Ask ten Amazon sellers what their ACoS is and they will tell you instantly. Ask them what their Voice of the Customer rating is, and most will have no idea the page exists. That gap is a problem, because VOC is one of the few Seller Central tools that can get a listing suspended — or your account restricted — without a single policy violation. It runs purely on returns, complaints and negative feedback, and it updates every single day.
At StoreStride we check VOC on every client account during onboarding and on every audit afterwards, because it is the earliest warning signal that an ASIN is heading for trouble — usually weeks before the sales dashboard shows anything wrong. Here is exactly what the dashboard measures, how the rating is calculated, and what to do the moment an ASIN shows Poor or Risky.
A Risky VOC rating is not a warning — it is close to a suspension. Amazon has removed and continues to remove listings, and in repeated cases restrict seller accounts, purely because the Voice of the Customer score stayed in the Risky band for too long with no corrective action logged. Checking this page weekly costs you five minutes. Ignoring it can cost you the ASIN.
What Is the Voice of the Customer Dashboard?
Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a Seller Central report, found under Performance → Voice of the Customer, that scores every one of your active ASINs on post-purchase customer experience. Unlike your Account Health Rating, which looks at policy compliance and account-level metrics, VOC looks purely at what happens after the sale: returns, negative feedback text, A-to-z Claims, and chargebacks tied to that specific product.
Each ASIN is given one of four status labels, refreshed daily on a rolling basis:
The dashboard also flags the specific driver behind a bad rating — return rate, negative review language, missing or incorrect product information, packaging damage, or counterfeit complaints — so you are not left guessing what to fix.
Where to Find It (and Why Most Sellers Never See It)
VOC lives in Seller Central under Performance → Voice of the Customer. It is not linked from the main dashboard, it does not trigger an email alert in most accounts, and it is easy to go months without opening it unless you make a habit of checking. That is precisely why it is such a useful signal: by the time a return-rate problem shows up in your P&L or your ACoS starts climbing because conversion rate has quietly dropped, VOC has usually been flashing Fair or Poor on that ASIN for weeks.
Click into any ASIN from the main VOC list and you get a detailed breakdown: return rate against the category benchmark, the top reasons buyers selected when returning the item, a sample of the actual return comments, and your negative feedback rate with example text. This is qualitative data most sellers never read — and it is often more useful than a star rating, because it tells you why customers are unhappy, not just that they are.
How the Rating Is Actually Calculated
Amazon does not publish an exact formula, but the rating is driven by a combination of the following signals, measured against category-level benchmarks rather than a fixed universal threshold:
- Return rate — your ASIN's returns as a percentage of units sold, compared to similar products in your category
- Return reason mix — "item defective," "item not as described," and "quality not as expected" weigh far more heavily than "no longer needed" or "better price available"
- Negative feedback rate — feedback left on the order that mentions the product itself, not shipping or seller service
- A-to-z Claims — claims filed against orders for that ASIN, particularly claims that are granted in the buyer's favour
- Chargebacks — payment disputes tied to the product
Because the benchmark is category-relative, a 4% return rate might be perfectly healthy for an item of clothing and alarmingly high for a £12 kitchen gadget. This is also why two near-identical products in your catalogue can show completely different VOC statuses — the comparison set, not just your own number, decides the rating.
The Action Plan When an ASIN Shows Poor or Risky
Do not wait for the rating to self-correct. Work through this sequence as soon as a Poor or Risky flag appears:
Read every return comment on the ASIN
Open the VOC detail page and read the actual buyer comments, not just the aggregate reason codes. Look for a single recurring theme — a sizing issue, a missing accessory, a part that arrives loose — rather than treating every return as random noise.
Check the listing against what actually ships
Mismatched expectations are the single most common driver of a Poor rating. Compare your title, bullet points, images and A+ Content line by line against the physical product. If the listing shows a bundle, colour, or capacity that isn't what's shipping, buyers will return it and say so.
