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How to use NEGATIVE review to BOOST your SALES! [PRO TIP]


bouchac

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Hi fellows sellers!

I’m FULLTIME online marketer with 4,000+ gigs sold on Fiverr so far.

I always say “Never trust a skinny chef!”, so the best idea before you read any article posted in this forum or order any gig, be sure the person you are dealing with has a good experience behind. If you now think 4k+ sales is enough as a proof of expertise, enjoy my post! 🙂

Nightmare of all sellers is called NEGATIVE REVIEW. Right?
Dear friends, this can really damage your gig a big way!

For example:
If I’m searching for some services here on Fiverr, I ALWAYS read negative reviews and looking how the seller responds to them to get the full picture about the gig and seller. And I’m pretty sure most of people do the same thing!

So how to manage negative reviews?

You simply can’t be perfect fit for everyone and from time to time you will get a bad feedback, no matter how much you try to avoid it.

Here is my secret recipe:

  1. Fight against negative feedback BEFORE it’s posted:

If you see your buyer is pure troublemaker or “tire-kicker” go away / offer refund as soon as possible! Trust me. You will end with only a few $$$ earned for SOOO much effort. And you will most probably get the negative review as well - no matter how awesome you or your gig will be. Don’t sell yourself under price and don’t sell to buyers who are searching for problems from the very first contact.

  1. Offer 100% satisfaction or money back guarantee:

I do this on all of my gigs with AWESOME results. Yes there is about 1% of people who will always misuse that, but 99% others will more likely order your gig! If something goes wrong, just contact the buyer with polite notice how you can improve the service you delivered and offer the refund if they think it was not the greatest buy in their life 🙂

  1. What to do when the negative review was posted:

First of all, try to reach your buyer ASAP. You don’t want the negative post repel the other potential buyers! Offer a quick gig remake or a refund. Be sure to tell your buyer he/she needs to take a FAST action (36 hours limit), because if you offer refund and the buyer is not responsive, you will end with money refunded to a buyer and negative review lasting on your account! My own bitter experience…

  1. The worse scenario - BAD review from unresponsive buyer:

Let’s take an advantage from this! Reply to the comment politely that you offer 100% satisfaction or money back guarantee and some people just rather hit the negative button than communicate the issue you were ready to solve.

EXAMPLE:
I am a HUGE Instagram fan and have MILLIONS of likes and hundreds of thousands followers across my IG accounts. I’m happy to share my secrets with people here on Fiverr. One of my clients wrote a negative review (thousands of positive ones posted before!):

“This gig is professional, but the strategy given is very basic and not suitable for experienced users.”

AAARGH, I have 6k+ REAL targeted followers on Instagram thanks to using just my “basic strategy” every WEEK! And someone with 400 followers now wants to teach me how I should do my business?

So I replied with proof of actual numbers of followers I gained thanks to my strategy last week (6k+!). And I’ve also mentioned it’s a HUGE difference between just knowing something and actually using it…

Do you think this negative hurts my sales? NO WAY!

People wants to know how to get thousands of IG followers the easy way and everytime someone will visit my gig and will click for negative reviews, my reply will take care of the best sale opportunity.

Be sure you’ll think about how to turn negative into positive from now!

Happy Fiverring, wish you great day and only same happy buyers,

Zbynek aka
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Dear Zbynek,

I have recently experienced exactly the same problem with a 4star review from one of my buyers.

Well, I am not such a big seller like yourself. I am somehow new on the Fiverr Universe.

Anyway, the funny thing is that the buyer was actually poisenous while criticizing my work in the worst possible way and finally ending the feedback by saying something positive.

Also, note the fact that this person is a Fiverr seller who has his/her profile inactive (I could see reviews but no gigs…hmmm…), so how am I suppose to know if he/she was some kind of a compettitor on my own field…

So, I simply said to myself, it would be better to cancel the order and just move on.

However, the buyer refused at the beginning by stating to me that I delivered what I have promised…I actually replied in a cold and insistive manner (although I am usually very polite…) that on the contrary, the feedback was inexplicably bad in general and this is how the story ended - with a mutual cancelation.

Hope I will not have the same bad experience with a seller/buyer again.

I was polite when the buyer placed the order that I have even offered photos with my report, something which is actually not included at all.

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Your advice is pretty good. When I get a negative review, I have two choices.

  1. Contact the buyer and offer him a refund if he removes the review. Remember, if he doesn’t remove the review and you refund him, you lose money and the negative review stays.

