Stuck about breaking down your Amazon Seller Rating? You’re not alone! Plenty of merchants don’t know the finer points of it, and therefore don’t know how to make them work to their advantage. In this post, we’re going to deconstruct all the complex bits so you can hit the ground running.
Amazon Seller Rating Explained
First of all, the Seller Rating is not the same as Seller Feedback. The latter is the reviews buyers leave of your service and your products, while the former is the measurement of your worth and success as a seller.
Your Seller Rating consists of a numerical score between 0-100, with 0 being the absolute worst you can score and 100 marking perfection. Each order you fulfil (or Amazon fulfils) grades your performance on the following metrics:
- Shipping Time: The shipping time you advertise for an item should reflect that in reality.
- Order Cancellations: You’ll get points taken off if a buyer places an order, then cancels it.
- Chargebacks: This is when a buyer contacts their credit card company and says it was fraudulently used.
- Customer Inquiries: The longer you wait to answer customers’ questions, the likelier it is you’ll lose points on your rating.
- Feedback: If you’re consistently getting negative reviews, your Seller Rating is going to take a hit.
- A-to-Z Claims: When a buyer feels any of the above weren’t to their liking, they can make an A-to-z claim so that Amazon will dig into things for them.
Amazon knows that a decent timeframe is needed to properly assess your worth as a seller, so they look at all orders from the last 365 days. For example, you’re assigned a score on each individual order, then all the scores from all orders in the last 365 days are tallied up, then divided by the number of orders.
However, not all scoreable areas are marked with the same weight. A-to-Z claims are penalized more heavily than a late shipment, as the marketplace sees that as being a more serious issue (perhaps because it affects the buyer more adversely, or encompasses more area).
Conversely, you can earn bonus points — no more than 10 on each order — when you provide service that goes above and beyond what’s expected.
Other Ways You Can Boost Your Amazon Rating
What we just discussed was what Amazon grades you on for your Seller Rating. But there are plenty of other areas in which they assess your stock, too. Some of them include:
- Refund Rate: The more you have to issue refunds, the more Amazon thinks you’re leaving a buyer dissatisfied.
- Return Dissatisfaction Rate: When you do have to issue a return, this metric deals with how successfully and efficiently you manage the process.
- Order Defect Rate: This refers to how many things you screw up in a particular order.
- Tracking Rate: Buyers like to keep track of where their purchase is before it gets to them, but it’s up to you to remember to provide the shipment tracking information to them.
- Customer Support Dissatisfaction Rate: Just as it sounds, this grades your ability to solve customers’ problems.
- Negative Feedback Rate: Not only are you marked on negative feedback but you’re also marked on how often your orders are associated with negative feedback.
- Pre-fulfilment Cancellation Rate: When you run out of stock before an item can be fulfilled, this metric grades you on that. Keep a full inventory.
- Perfect Order Percentage: Your aim should always be a perfect order, and this metric measures how many times you achieve that.
Final Thoughts
It can be a lot to take in, so focus on mastering one metric per day until you’ve got them all. As we said before, your goal should always be perfection on every single order. You won’t necessarily have a 100 Seller Rating on Amazon, but perform like you will and you’ll get super high scores as a byproduct.
When it comes to meeting Amazon SLAs and performance metrics, eDesk can make a big difference. Learn more about eDesk’s native integration with Amazon.
