If you are a business owner and often find yourself in the midst of negative reviews, both genuine and engineered, then read ahead. Negative reviews about the products and services of a brand is a matter of great concern. It affects the overall reputation and embeds a sense of distrust in both existing and prospective customers. Businesses with an online presence need to formulate policies to deal with such mishaps. Negative reviews will come from customers who did not find your product as per expectations or potential hijackers appointed by rival companies to damage your reputation.
It is essential to keep negative reviews at bay in both the situations to keep your reputation and business in a healthy state. We have brought an excellent guide to understand the essentials of dealing with negative reviews.
Consumer Negative Reviews: What Can We Learn From Them
It is always a good idea to learn from adverse events; after all, we can’t change them, so it’s better that we learn and move on. Businesses can’t really expect to get a 5-star review on each sale in the online space. Some consumers may not find your product or services appropriate; some might have much higher expectations in ratio to their price.
Keeping all these factors in mind, you should never feel low about your business, in case of genuine negative reviews, you will need to update your products and services up to the mark. The issue arises when you have to deal with negative reviews without making a real customer feel that he is wrong about your product or service.
Negative Reviews: What Purpose They Serve
Some negative reviews do not really mean that people will stop buying your product. It can also be beneficial to your business. It’s all about how you look at them. We will share a different perspective with you that will make you feel positive about the negative reviews you abhor so much.
Negative Reviews Makes Positive Reviews Look Genuine
Imagine you are looking for a product online, and you like a particular brand providing that product. When you go through the reviews, you find that all of the reviews are 5-stars, along with poetic praises for the product. Can you trust the brand now? You will certainly entertain the thought that these reviews are not genuine but engineered to make the product look like the epitome of perfection.
Every major study regarding the psychology of reviews has offered the same insight that the customers are less likely to trust such brands. On the other hand, If you have negative, average, and positive reviews in the right proportion, it reflects a genuine review set. As we have discussed above, that a negative review doesn’t really mean that your product is bad, it can have many other reasons. While looking at the diverse range of reviews, the intelligent customer will trust your brand more than a brand with consistent 5-star reviews.

Ultimate Guide to Removing Negative Reviews and Defend Against Hijacked Review
1.Negative Reviews and Buying Decisions
As we discussed in the previous section, bad reviews will actually give a boost to your brand as they reflect a genuine online reputation. With a combination of reviews at their disposal, the prospective customer will eventually get the true picture of your product. They will know what they are expecting on both the positive and the negative front if they buy the product. As mentioned earlier, one of the most common reasons for bad reviews is the high expectations that customers have about the product. When these expectations are not met, they find themselves cheated and write frustrated reviews. If you own a business and have negative reviews for your product, you will know that the word “disappointed” is quite common. Disappointment will arise only when there is some expectation. All you need to do is give genuine expectations, and customers won’t give you a disappointing review.
Imagine you ordered a Large size T-shirt, but the Shirt is a little smaller. You wrote a review that the size is smaller than mentioned. Another buyer will see the review and order a larger size of the Shirt. Didn’t this negative review help out the business?
2.Negative Reviews Adds To Publicity
Any publicity is still publicity, it’s about how you use it. One of the excellent ways to tackle bad reviews is to offer something to the person who wrote the review and give him/her a discount on the next purchase. He will only be happy to get such a genuine gift. In the end, It’s not about using rhetorics to argue with a negative review; all you have to do is tackle it with creativity.
We hope that we have succeeded in giving you a new perspective on the usability of negative reviews. This is how you should look at reviews given by genuine buyers. On the other hand, when your brand is subjected to bad reviews for no good reason or feel that the negative reviews affect your overall sales, you should act immediately in a different way. Ultimately it comes down to running your business successfully and achieving high sales. In order to do so, you must take necessary actions against negative reviews that target your brand with ulterior motives.
Read More about Amazon listing Hijackings and protect your amazon business:
- Amazon Listing Hijackers: How to Protect Your Amazon Business During Pandemic
- Ultimate Guide to Lower Return Rate On Amazon FBA
3.Dealing With Negative Reviews To Save Your Brand
Let’s have a look at how to deal with negative reviews if they are affecting your sales too much and how you can save yourself from hijacked reviews. The below mentioned guidelines will surely help you out in managing your Amazon negative reviews in an efficient manner. These are tried and tested methods compiled by our team of experts with extensive experience in the eCommerce industry.
