‘Worldwide Brands’ has released their latest ‘Product Sourcing Newsletter’, complete with product sourcing tips for home-based e-tailers, upcoming trade shows, and spotlighted eCommerce wholesalers. The featured article is titled “Rating Your EBiz…Are Customers Always Fair To You?”.

Rating Your EBiz…Are Customers Always Fair To You?

By: Chris Malta, CEO WorldwideBrands.com

eBay and many Online Store platforms allow your Customers to Rate your Store. That can actually be damaging to your business!

Those who are familiar with eBay are very well aware of eBay’s Feedback System. Much of what you do on eBay revolves around that system.

Many Online Store Platforms also allow your Customers to Rate your EBiz.

In both the eBay and Online Store worlds, anyone who is thinking about buying from you can view those ratings, and base their decision on how well rated you are by previous Customers.

In theory, that’s all well and good. It’s kind of a built-in “Consumer Reports” thing, right there in the place where the Customer is thinking about buying.

However, something that you really need to keep in mind is that many of those rating systems are VOLUNTARY. That can cause your business serious problems if you don’t stay on top of it!

Why? Because in a voluntary rating system, you’re most likely to ONLY hear from people who are DISGRUNTLED for some reason.

It’s a time-tested, proven thing in Customer Service, which is what a Rating System is most closely tied to. Customer Service people almost NEVER hear from SATISFIED Customers. It is extremely rare for a Customer to call or write to a business and say, “Hey, thanks, good job! I got my Green Widget, and I like it a lot!”

People just don’t do that very often. They EXPECT to get their Green Widget and like it a lot, so when that happens, they don’t bother to let you KNOW that. If you run your EBiz well, most of your Customers will be satisfied, and you’ll never hear a word from them.

Customer Service professionals spend their entire day dealing with people who have some kind of a problem or gripe. Many times the problems are legitimate. Sometimes you get one of those permanently miserable people who will never be satisfied no matter what you do for them. The point is that in your EBiz, the people you’re going to get phone calls and emails from will mostly be people with problems.

The same exact thing is true for RATING systems. Most people who are HAPPY with your service are not likely to take the time to go to your EBiz Rating Page and say so. They just don’t do it that often. They’ve completed a transaction with you, they have their Green Widget, and they have other things to do besides take time out of their day to go online and give your business a good rating. After all, you only did what you were supposed to do….you sent them their Widget. Why should they bother to praise you for something that you were paid to do in the first place? They’re already busy buying other Widgets from other people, and they’ve forgotten about you for the most part.

Yes, some happy Customers DO rate your EBiz, and give you a good rating. But the majority of your satisfied Customers will not bother.

So, who DOES go to your Rating Page? People who are UNSATISFIED with your services or products. If someone has a problem with how you served them, and they don’t get an immediate resolution, some of them go off on a campaign of nasty phone calls and emails, and make it their Mission of the Week to make your life miserable. Their favorite thing in the world to see is a Ratings page where they can blast you with (usually undeserved) criticism in front of the entire online community.

Again, if you run your EBiz well and take care of your Customers, this will be a rare thing. It will be reserved for that kind of person (and we all know one or two of them, don’t we?) who is simply nasty and unreasonable all the time, no matter how you try to satisfy them. You ARE going to run into a few of those human complaint dispensers, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it.

Okay, if SOME of your satisfied Customers DO take the time to give you good ratings, and you only get a BAD rating from these nasty people once in a great while, why be concerned?

Because to the potential Customers looking at your Ratings page, ONE BAD rating is more powerful than 20 GOOD ratings!

This is less of a problem on eBay, because people on eBay are almost ALWAYS going to give you Good Feedback. Why? Because they want something from you in return. THEY want YOU to give THEM good feedback as Buyers! So the eBay Feedback System is actually skewed toward everybody giving each other Good Feedback all day long, and living in Happy-Happy Land, even if the service wasn’t all that great. People leaving bad feedback on eBay risk getting bad feedback themselves, and they don’t want that. Because of that, Bad Feedback on eBay is usually either deserved, or the result of a COMPLETE misunderstanding. In a world where Rating systems will never be perfect, eBay probably comes the closest to keeping things honest.

It’s more of a problem in an Online Store or other Business Rating environment, where if they leave YOU bad feedback or ratings, you can’t do anything about it, and they know it. So, the disgruntled have a chance to strike at your business in public with no risk that you can strike back.

Any kind of a public feedback or rating system that does not allow the business in question to respond publicly is poorly thought out, and an extreme disservice to an Online Business.

Does that mean that I think Ratings and Feedback Systems are a bad idea? No. I think they’re a good idea when properly structured. Most of them, however, are not and give you little or no opportunity to have UNFAIRLY placed negative and harmful feedback and ratings either answered publicly, or removed from the system after you can prove that they are unfair or malicious.

So what do you do to protect yourself from the uncaring Powers-that-be who control these ratings systems on your ECommerce Platforms? You can call them and write to them and tell them that you’re paying them to be a part of their Store or Business Platform, and they’re forcing you to live with a poorly designed Rating system, but most of the time that will fall on deaf ears.

The only thing you can really do is try to overwhelm the negative ratings with a larger number of positive ratings. To do that, you need to follow up with your Customers, which is something you should be doing anyway. After a sale is complete, you should be contacting your Customers, telling them you appreciate your business, and asking them to please go to your Ratings or Feedback page and let you know how your Service was.

Yes, most ECommerce Platforms will do this for you automatically, but most of them simply send out boiler-plate emails that come with the system. If your ECommerce Platform does offer this automatic follow-up system, be SURE that you go into the settings for that system and PERSONALIZE that follow up email with your own name and business information! If your ECommerce Platform does NOT offer that service with your Store, then follow up with your Customers yourself. Your goal is to make that follow-up email as appealing to your Customer as possible, so that they feel they should respond. Do NOT, however, bombard your Customers with follow-up after follow-up. They’ll get annoyed, and then you’ll get a bad rating from them.

Remember, one bad rating can make a LOT of good ratings worthless in the eyes of the public. If you make sure you follow up with your Customers, and stay on top of your Ratings, your EBiz will be more successful.

This article has been provided by Chris Malta’s blog. Find more great information about your online business on Chris’s site. HERE.

Product Sourcing Newsletter

* IMNewswatch would like to thank Worldwide Brands for granting permission to reprint this newsletter article.

Before purchasing with you, buyers must perceive that your business is legitimate and real. But establishing customer relations takes time. And if they don’t feel comfortable buying from you, you’ll never get a chance to develop those relationships in the first place!

Sharing is caring