Hello, I wanted know if we can ask buyers for their honest seller feedback through Amazon messages.
I would not via messages. This is annoying to customers and bypasses some personal preferences that you can set within Amazon re what messages you want to get as a customer.
There was a request feedback button in seller central, haven’t looked for it in a while so I will let others comment on it’s current existence.
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You can, but it might backfire.
Additional messaging has a creepy feel. Buyers - me included! - want one simple, complete transaction, and nothing more. ( Imagine parallel in-person scenarios: how would you feel if a waiter pursued you into the parking lot, asking for a larger tip? )
The way to earn good feedback is to do a better transaction than your competitors. This is actually becoming easier on Amazon, as the overall quality of service declines. Earn the good feedback.
Your paperwork might include a request for feedback. ( I’m not sure if this is allowed, but lots of us do it ) If you have given the customer good service and a good product, good feedback will often follow.
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I have a Variation Relationships client who’s done this for a while. I’ve mentioned not to on several occasions, but they persist. No issues so far.
I agree with the previous comments, but let’s face it. Feedback is just not something buyers want to fool with these days.
So … while some will say it’s not that important to your account, the bottom line is it’s still used by Amazon and has meaning. That said, I’m not one to advise a newer account not to pursue whatever method.
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If you are going to do it and want to be sure you are not crossing any lines with Amazon, simply use the button and forget messaging and notes.
Our thoughts
We do not ask for any feedback or reviews and so we do not receive a lot. But what we do receive tends to give us a real insight as to how we are doing. We know what is working and what can be worked on from the feedback and reviews.
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The only way I would recommend (I don’t do any asking myself) is to use the request review link provided on order detail page. That requests both product review and seller feedback. It’s the only way that definitely won’t ruffle Amazon’s feathers.
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Feedback is almost meaningless, I would not bother people for it. (Product reviews are a different subject).
Also, Amazon sends enough useless emails to buyers. A seller sending more useless, self serving emails is not welcome.
If you really want to get feedback, or more importantly, product reviews, I might suggest buying an autopen machine and including a “handwritten” note in your product requesting as such. People are suckers for that kind of thing.
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It’s actually a request a review button on the order detail screen but it also requests feedback. I’ve pressed that button probably 15K times since it came out. I can say with the utmost confidence, at least for us, that it works quite well. Just a ton of work to sort through every order and decide who gets a request and when. I’ve got an ever-evolving science for that…
I religiously track our percentages / star avg’s. Brought our review rate up 3X using this. Still not saying much but when you are in a category with REALLY shady competitors, it helps to offset their 1 Star fake reviews against you with 5 Star reviews.
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You definitely need to make sure you’re sending the right requests and not just blindly spamming people, because if someone wasn’t quite thrilled with the product and they get a spam email from you the odds of a negative are very high.
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You’re correct. That’s the reason why we only request reviews from buyers who are reordering.
A buyer gets a review for the first reorder (unless it was a subscribe and save), and only if their second order was at or below the price of the initial order. They get another review request for their 5th and 10th reorder. The subscribe and save exception goes away in these last 2 scenarios because the hope is that if they forgot to cancel a subscription they didn’t want, they would have done it by the 5th / 10th reorder.
We also avoid sending requests to geographical areas that may be under stress for weather or other reasons because you want to get people when they are at their happiest potential.
You will still run into people that will lash out even if they are happy but the good outweighs the bad.
It’s my understanding that if a buyer has already left a product review that the request for one will be blocked by AI which negates the effect of bothering people with something they already did.
With that said, they can’t review the product again and it would take a special kind of A-hole to go back in and change a review because an email made them mad. Those people probably also exist. Haha.
Anyway, this strategy is one of the reasons why we have been somewhat successful on Amazon. It takes a lot of persistence to keep this up but I do it every single day for at least an hour a day - virtually 365 days a year.
I also go back once a month to all the subscribe and save orders you can’t initially see because they ship a min of 10 days after the order is placed and get the 5th and 10th reorder people who you know are committed to the brand. I see a nice bump in reviews 2-4 days after this is done. I can get orders that are up to 6 weeks old at this point. The policy is at least 5 days after delivery and up to 30 days. After that, you cannot request a review.
I start looking at orders that are a min of 2 weeks old. At that point, they would have gotten a review request (if Amazon sent one), and seeing something a second time has been shown to be a driver for increased call to action.
Happy to share this secret formula with the group. It works but it’s not easy or fun to stick with.
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The way you do it is definitely a lot of work and it’s also not something you can really outsource if you want it done right.
If you pay someone cheap to do it they’ll just do a cheap job and randomly spam people and call it a day.
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Correct again. There’s also no way to prove that it’s been done at all.
Like I said, you need to be pretty committed or perhaps need to be committed to do what I do. But you do what you need to in order to win on Amazon.
I’m pretty sure if I reached into the corner of my brain, and brought back the excel expertise I used to have, that there would be a way to somewhat automate this whole process with various formulas and hyperlinks. If you copy and paste an order # into excel it does create a clickable link.
The trick would be to attach a unique identifier for each buyer with the limited info Amazon provides through the FBA Tax remittance report and run formulas to weed out just reorders that match the criteria I follow manually now. Then you can take the link, combine it with the order #, and just click the spreadsheet for those orders to look at / request the review.
