Facebook Is Looking for Feedback on Purchases Made From Its Advertisers

Facebook is introducing a way for people to share feedback on transactions they concluded with advertisers, even when those purchases were consummated off the social network, such as on retailers’ websites or via applications. A new tool is launching globally Tuesday, enabling users to review businesses that they have made purchases from. Product marketing director Sarah Epps said, “We’ve all had frustrating customer-service experiences. It’s never good when businesses are hard to reach, late shipping items or send poor quality goods. Bad shopping experiences are bad for good businesses that are trying to provide good customer experiences. We take it really seriously.” The new tool can be found under the Ads Activity tab, where users can view ads they’ve recently clicked and click the Leave Feedback button to answer “a brief questionnaire” about their experiences. Some users may also see surveys in their News Feeds that ask about their recent shopping experiences. Leaving feedback via Facebook’s new tool is not tied to specific transactions the way, for example, feedback on eBay works, so people who have made purchases in recent weeks can offer their input on the companies they dealt with. Epps said that feedback will be collected and shared with all advertisers that sell physical goods via their Facebook ads, and those businesses will be updated monthly. Facebook will share feedback directly with businesses that are on the receiving end of “high volumes” of negative feedback and share guidance on how they can improve in areas such as customer satisfaction and meeting customer expectations, including taking steps to be more clear about shipping times or return policies. “Most businesses want to improve,” Epps said, adding that “over time, if they are not improving, we will reduce the delivery of their ads in News Feed. Are there businesses that are not intending to improve? In those cases, we take more drastic action.” That drastic action can include banning advertisers from the platform altogether. Facebook said in a Newsroom post introducing the new feature, “We wanted to better understand frustrations with purchasing things from Facebook advertisers, so we spoke with people around the world to try and get a sense of some of their biggest pain points. The two biggest frustrations we heard were that people don't like ads that quote inaccurate shipping times or that misrepresent products.” The social network added, “We believe this tool will give people more confidence in the businesses they interact with via ads and help hold businesses more accountable for customer experiences they provide.”