If you sell on Amazon, your Account Health page is one of the most important elements to keep an eye on; maintaining account health will help you avoid costly disruptions and account suspensions. Account health is also a direct reflection of customer satisfaction and experience, so a happy account generally correlates to happy customers (and vice versa).

To keep your Amazon seller account health rating in good standing requires you to deliver a quality experience to your customers. That entails quick response times to consumer inquiries, fast shipment delivery, and air-tight management of your inventory, distribution, and warehousing. You already need that in the first place, though, to ensure your business runs smoothly, your customers are happy, and your store can grow.

What impacts your seller account health rating?

Amazon’s Account Health page clearly details everything you have to pay attention to keep your account in good standing. Every item on the Account Health page has subsets as well with multiple individual points. The most important ones are performance targets, policy compliance, and shipping performance. However, all factors play a role, and a good score on one metric won’t offset a bad score on another.

You can access this by going to “Seller Central” –> “Performance Menu” –> “Account Health.” There, you’ll see three metrics: Customer Service Performance, Product Policy Compliance, and Shipping Performance. Each of these includes an overview of the order defect rate (ODR), which is the total number of orders resulting in negative feedback, an A-to-Z claim, or a chargeback. Amazon further breaks this down by FBA and Seller Fulfilled.

Performance targets: These are specific metrics you have to meet to keep your account in good standing, which mostly include: 

• Order defect rate: >1% 
• Pre-fulfillment cancel rate: >2.5% 
• Late shipment rate: >4% 

That’s pretty simple on the surface. However, multiple variables are included in its calculation. 

Poor inventory management: If products are packaged poorly, the wrong items are shipped, or goods take too long to leave the warehouse, your order defect rate will increase. Strong inventory management is critical to product fulfillment, so it’s important to review your processes and software. 

Slow fulfillment: The longer products spend in fulfillment, the lower your rating and account health will be. Sometimes extenuating circumstances leave you helpless, but otherwise, you should take steps to optimize your fulfillment partners and procedures. 

Incorrect/Defective product: Your products have to be top quality and meet customer expectations. That may entail smart design, sourcing from reputable manufacturers, or making it clear to the customer what they’re buying. 

Negative reviews: Negative reviews are impossible to avoid. However, you can reduce their frequency by responding promptly to customer complaints and inquiries and ensuring products arrive on time, as described, and in good shape. 

Chargebacks: Chargebacks can have a highly negative impact on your account. To prevent them, build a smooth returns process and offer satisfactory exchanges to save the sale. Also, be explicit about both your returns policy and shipping information to avoid customer dissatisfaction and, in turn, chargebacks. 

Amazon guidelines and policies: Amazon has eight unique policies that sellers must comply with to support account health. Not all of them apply in every case; for example, if you sell food items, you’ll have to abide by food safety rules. You’ll also have to deal with intellectual property complaints and violations, product condition, product safety, listing accuracy, restricted product, and more. The best defense is to familiarize yourself with current policies, how they apply to you, and what you have to do to stay in compliance. 

Seller metrics: While there are many seller metrics, you should pay attention to: 

• Order defect rate over the last 60 days (should be under 1%) 
• Cancellation rate over 7 days (needs to be under 2.5%) 
• Late dispatch rate (should be under 4% over 10 or 30 days depending on if you use Fulfilled by Amazon of Fulfilled by Seller)
• Valid tracking rate (Fulfilled by Seller and should be above 95% over a 30-day period) 
• On-time delivery rate (should be above 97% over a 30-day period) 
• Return dissatisfaction rate (should be under 10%)

4 Tips to improve Amazon account health

Shipping products out of the warehouse and to your customers on time, in good condition, and according to buyer expectations is a serious undertaking, yet 9.7 million sellers accomplish this every day. That entails putting up infrastructure to manage your sales, fulfillment, and customer service, as well as familiarizing yourself with selling policies. However, the following four tips will go a long way towards ensuring your seller account health stays strong.

1) Keep an eye on your order defect rate

ODR calculates the total number of products that result in a negative review, an A-To-Z claim, or a chargeback. This enables you to consider every aspect that leads to customers receiving a broken, damaged, or low-quality product, such as:

• Manufacturing quality
• Inferior packaging
• Improper pick and pack functionality

2) Optimize product listings

It’s crucial that customers know what they’re purchasing, since 6% of all chargebacks occur because the product failed to meet buyer expectations. Invest in product listings with clear photos, videos, and copy that explicitly states measurements, materials, and other pertinent information to reduce the number of returns and, in turn, chargebacks. It’s also important that this information is easy to find and skim, as many Amazon buyers seek convenience, not a user manual.

If your listing doesn’t quickly and easily summarize what the product is, you need to revise it.

3) Leverage 3PL or FBA

Fulfillment times have one of the largest impacts on your Amazon account health. You can easily improve your account health by transferring some or most of the responsibility of pick and pack, inventory management, and fulfillment to a team that specializes in logistics.

With their expert personnel, robust infrastructure, and expansive networks, third-party logistics (3PL) companies can help you meet your fulfillment goals. That includes optimizing packaging for each product, quickly and accurately packing items, and minimizing delivery times by handing off post at the shipping point closest to the delivery address. FBA and many 3PL options will also allow you to distribute your inventory across a wider geographic area so you can both fulfill orders more quickly and widen your consumer base.

4) Integrate a central customer service platform

No matter how impressive your products, packaging, shipping, or Amazon product pages are, you’re still going to have unhappy customers. You’ll inevitably have to deal with messages from them asking for answers to complaints, replacement products, or refunds. To keep up your account health, you have to respond within 48 hours; the faster you respond, the happier the customer. That’s easier to achieve if you only sell on Amazon and have a single place to manage incoming communications.

However, as you grow and leverage other channels, you’ll want to establish centralized customer support management so all your tickets and customer inquiries come in through the same channel. If you struggle with this, handing customer service over to Customer Service by Amazon may also be an option. However, CRM software can also go a long way toward alleviating that burden, even for small teams.

Wrapping up — Monitor your Amazon account health for hale and hearty operations

If your account health dips, Amazon may suspend your account, which could create gaps in your income. So, pay attention to seller metrics and the factors that impact account health. Luckily, most of the important aspects are the same metrics that impact customer satisfaction and buyer relationships, so you’re likely working on them already. Embrace the tips discussed in this article to help you keep your Amazon account health in good standing and ensure an unbroken stream of sales on the marketplace.