By: Tom Murray | Managing Director
Over the past few years with the rise of Shopify as an easy-to-use website maker, there has been an influx of new “brands” promoting more direct-to-consumer products than ever before.
While many of these are real brands (think Casper, Warby Parker, etc) there have been many brands that are actually just dropshipping companies, which means they are not taking any inventory of the product, and just having it ship from another location (usually China) once an order is placed. This usually means that the products will have a slow delivery time, and typically will be of lower quality as it is a race to find the cheapest providers of the goods.
Facebook has caught onto this trend, as many consumers were not happy with their purchases - either due to product quality or shipping speed. From the lens of a consumer, they would never know that these sites were actually dropshipping operations, or that the products were being made and shipped from China. It isn’t until the package arrives weeks later from China that they realize this.
To combat this, Facebook rolled out customer feedback surveys to users that bought a product and asked them questions around shipping speed, product quality, and their overall thoughts on the purchase. Facebook can then track that score over time, and once you hit a certain threshold of replies, you will get a score from 1 to 5.
You can view your score here (must be a page admin):
https://www.facebook.com/ads/customer_feedback/
Anything above a 3 is considered acceptable. If you fall below a 3, there can be some consequences.
From a 2 to a 3, you are close to receiving a penalty, so this is sort of the grace area where you can try to fix and get above a 3.
From a 1 to a 2, you will have a delivery penalty on your ads, which can mean either an increased CPM cost, and/or reduced delivery (reach).
If you fall below a 1, you will have your product and account disabled from Facebook, so you will no longer be able to advertise.
Facebook’s dashboard allows you to see the responses, as well as feedback from customers, so you can take actions to help improve your score. See below for a few examples:
To help improve your score, here are a few tips:
- Set your shipping speed so that way the survey does not go out before customers are likely to receive their package.
2. Be clear in what you are selling, as well as the expected shipping times.
3. Ensure that the product you are selling is a high-quality item, perhaps ordering from the supplier as if you were a consumer to see this first-hand.
4. Improve customer service times on your site (live chat), or email response times to ensure customers questions are being answered in a timely fashion.
5. Make sure you have enough inventory, so that if you are likely to go out-of-stock, which can cause shipping delays, you are set up for scale.
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