Sellers who don’t use Amazon’s FBA fulfillment service get a new set of metrics – this time, to measure how well they handle returns. With the holiday shopping period nearing, it’s just what sellers don’t want to be thinking about.
Amazon spun the new Returns Performance dashboard as a positive, saying it would help sellers monitor their returns performance and proactively address return-related issues.
The Returns Performance dashboard will focus on three key returns performance metrics:
- Return requests approved in less than 24 hours
- Total declined return requests
- Return-related buyer contact rate
The dashboard will have a companion tool, the Returns Analysis page, which sellers can use to identify listings that have issues and “identify the top return issue for each of your product listings so you can take action to improve the return experience.”
And Amazon is making available a pop-up window within the Manage Returns page to view a summary of returns performance metrics.
One seller asked the million-dollar question: how would the new return metrics impact sellers’ account health?
“Most of those metrics are out of our control and Amazon has purposefully made it so easy to return without any attempt at retention or resolution that the return rate on this platform is 4-10x higher than we see anywhere else,” the seller said.
You can find the full announcement and seller reaction on Amazon Seller Central.
