your product listings. Your competition may create multiple buyer accounts and sabotage your reviews by making up problems with your product and warning others not to buy from you. You are able to appeal these sorts of reviews but it is not easy and unless you are able to definitively prove that it was a phony review left by a malicious seller, Amazon is not likely to take it down.

The best thing you can do when you receive any negative reviews is to respond and attempt to repair the situation. By commenting on the review and offering to make things right, you will limit any potential damage the review may have caused. You will have proven yourself to be trustworthy. In the case of honest negative reviews, you may even find customers amend their previous review or leave a new one that explains the steps you took and how happy they are with the result. Any time you can provide really good customer service, you undo the efforts of anyone trying to sabotage your brand.

Growth Opportunities

When you monitor and engage with product reviews and customer feedback, consider it a learning opportunity. If you are getting a bunch of neutral or negative reviews that keep saying the same thing, you need to pay attention. These comments point to a part of your product that obviously needs to be improved. Or, maybe it is a marketing issue. Perhaps your listing is not clear enough and you are not properly explaining the uses and purpose for your product. Correcting your description may actually improve your feedback and increase your sales.

Product reviews may also alert you to areas for potential growth. Perhaps some of the shortcomings in your products can be solved by another product or maybe your product lends itself perfectly to companion products. By looking at what people are talking about, you may be able to find creative and previously unimagined products that can be added to your brand’s offerings. Be open and you may just find another way to grow your bottom line.

Build Trust

Responding to negative reviews creates trust and confidence in both the customers you have and the ones you are hoping to win over. If a customer is uncertain about a product, they will head to the reviews to see what people are saying. One of the biggest concerns people have when shopping online is that the product won’t perform as promised or that it won’t be what they were looking for, or that they won’t like it. Honest customer reviews give them a chance to address these concerns before they purchase. And even if all of their concerns are not entirely addressed, seeing that you have a good return policy or that you will do whatever it takes to make a customer whole and happy, inspires confidence in you and your brand. People want to know that they matter and if you can demonstrate that you care about their experience of your product, you will put their minds at ease which will make them likely to choose you over another seller.

Conclusion

Managing your product reviews and customer feedback is not the most glamorous part of being an Amazon seller but it is by far one of the most important. By using powerful monitoring & buyer-review matching software like FeedbackWhiz, you can instantly find out not only what people are saying about your product, but who they are.  By responding to these reviews, you can protect your brand, prevent sabotage, grow and/or improve your product line, build trust and loyalty with our customers, and set yourself up for long term selling success.

FeedbackWhiz is an all-in-one management, monitoring, and automation tool for Amazon sellers. Built on one of the most powerful platforms, it provides sellers a complete set of tools for order, feedback, and product review management while providing advanced analytics and insights to help Amazon sellers save time and grow their brand.