Monitoring Amazon Seller Accounts
Selling on Amazon for Modern E-commerce Businesses
Data shows that 55% of all product searches in the USA begin and end on Amazon.com, which means it’s a platform that you cannot afford to ignore.
Unfortunately for busy store owners and entrepreneurs, Amazon requires a significant time investment for maintaining and monitoring Amazon Seller accounts.
Amazon’s strict customer satisfaction requirements for Sellers mean that you must act on your feedback and performance metrics quickly to prevent penalties, or worse, suspension.
Maintaining your account health means responding to all Amazon notifications, handling negative and neutral feedback as soon as ratings appear, keeping a close eye on Seller account performance, making changes when it drops, handling customer service, and optimizing to improve the overall health of your account.
All of this is time consuming, but necessary if you want to avoid suspension. It may sound overwhelming, but there are some tools and tactics to help you save time and keep your Amazon account in top shape, even on a busy schedule.
Automate Repetitive Tasks and Functions:
Repetitive tasks are time consuming, boring, and often simple. While they are necessary, you can automate them to save yourself valuable time every single day.
You can utilize automation programs like IFTTT (IF This Then That), set up automatic email responses and scheduling using tools like Boomerang, create automatic social sharing with Buffer, or use Zapier to set up workflows and automate server and email responses.
Tasks that are completed using set parameters and that are repeated in the same way every time can be automated with just a few lines of code and perform reliably every time, saving you minutes / hours every day.
You can also use integrated e-commerce automation tools to automatically assign warehouses, shipping providers, order details, and simple if this/then that rules.
Use a Customer Service Tool:
Customer service is increasingly important and could make or break your Amazon experience. Even though 78% of consumers state that they have abandoned a purchase, because of a poor customer service experience, customers aren’t all you have to worry about. Amazon rigorously controls the quality of its customer experience, and if you do not keep up with customer complaints to maintain a consistently high customer satisfaction score, your account will suffer.
Customer service tools that allow you to reply to questions, complaints, returns, and other details all in one place will save you time while allowing you to respond more quickly to boost your score. While there are numerous options, Zendesk with Channel Reply and XSellCo Fusion are two of the most popular solutions for Amazon.
Integrated Inventory Management:
Inventory management and calculations are time consuming, but they are a crucial part of your account. Overselling, selling out, overstocking, and understocking all cost money. Completely selling out of a product means that you instantly lose traction with Amazon sales velocity, and your product page rank will drop.
Integrating strong cross-channel and multi-warehouse inventory management can help you organize your inventory data, so that you spend less time calculating stock levels, setting reorder points, or preparing for and preventing out of stock events.
Outsource to a 3PL or use Amazon FBA Shipping:
Speed and quality are big concerns for Amazon, and your account will be penalized if you ship too many items out too slowly, make mistakes with orders, or otherwise have shipping or distribution issues.
Switching to a third party logistics provider (3PL) or to a similar service like Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) will eliminate these issues and can cut logistics and distribution costs.
A 3PL will provide their own warehouse, organization, and shipping times, which reduces the strain on e-commerce sellers. It also ensures that you don’t have to maintain and manage your own warehouse, speeds up shipping time significantly, and will save you on shipping costs, warehousing, and packaging.
Combine Data in One Location:
If you’re visiting multiple accounts and pages to check your data, you’re spending valuable time that you don’t have to. Cross channel e-commerce analytics will allow you to view and use all your data in one place. In some cases, your e-commerce provider or logistics solution will handle this for you, otherwise, most platforms and companies offer API so you can export data where you need it.
Set Specific Times to Check Your Account and Do So Every Day:
You have to spend time every day managing your account so you should plan for it. Set aside small blocks of time throughout the day and keep them clear so that you can check your account, reply to buyers, and check account notifications.
While the amount of time you have to spend will vary depending on the size of your Amazon Seller account, you should have a good idea of what’s necessary and therefore a good idea of how much time to invest.
Partner with an Account Monitoring Company:
If you do not have the time to monitor your Amazon account, it may be in your best interest to partner with a company that can handle account monitoring for you. Having a professional team available to monitor your accounts, make changes as necessary, and handle issues before they become problems will save you time and money.
Managing and monitoring Amazon Seller accounts regularly is crucial to maintaining account health, eliminating buyer dissatisfaction, and keeping your Amazon sales up. Missing even a single notification can negatively affect your account, so it is crucial that you and your team spend time every day making sure that doesn’t happen.
Monitoring Amazon Seller Accounts
We hope these tips and tools help you optimize your Amazon accounts, despite your busy schedules. How do you save time managing on Amazon? Let us know in the comments below!
Guest post by the Skubana team. Skubana is an all-in-one ERP system and operations platform designed for high volume Sellers to run and automate their business. By unifying point solutions in one place, Sellers can now diagnose what used to take weeks in seconds. It integrates with most e-commerce marketplaces, 3PLs, and warehouses, provides profitability & multi-channel inventory management, and compiles all of your marketplaces on a single convenient dashboard. Reach them at [email protected] with any questions, or sign up for a 14-day free trial.