Getting a product suspended on Amazon could result in a lot of lost sales. An Account suspension is even worse. In this article we’re going to cover the top tips on keeping your Amazon account score healthy.
What is the best way to keep your product & account health score high? Always check the quality of your products before shipping from the manufacturer.
Tip 1 Overall Score
When you log into seller central, head to Performance > Account Health on the main menu. Amazon gives you a quick snapshot of your overall account health.
This section covers your Customer Service Performance, Policy Compliance & Shipping Performance (which only applies if you do FBM).
You want this to be rated good. If any part of your account shows fair or poor you need to take action quickly to fix that issue. Amazon could suspend your account and prevent you from selling any more products, killing your business overnight.
It’s your responsibility to double check these metrics once a week.
Tip 2 Order Defect Rate
The order defect rate needs to stay below 1%. Amazon measures this by taking into account any negative feedback, claims or credit card chargebacks your products have.
To reduce negative feedback, set up an automatic feedback collection email using a tool. In addition, check your product reviews and seller reviews and contact anyone who leaves a negative review asking how you can fix that issue.
Tip 3 Refunds
I usually offer a 25% discount or refund for minor issues such as packaging being damaged, and a full 100% refund instantly if they report any functional or other major issues with the product.
After refunding the customer, let them know you’ve done this and ask them to reconsider their review of your product.
You are not allowed to request they remove a negative review in return for a refund, but by providing good customer service most customers will update their score to reflect this.
Tip 4 Contact Response Time
This is one of the easiest areas to get bad ranking within Amazon’s system.
Amazon expects you to respond to every customer within 24 hours. That includes Saturdays and Sundays and public holidays.
If you respond to more than 10% of messages beyond the 24 hours, Amazon could penalize your account. I recommend you check customer emails at the same times twice a day, such as 11 AM and 8 PM every day.
I started by checking all customer service emails myself to spot issues as early as possible. Then I made templates to cover most problem areas, which I outsourced to a virtual assistant who now responds to all messages.
Tip 5 Seller Feedback
Ideally you want to keep your feedback rating at 5 stars.
If a customer leaves negative comments about a product on your seller account you can have this removed by Amazon, because this section is for comments about your performance as a seller and your customer service.
You can also respond to negative feedback on the feedback manager page. I recommend you have someone check this daily and contact dissatisfied customers as soon as possible to resolve any issue they might have.
Tip 6 Perfect Orders
Amazon measures the percentage of perfect orders for your overall account as well as individual products.
I currently have 98% perfect orders in the last 90 days. Amazon takes negative feedback, refunds and even customer messages into account to work out your score.
A lot of these issues can be prevented by having strict quality control at your supplier’s before the goods go into Amazon. This will prevent customers from having a poor experience with your product and will therefore reduce the number of complaints and negative feedback you get.
Tip 7 Product Performance
Each product also has its own score, based on the number of orders without any issues divided by the total number of orders for that product.
For some car accessories, I found that the listing page didn’t describe which models my product worked with well enough, so there were quite a few returns when users found that it didn’t match their requirements. I simply updated the listing page to clearly show which models my product worked with and clearly stated the models it did not work with, which fixed the issue.
Regularly checking customer service emails, product feedback and your seller feedback will allow you to catch any issues quickly and prevent your account health from slipping.