Inspect a unit from current inventory
Order one yourself. Check packaging integrity, included accessories, instructions, and whether FBA handling has caused any damage in transit. A packaging fix is often enough to resolve a defect-driven spike within a few weeks.
Pull back PPC spend on the ASIN while you fix it
Driving more traffic into a listing with a known quality or expectation problem accelerates more returns and negative feedback, which pushes the rating further into Risky. Pause or sharply reduce Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands spend on that ASIN until the underlying issue is resolved.
Document every corrective action you take
Keep a record of listing edits, supplier quality checks, and packaging changes with dates. If the rating stays Poor or Risky and Amazon requests a Plan of Action before a suspension, this record is exactly what you need to submit.
Why This Belongs on Your PPC Checklist, Not Just Your Ops Checklist
Most sellers treat VOC as an operations issue and PPC as a completely separate function. That split is a mistake. A declining VOC rating and a declining PPC account are frequently the same problem wearing two different dashboards.
- Conversion rate drops before you notice. An ASIN with a quality or expectation problem converts worse long before it converts to zero. Your ACoS creeps up, and if you don't check VOC, you'll waste weeks "fixing" bids and keywords on a listing that was never the problem — the product experience was.
- Negative reviews compound the damage. The same dissatisfied buyers driving your VOC rating down are the ones leaving the 1 and 2-star reviews that then hurt every future click your ads buy.
- A suspended ASIN wastes every pound already spent getting it to rank. If a Risky rating is left unaddressed and the listing is removed, all the PPC budget invested in building its sales history and keyword rank disappears with it.
Build it into the routine: check Voice of the Customer for every active ASIN alongside your weekly PPC review, not as a separate quarterly task. A five-minute scan catches a Fair rating before it becomes Poor, and a Poor rating before it becomes an email from Amazon about a potential removal.
Keeping Every ASIN in the Good Zone
- Check VOC weekly, not just when something already feels wrong. Treat it the same way you treat your Account Health Rating dashboard.
- Make your listing match the physical product exactly — quantity, colour, size, included parts, and compatibility, with zero ambiguity in the title, bullets or images.
- Audit your packaging for FBA-specific damage at least twice a year, especially for anything fragile, liquid, or heavy that travels through multiple fulfilment centres.
- Address supplier quality issues at the source rather than relying on returns processing to absorb a defect rate. A recurring "item defective" return reason is a manufacturing signal, not a one-off.
- Pair this with your return rate reduction strategy and your Account Health Rating monitoring — the three dashboards together give you a complete early-warning system for every ASIN you run ads on.
Not sure what your VOC dashboard is telling you?
We review Voice of the Customer alongside PPC performance on every account we manage, so at-risk ASINs get fixed before they cost you the listing — and before they quietly inflate your ACoS. Book a free audit and we'll walk through yours.
Get Free Amazon PPC Audit →Common Questions About Voice of the Customer
Can a Poor VOC rating get my listing suspended on its own?
Yes. Unlike most Seller Central metrics that only matter alongside a formal policy violation, a sustained Risky VOC status can trigger listing removal or a request for a Plan of Action by itself, purely on returns, complaints and negative feedback data. It does not require a separate policy breach.
How often does the VOC rating update?
It refreshes daily on a rolling basis, using recent order and feedback data. A rating can shift from Good to Fair within a week or two if returns or negative feedback spike, and can recover over a similar timeframe once the underlying cause is fixed and newer, cleaner data outweighs the old.
Does VOC affect new ASINs with very few sales?
Low-volume ASINs can swing status quickly because a small number of returns represents a large percentage. Treat any Fair or Poor flag on a newly launched ASIN seriously — the sample size is small, but so is the margin for error while you're still building review count and rank.
Is VOC the same as my Account Health Rating?
No. Account Health Rating is an account-level score built from policy compliance, order defect rate, and other seller-level metrics. VOC is ASIN-level and purely about customer experience on that specific product. A perfectly healthy account can still carry several ASINs with Poor VOC ratings, and those ASINs are the ones most likely to drag the account-level score down next.