You might be wondering what Account Health really means, so let’s clarify this from the start. It’s the combination of performance indicators and requirements tracked by the Marketplace. They are mostly related to the quality of service you provide to customers, but also include compliance, content, finance, copyrights and patents, and other operational aspects.
Pretty much all Marketplaces will track your ability to keep the delivery promise, the speed of responses to customer claims and questions, as well as your return and claim rates. Marketplaces such as Amazon have a much more complex system of requirements, which can get you in trouble very quickly even for a seemingly minor violation.
So make sure you don’t ignore Account Health while chasing ambitious sales goals – after all, a suspended account will produce zero revenue and kill all your commercial efforts.
Let’s take a look at the most important aspects of Account Health.
On-time Shipping and Delivery
Many marketplaces will track both how quickly you prepare and ship the order, and the total delivery time to the customer address or pick-up point. Normally you will have control over your delivery promise – meaning that you can set your own delivery times. But beware of giving yourself too many safety buffers – long delivery time is a conversion killer in almost all categories. And if you are enrolled in programs such as Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime, the deadlines become really tight. So make sure you are on the same page with your warehouse and carrier teams – they are the people who know how long it takes to prepare an order and deliver it to the customer. It’s a must to have them sign off on the delivery promise.
Tip: Make sure that order tracking links are uploaded on time to the Marketplace – otherwise the package might be on the way, but your order will still be considered shipped late, which will impact your Account Health KPIs.
You also need to make sure you are shipping with a carrier recognized by the Marketplace – otherwise they might be unable to read and confirm your tracking links.
Response time
Whether it’s a claim, or just a customer asking “where is my package”, you have to respond timely. Most marketplaces give you a 24-hour window to respond, others are more lenient and allow up to 48 hours. Keep in mind that expectations are getting higher, and many platforms already don’t care if it’s workdays or weekends – you still have 24 hours.
Some sellers use a trick – they generate an automated response to buy themselves more time before they actually send a meaningful response. This might work for some time, but is usually a violation of T&Cs. If you get caught, you can be suspended immediately. And it’s pretty common for customers to complain about automated responses. So avoid this at all costs.
In my experience I have seen also “invisible” customer service indicators. The worst about those is that you cannot see how you are doing – the KPI is not shown in the platform back-end. You only find out you are in trouble when the Marketplace contacts you and tells you, for example, that your Customer Service agents require e.g. 5 messages on average to solve a case, and this is a problem. They will ask you to solve cases faster and without bothering customers too much. They might require that you solve more cases with one message which is the ideal way for customers.
Return and claim rate
If customers return too much, or have issues with your product quality, this will translate into higher return and claim rates. These are pretty common KPIs. Of course, marketplaces don’t like it when their customers face issues. So you might be punished in different ways – for example, still pay commission on returned orders, or pay extra logistic fees if you are using fulfilment services provided by the marketplace. Sometimes they will force you to delist products with high return and claim rates. And if you perform consistently poor, you might as well be suspended.
To avoid all this, analyze customer feedback and SKU-level return and claim rates, and take proactive action. Sometimes it can be as simple as fixing a product listing which contains wrong information about the product. Make sure you offer smooth claim resolution – if possible, just replace a defective product without asking too many questions.
Seller Score
Most marketplaces ask their customers for feedback. The two main types are: tell us about the product you bought; and tell us how the seller did. While product feedback is important commercially (it will impact your conversion rates), seller feedback is critical for Account Health. Customers are likely to share negative experiences in their seller feedback. And many marketplaces have a threshold for seller score: below certain levels you might lose your account.
Some platforms use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric: the customer is asked to evaluate their purchase from 0 to 10, and responses are split in three buckets: Promoters (9 and 10), Neutrals (7 and 8) and Detractors (0-6). Your NPS is calculated by substracting the share of Detractors from the share of Promoters (Neutrals are ignored). The marketplace will expect you to maintain a certain level of NPS, and might punish or reward you for it.
Compliance
Depending on the category, your products might require certain compliance data and documentation to be provided to the Marketplace. For example, certain types of electric and electronic products, batteries, car tires, and several others, require a registration for the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). If you don’t provide the necessary data and documentation, your products will be delisted.
If you are selling on a French marketplace, you will most probably be required to calculate and provide eco tax related to the disposal of electric and electronic devices.
In the Toys category, you will need the “EC declaration of conformity” to ensure the products are safe for use.
The above are just examples. Compliance requirements differ from country to country and from marketplace to marketplace. One important thing to consider is that most marketplaces have lists of “Forbidden products” which carry a high risk of suspension if detected. Make sure you know what you are allowed to sell, and don’t take chances with this.
Copyright infringements
If you are a brand owner, you might face copyright infringement claims. Reasons can be different: sometimes you might be using a copyrighted keyword in your content (e.g. selling a blender and putting “Nutribullet” in the title). This is relatively easy to fix. Other times your product can be very similar in the design to other products, and the competitor will file a design infringement claim. Usually this will result in the delisting of the product, regardless of whether you are right or not. Consult a copyright lawyer if you are facing such a situation.
Financial compliance
When you onboard the marketplace, you undergo the KYC process. But sometimes there might be a change in the corporate structure of your legal entity, or a new regulation coming into force. In such cases you will be required to provide additional documents and data. Failure to do so may result in account suspension and / or blocking of sales proceeds. In extreme situations you might have your money blocked by the marketplace for a period of up to 12 months.
General guidelines
It’s important to keep an eye on Account Health on a daily basis, as the indicators are very dynamic. Usually, if you are at risk, it will be clearly visible in the back-end, but you can also wake up to a suspended account overnight, especially if you have made a serious error, or failed on important compliance requirements. So take this topic seriously.
It’s a good idea to have a single responsible for Account Health on all marketplaces where you are selling. If your team is big enough, it would be good to split commercial responsibilities from operational ones, as sales people tend to overlook those topics and sometimes take unnecessary risks.
Need help improving your Account Health? Contact Marketplace Agents.