4.Contacting The Customer
If you are a seller on Amazon, then you will know that the only amazon members can post a review about your product. The seller center will be the place where you can find the customer’s details like order ID and name and confirm if it’s a genuine customer who bought the product. The seller cell won’t provide you the customer’s contact number though, they have stopped doing so.
Even if you had the number, calling a customer over a bad review is a bad idea. The most appropriate way to contact a customer is through the internal messaging system. A buyer will most definitely respond to an official message rather than a random caller judging his judgment.
5.Commenting on Positive Reviews
To increase your sales and build a genuine relationship with your customers, you should comment on positive reviews. You can start your comment by a simple thank you to appreciate the purchase and then go on to write about the review. You can also add links to other products that you sell as a marketing technique. This is an effective way of communicating with your customers and making them feel important.
6.Commenting on Negative Reviews
This is a little tricky as you are dealing with someone who doesn’t like what you sold to him. You must reply to negative feedback quickly to resolve the issue as soon as possible if the customer is still online. You should always be truthful about the issue and present a genuine apology while accepting the mistake and tell them that they will receive a refund. As we have mentioned before, you can give them an unexpected gift to keep up the relationship.
7.Replacement or Refunds
This is the ultimate game; if your customer has blasted your brand with negative reviews, then you can throw the replacement and refund card. Most eCommerce sites believe in total customer satisfaction, which will also be expected from you. So you need to make sure that your customer is happy. You can negotiate the amount down to half the value if you wish to. After providing the customer with the necessary refund, all you have to do is ask him/her to remove the negative feedback politely. Always remember being polite.
8.Tracking Fake Reviews
Your competitors will often try to damage your brand by putting negative reviews on your products. The first thing you need to do to match it is to compare the list of genuine purchases and reviews. Off-Course, you won’t get the full name of the customer through this.
If you wish to get the customer’s full name through Amazon, you need to use the ‘wishlist’ feature. You can gain access to the Wishlist of a customer by clicking on the review. Once getting your hands on the wishlist, you can match up your report with wishlists to get the buyer’s name and the order ID for the purchase. You can now contact the customer who left the negative review.
9.Download Reports
In order to compare the negative reviews with the buyer’s report, you must first download the order reports along with shipment reports. These reports will make sure that you are in possession of all the data for comparison purposes. You must collect the data every month to keep yourself updated. Make sure that you take quick actions once you have the reports with yourself along with the list of negative reviews.
10.Organize The Reports
You can create a fresh spreadsheet for storing the acquired data, including the names of the customers, their IDs, the purchase report, etc. If you have a large amount of data on a monthly basis, then you can also use Google fusion tables with the capacity to hold a large amount of data and also to sort them out accordingly.
11.Manage The Hijackers
If you believe that you have been a victim of review hijacking and losing your revenue because of it, then you must make sure that you take necessary actions to keep hijackers at bay. You can take help from organizations providing tracking services that can give you an immediate alert if they suspect any negative comments on your product reviews. They can also help you out with tracking your listings, keyword rankings, and overall sales tracking. Product Spy Pro is one of the pioneers of this industry and stands as a leader in providing active support to Amazon sellers by providing monitoring services. We can also help you to keep your amazon business safe from leeches and hijackers. You can use their services to spy on your competitors and stay one step ahead of them all the time.
12.Stay Vigilant
If you are in the business of online sales, then you must stay vigilant about the reviews all the time. You cannot just sit ideally when your brand is feeling the heat of negative reviews. The quicker you act, the better, as people are always online and might be looking at your product reviews. You don’t want a prospective buyer to see a lot of negative reviews and ending up buying the product from one of your competitors. It takes a lot of effort and time to build a business online because of the trust issues among the public.
You don’t want to lose your hard-earned reputation and active revenue cycles because you didn’t keep a good track of the piling reviews speaking against your brand and products. It can have a drastic effect in the long run.
On the other hand, you must never use fake review techniques to boost your sales. We have already discussed that a combination of negative, average, and positive reviews is what you need to attract genuine customers and give them a real picture of your products.
We hope that we have provided you with a usable guide for managing your online reviews. You must make the most of it and keep your business on a higher note, withstanding unlucky customer reviews and your competitors’ intrigues. Online space is much more competitive than a normal retail store where you can build effective relationships with your customers through daily interactions.
Get Instant Alerts of Buybox Hijackers,Negative Reviews,Product Suppressions, Price Changes,Sales Alerts, Review Monitoring ,keyword rank tracking and much more
(by Using Our Powerfull Monitoring Suite )
Leave A Comment