  2. Reply the review and let the people know what happened. Maybe the buyer didn’t give you enough information, maybe he forgot he could have asked for a revision or refund, maybe you gave him quality and he has no taste. So answer that review and let the people know.

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Hey, Nice post and some good ideas.

To be honest, I hate the idea that most sellers have of refunding negative reviews. I understand why people do it, Fiverr users obsession with 5 stars (even 4.5 is not enough for people) makes it almost essential for every order to get top ratings. It is this culture that annoys me, I think it creates an expectation from experienced buyers that they can do whatever they want.
When orders are for $5 it makes little difference to a seller to refund rather than stand their ground but for me, my average sale is $25 and many are for $50+. I have had $300 orders and the idea of cancelling those because some guy has done the “I’m not happy, cancel the order” trick on other sellers and is gonna try his luck again really annoys me. He wouldn’t try it again had the other sellers stood their ground and not refunded.
I suppose I am saying that the idea of cancelling to avoid a negative review is very short sighted.

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In your case your buyer was there to communicate; how do you deal with a buyer who wont even show up or reply your messages at the right time? The worse part is, the moment they left the negative, they will disappear only to reappear and find the damage cannot be undone.

What I now do is include in my delivery note that I don’t want a rush to the negative button, contact me first if you have issues with my job and I can fix it; worse case, I am ready to refund.

After all, Fiverr already includes the resolution option as a way to avoid such incidence of misunderstanding between buyer and seller.

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Thanks for your feedback, Vivian!

There will always be someone who will try to hurt your rating or abuse the system to get your work for free. Just expect this and have prepared some scenarios how to deal with it. If your buyer is clearly a competitor just trying to damage your gig, collect as much evidence as you can and contact Fiverr customer support. These guys are AWESOME and always ready to help.

Here is what works best for me:
Always send a delivery note, that if the buyer is not 100% happy with your gig he/she should contact you before placing the negative review and you will be ready to listen and help.

Always ask for positive review after delivery. If you offer some extra bonus in return, you will see a MAGIC IMPROVEMENT in your ratings ASAP.

Be clear in your gig description WHAT exactly the buyer gets for their $$$. And what you will NOT to do. Some people thinks they will got a $1000 service for their $5 investment and have an excessive expectations. This is a road to hell and you can easily dodge this by just setting the clear rules.

If everything else fails, offer a refund.

If the buyer is unresponsive / doesn’t want to take back the rating, reply the best way you can. Be sure people will read this and if you show you did your best to satisfy the buyer, you will get some nice +points and sales even from negative review…

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Thanks for your reply, mate!

Ad 1. The buyer doesn’t have to remove the review to get rid of it. If you offer a mutual cancellation and you both agree in Fiverr deadline time, the buyer gets refund and the review is automatically removed. The review stays only if your buyer is unresponsive and doesn’t accept the refund on time. The gig is then automatically refunded, but the review stays! I think this should be changed ASAP. I returned the funds, so why the review should be on my profile? That doesn’t sound like a fair play for me.

Ad 2. Agree 🙂

Have a great day and happy gigging!

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Hi Eoin and rest of the Fiverr gang 🙂

I fully agree with you that “I’m not happy, cancel the order” is a very dirty trick and we sellers don’t have any available defense against it right now. You just need to expect this will happen from time to time and get over it ASAP.

I wish there were some more specific rules for refunds. The buyer should give you a chance first to redeliver / remake the work according to their wishes and only if you fail to do this, get a right to cancel.

Fortunately the majority of buyers is still honest and Fiverr is still improving their services. I hope this problem will be eliminated in one of next system updates. Fingers crossed 🙂

Zbynek aka BOUCHAC

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I hope you’re right, because I had a horrible experience. I refunded an order (mutual cancellation) and the negative review was still there. So I had to write customer service, they did me a favor but warned me they generally don’t remove reviews.

Either way, I like what you wrote, specially the part of 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Ironically, I also inform buyers that what I do is a brainstorming for one of my gigs. I’ve had issues with unrealistic buyers.

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I can’t see it being fixed any time soon unfortunately, to do so would require a lot more CS staff and that’s not gonna happen. I disagree that we need to accept it and move on, I think the whole issue is because sellers do not stand their ground.
Tell your buyer that they can accept your work or a revised version of it or leave a negative review but you are not going to refund without good reason.

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