How to Collect Seller Feedback

Many of you know that making customers happy and offering the best service helps sell on Amazon. But there’s another benefit to it. Happy buyers can «sell» your products to other Amazon customers by leaving positive feedback about you as a seller. Since people tend to trust other people’s word-of-mouth, their shared experience of successful shopping with you will attract additional buyers.

At the same time, earning positive feedback is not as easy as you might think. This post helps you understand what exactly is meant by seller feedback, why it is essential, and how to gain feedback to grow sales.

What Is Amazon Seller Feedback? 

Amazon seller feedback is the buyer’s experience about shopping with you as a seller shared with other customers. It works as a report card showing service and fulfillment quality, performance, and overall Amazon customers’ experience with the sellers. 

Seller feedback is public; every shopper who wants to purchase from you can view it. That may influence their decision whether to buy from you or not. 

Buyers can rate sellers from one to five stars, with five stars being the best. They have 90 days from the date of their order to leave feedback. 

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Feedback, Review, And Rating: Is There A Difference? 

The sellers and buyers often confuse seller feedback, product reviews, and product rating. Here’s the difference between all three, explained in simple words.

Seller feedback

Amazon seller feedback refers solely to the seller, not to the product. Feedback may relate to how the seller packaged and shipped the order, the seller’s customer service quality, seller performance, response time to the issues with the order, proposals to the seller on how to improve their experience or comments on if a shopper is going to buy from the seller again.

Sellers can review their feedback on their Seller Central homepage, while buyers can find it on the Amazon storefront.

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Product review

A product review is the opinion about a product expressed by a buyer who has purchased and used it and posted it on the Amazon listing.

The significant difference between seller feedback and product review is that a review solely focuses on the product, while seller feedback concerns the seller and their service quality. The product review must contain comments on product quality, features, upsides, and downsides.

Reviews can be found on the Amazon product page. Brand-registered sellers can see their reviews using Amazon’s Customer Reviews Feature on the Brand Dashboard.

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Product ratings

Ratings are a star score from 1 to 5 stars buyers assign to a specific product. 5 stars are the best rating, while 1 star is the worst. Like a product review, a rating refers to the product only, but it scores a product numerically, while a review is a text message.

Ratings are available on the Amazon product page. You can see the average product rating and its details when you hover your mouse over the stars.

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Note. If feedback contains product information, and vice versa, a review includes information on seller performance or order fulfillment, Amazon may remove the feedback or review.

Why Is Seller Feedback Important? 

Seller feedback matters on Amazon because it helps you stand ahead of the competition and grow customer trust. 

Winning the buyer

Feedback is social proof of your seller's reputation. While positive feedback may attract buyers, negative comments may reassure them. Despite that, seller feedback doesn’t necessarily predetermine whether a buyer will purchase your product or not, to many buyers, trust in you as a seller may become a clincher when making a purchasing decision.

Gaining the Buy Box

Buy Box brings you sales. Amazon considers seller feedback when granting the Buy Box. Buyers may or may not look into your feedback, but Amazon will. Amazon’s algorithms consider all types of customer feedback when you are awarded the Buy Box or placing your products on the search results page. Feedback is included in one of the seller performance metrics — Order Defect Rate (ODR), that influences getting the Buy Box. 

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Improving Amazon Account Health

When you sell on Amazon, you must comply with their rules and policies. These rules include maintaining sales metrics at certain levels — keeping your account «healthy.» Seller feedback determines Order Defect Rate. Amazon requires sellers to maintain an ODR of less than 1%. If you fail to comply with these requirements and your Amazon Account Health Rating turns «At Risk,» Amazon may suspend your account.

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5 Ways To Earn Seller Feedback 

There are several strategies to get positive seller feedback. Below you can find the most effective of them.

1. Ask for feedback 

Sellers often underestimate the option of asking for feedback. Yet, if the customers are happy with the order, they will likely leave feedback on request. 

How to ask for feedback by email?

Amazon doesn’t provide access to customer emails; however, you can use Amazon’s Buyer-Seller Messaging Service to send a polite request for feedback after an order has been delivered. Just make sure that your request is in line with Amazon’s guidelines. You can ask only for feedback as such, not for positive feedback; you can’t incentivize shoppers to leave feedback, and you can’t send multiple requests for one and the same order.

You can also apply a «3-emails strategy.» Send the first email after the delivery of your product. With the second email, after a couple of days, ask for a product review. If it’s positive, follow up and ask for seller feedback. 

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2. Create a product insert 

A product insert is a small paper card that usually resembles a business card. When a shopper opens the received package, they can see packaging inserts inside the product packaging. Insert cards are typically added to the packages at the prep center or the factory.

How to ask for feedback with an insert?

Product insert is a great way to ask for feedback. On the card, you can include your store’s logo, thank you for a purchase message, and politely ask for feedback. Again, in the same way, as in the case of emails, you can’t manipulate feedback or specifically ask for a positive one.

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3. React to the buyer messages immediately 

Your customers always expect you to react to their questions and order issues quickly. Amazon recommends sellers answer customer messages within 24 hours. Fast reactions to unhappy customers’ messages, timely comments, or clarification often help avoid negative feedback or even A-to-z claim. 

How to ensure fast customer response?

There are two parts to this. The first one is responding to your messages daily. That helps you stay in line with Amazon’s requirements and avoid piling tens of emails in your mailbox. 

Answering a lot of emails at once may be frustrating and generate errors. The second part of it is responding asap. Try to react to the messages as soon as you see them, but not later than within 24 hours. If your customer gets a response from you after two hours, they will be happy with your customer care quality and will likely leave positive feedback.

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4. Provide the best customer service

High-quality services always generate good feedback and recurring purchases. And on the contrary, late deliveries and lack of information are often the reason for negative feedback. You can earn positive feedback by providing perfect services.

How to provide the best customer service?

Improve your shipping time and inventory management. With Fulfillment by Amazon, you can delegate a big part of the fulfillment process to the marketplace. Make sure you timely ship your products to Amazon. If your products are merchant-fulfilled, optimize your shipping and track them, so they don’t arrive late. Also, managing inventory effectively and not running out of stock is essential because that often results in negative feedback. 

5. Review your seller performance metrics 

Amazon helps you maintain the best level of customer service and avoid negative seller feedback by measuring your seller performance metrics. It allows you to monitor the quality of your customer service and proactively avoid negative feedback.

How to review seller performance metrics?

Amazon seller performance metrics are displayed in the Amazon Account Health Dashboard in your Seller Central account. The dashboard shows your service performance, Amazon policy compliance, and shipping performance. Amazon expects sellers to maintain Order Defect Rate under 1%; a Late Shipment Rate under 4%; a Pre-fulfillment cancel rate under 2.5%; and a Valid Tracking Rate greater than 95%. Increased ODR may indicate that you have received bad feedback, negatively affecting your sales and Amazon account health. Therefore, it’s crucial to manage and proactively avoid negative feedback.

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Final Thoughts

Amazon feedback is customer opinion about you as a seller that shouldn’t be underestimated or neglected. You must use all available options to get positive seller feedback because it helps grow sales and customer loyalty.

For your business, positive feedback and researching profitable products are equally important. One of the popular product research tools is Seller Assistant App. It’s a powerful product research extension for Amazon sellers engaged in online arbitrage, wholesale, and dropshipping. 

Seller Assistant Аpp is an all-in-one extension incorporating features vital for product research. Advanced IP Alerts can immediately tell you if a product has any sales restrictions or has led to problems with account health in the past. It combines an FBM&FBA profit calculator, Quick View, Stock Checker, and Restrictions Checker in one tool.