As this year continues have you noticed something different when it comes to seller-to-buyer communication? Some sellers may have been informed by Amazon, but not everyone has received the message. As of December 16th, 2020 Amazon retired the feature allowing anyone to comment on a product review. The reasoning Amazon tells is because the feature was being underutilized. No one was really using it so they tossed it as a feature. A few sellers, but not all after trying to leave comments received this mail from Amazon:
Dear seller,
You’re receiving this email because you recently left a comment on a review.
While reviews and feedback are important to our customers and sellers, the comments feature on customer reviews was rarely used. As a result, we are retiring this feature on December 16, 2020.
We’re committed to your continued success and will innovate and develop other opportunities for you to connect with customers.
Thank you.
Amazon Services
It may have been a rarely used feature, but for a lot of sellers, it was a good way to communicate with their customers, whether it be responding to negative or positive feedback. Due to the news of the removal, many sellers found themselves upset when they no longer had this communication tool. Some believe that it makes it more difficult to provide peak customer service to the people who buy their products.
Though, obviously, communication between buyers and sellers is not totally cut off. Recent Amazon FBA updates seem to be centered around the buyer-seller communication processes. These two parties can communicate through the Buyer-seller Messaging Service. This is a more private way of communication, as it cannot be seen by other customers on the product review comments, which can be positive or negative depending on the way you look at it. On one hand, people respect their privacy and would feel more comfortable speaking on their issues in a private message. On the other hand, sellers might like the idea of showing other customers how they handle issues with dissatisfied customers and how they rectify problems.
Again, this is just another example of Amazon updating their platform, which can happen at any time, and all sellers need to find a way to adapt to it. Our quality assurance team at Avalanche is always handling customer questions, concerns, and complaints in whatever way Amazon lets us, as long as we end our day by leaving each buyer satisfied and in turn our brands happy.