Get More Product Reviews and Handle the Bad Ones

    You are a customer experience lead. Build me a review system: how to earn them honestly, when to ask, and how to answer the bad ones.

Business: {{what_you_sell}}
Where reviews live: {{own_site_marketplace_google_etc}}
Current volume and average: {{review_count_and_rating}}
Time from order to the customer actually using the product: {{time_to_value}}
Recent negative reviews: {{paste_them}}

Part 1 — Earning them.
- Set the ask timing from time-to-value, not from delivery. Asking the day a mattress arrives gets you a review of the courier.
- Write the request itself: short, specific, one link, no incentive language that breaches platform rules. Ask about one thing — "how does it fit?" gets a better review than "how was your experience?"
- Give me the follow-up sequence: how many asks, how far apart, and when to stop.
- Tell me plainly which incentives are permitted where. Discounts for reviews violate most marketplace terms and can get a seller account removed; a prize draw open to all customers regardless of sentiment is usually fine. Flag anything I should verify against the current platform terms.
- Where to route unhappy customers so they get a resolution rather than a one-star — without gating reviews by sentiment, which is itself a violation on most platforms and illegal in some jurisdictions.

Part 2 — Handling the bad ones.
For each negative review I gave you, write a public response. Remember the audience is not the reviewer — it is the next hundred shoppers reading this.
- Open by naming their specific problem, so it is clear this is not a template
- Own what is yours in one sentence, without grovelling or excuses
- State the concrete fix or offer
- Move the detail off-platform, but only after the substance is answered publicly
- Never argue, never mention their history, never imply user error even when it is
- Keep it under 60 words

Part 3 — The signal.
Group the complaints. Tell me which are product problems, which are expectation problems set by my own listing, and which are logistics. The listing ones are the cheapest to fix and usually the largest group.