Howdy manufacturers! Jon Hoch, Founder of Power Equipment Direct, and I am back with another video on our brand new Manufacturers' Portal. Today we're going to be talking about verified and non-verified customers.

Just by the name, you can probably figure out what the difference is between the two. But today, I want to tell you why it's important on our websites and why it's important on our letter grade rankings. So let's take a look at the letter grades that are on our sites.

You'll notice that this product has an A and this one has an A-, and as we talked about in our past videos, this is determined by our algorithm. It's based on multiple data points. For example, it's based on our Product Experts' opinion, it's based on our buyers' opinion, and heck - it's even based on your opinion, the manufacturer.

If you write a review on our site, it's influenced into this letter grade ranking. But just the three of us alone will not be able to determine what the grade is because we need a couple outside reviews. We need some other people to tell us what these are.

So what we do is, once we get one verified review or a couple non-verified reviews, then we can assign the letter grade ranking. But ultimately, it's not our opinions that matter. It's the customers' opinions that matter. Because after you get twelve reviews, thirty reviews, eight reviews, our voices get drowned out and it becomes the voice of the customer that determines these letter grade rankings.

I want to give you a hint on something that's going to be happening soon, so it's important for you to know. Let's take a look at our Campbell Hausfeld product here. We have a Campbell cordless inflator. And if we scroll down, you'll notice a couple different things on the reviews, okay?

It's an A- ranking. Steve Robbins, our Product Expert, recommends it. And this is cool, because Steve has 1521 helpful votes. So people are appreciating what Steve has to say on this product.

In addition to that, they're appreciating what Andy has to say about it, because it's the most helpful positive review. And you'll notice two things on this review. You'll notice that it has a Verified Buyer badge, because we know that Andy bought this from us.

In fact, we can say that, Andy's experience with Air Compressors Direct - "Great service and fast shipping," - he likes us, he likes the product. Great, that's the way it should be. But what happens if they don't like us?

Here's the most helpful critical review, and this is from John. And you'll notice that something is missing from John's review. It's the Verified Buyer badge. We don't know whether John bought this from us or not. We know it's your product, so it's your review and it's associated with your stuff. But we don't know whether John is our customer, so going forward, starting on March 1, 2015, we are no longer going to be responding to these types of reviews because we don't know whether they're our customer or not.

Either way, all of these reviews are your customers. That's pretty much guaranteed because whether they bought it from us or they bought it from someone else, it's your product. So here's what I encourage you to do.

As the reviews come in, make sure you're taking care of them and responding to the ones that you need to. Log into the portal, take care of the customers, do what you need to so you get those letter grades higher. Higher letter grades equal more sales, and that makes both of us happy. It makes our customers happy as well.

I hope this was helpful, and thanks for listening. Have a good day.

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