It can be done, I’m just too old and tired to sit down and work it out.
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The RAR (“Request A Review”) functionality is programmatically available via the SP-API; the kinks in the days when Amazon was still thrashing about with the migration from the MWS-API, and constantly delaying the former’s full roll-out year after year - which brought the Director of Product Management for one of the Third Party Service Providers, JS ("Jungle Scout), that’s long been in the SPN (“Service Partner Network”), to the OSFE in response to the 8May`21 thread linked below - have been worked out.
The NSFE URL for that thread is here, but the above should automatically redirect:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/07950387abe88dfc5256e945cfaaff03
We’ve never used Jungle Scout ourselves, but we long used a similar provider (which didn’t suffer what JS went through); in Q1 of 2023, after nearly a decade, we opted out because the Seller Feedback trends had fallen so drastically after the height of the COVID-19 Crisis scare (continuing a participation decline that began some years before that).
It has not made a remarkable difference in Product Review rate, but that of Seller Feedback did fall noticeably.
This does not bother me.
ETA:
Welcome to the SellersAskSellers Forum, @Andrew!
I believe you may find that it is the BEST Seller Forums Experience.
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I’m familiar with what’s out there for automation but nothing can do what I do manually sadly.
If I created a program that did what I did, Amazon would probably take it down for stacking the deck…
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I think that the Request A Review function is far more important for sellers who are trying to build the reputation for their own Amazon-only Private Label product than any one else.
I see neither reviews nor FB as being meaningful unless you are trying to promote a brand no one has heard of which has name brand and more established private label competition.
As for Amazon’s use of FB, it appears mostly to be an excuse to throttle sales by sellers with no established sales record. Its use as part of the ODR is not significant except to mostly bad sellers.
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Hi @Andrew and welcome to SellersAskSellers!
I agree with @Pepper_Thine_Angus @Lost_My_Marbles @bookwormapril and @ASV_Vites that IF you are going to request Seller Feedback (or Product Reviews) from Buyers, you do it only by using the “Request” button in Manage Orders, individually and manually. This way, there should be no gray areas about whether your message or contact is compliant with Amazon’s policies.
That being said, I’m intrigued by how that request is actually communicated to Buyers. Please see below for two emails I have received as a Buyer for Amazon purchases this month:
- Both orders were FBA from 3P Sellers (sold by X, shipped by Amazon).
- Both emails are from official Amazon accounts. BUT NOTE: Titles, content, sender, and destination links are different.
- For each image, the left-side portion is the email I received, and the right-side portion is where I was directed when I clicked a star in the email. RED blocks my details, BLACK blocks Seller/product details, BLUE indicates “areas of interest”.
- The PINK image specifically says “Seller requests” and took me directly to a Product Review (not Seller Feedback).
- Interestingly, I was prohibited from simply leaving a star rating…so that’s a no from me on leaving any Product Review (sorry y’all, I will only leave detailed product reviews for awesome or awful products, nothing mid).
- The BLUE image specifically notes “Fulfilled by Amazon,” yet when I click the same star as the PINK email, it takes me directly to Seller Feedback, for a Seller not actually doing fulfillment or customer service.
Anyone have any insight into which of these (or both, or none) are generated by the “Request” button? And/or why/how these two different emails are generated?
Click an image to enlarge.
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Aha, interesting, thank you!..so it takes a Buyer directly to Product Review (and not Seller Feedback). Does it always force a full review, too?
And then to @Andrew 's question…
…we Sellers have to hope that Buyers will also provide Seller Feedback after navigating independently from Product Review? 
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6 posts were split to a new topic: Something’s up with star-only product reviews right now
Back in the day, before the request a review button and when there was a box in the seller / buyer messaging for requesting a review, I had a really nice / classy template for requesting reviews in writing via messaging.
It was so much more effective IMO than the button. The issue with the messaging, (especially now) is the seller opens themselves up to the buyer saying they got messaged inappropriately or whatever Amazon’s verbiage is for reporting a message.
Because requesting a review has been removed as an option for messaging, I really think this could come back and bite sellers that do it in the butt. I’d prefer it to do it the way we used to but it’s not worth the risk, and I do think there is a real risk.
Our organic product review rate is 1 out of 600 (.17%). We hover around .25% with what I do. A 47% increase but still works out to 1 review for every 400 units sold.
Doing the math on the 7-10 hours a week it takes to get a couple reviews, it’s sad but well worth it IMO.
Looking at every single order we get gives me a lot more than carpal tunnel syndrome and a few reviews. I also track our reorder rate which there’s no real reliable and accurate way to do through reporting without massaging the reports with formulas and if statements which also takes time.
The reality is that my method stacks the deck in our favor but the main purpose of doing this is to counteract the fake negative reviews we get from our competitors. So if Amazon won’t do anything about them then I will find ways to use their systems / data to do it myself.
I know I bitc h about SAS (Strategic Account Services), but I was reflecting last night on all the damage I have done to some of our competitors with it (for good reason). It’s been well worth the expense. I’ve never been able to completely take down sellers like I would like, and like they deserve for policy / legal reasons, but I’ve done some significant damage to their “businesses”. The instances of fraud from these specific sellers plummet after I work them over with reporting and escalating. Teaching them a lesson that there’s always someone watching.
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