How to prepare for an Amazon DSP operational review

Amazon periodically reviews DSP operations to assess whether a delivery partner is meeting the standards required to retain their contract and, in some cases, to qualify for additional route capacity. The format varies — it might be a formal in-person visit from an Amazon Operations Manager, a structured virtual review, or a document request with a follow-up call. Whatever shape it takes, the operators who come out of it well are the ones who can produce evidence quickly, not the ones who scramble to compile records the night before.

Here is what Amazon typically looks at, and how to have it ready.

What an Amazon DSP operational review covers

Reviews are not uniform — Amazon tailors them to the risk or opportunity at hand — but the same four areas come up consistently:

• Scorecard performance — DCR, DPMO, DNR, POD, CC, and CDF over the trailing 4–12 weeks, with any weeks where status fell below Fantastic called out.
• Safety record — Mentor FICO scores, safety events per driver, and any at-fault incidents or near-misses in the review period.
• Driver compliance — right-to-work documentation, driving licence validity, completion of required Amazon training modules, and any outstanding DA account suspensions.
• Fleet and vehicle compliance — van inspection records, MOT status, insurance certificates, and evidence that daily walkaround checks are being completed.

An Amazon reviewer is not trying to catch you out. They want to see that your operation is organised and that problems, when they arise, are identified and managed — not ignored.

Preparing your Cortex scorecard evidence

The most important thing you can bring to a review is context for any week where your scorecard dipped. Amazon knows operations are not perfect. What they are assessing is whether you know what happened, why, and what you did about it.

Before a review, pull the last 12 weeks of weekly scorecard data and annotate any weeks below Fantastic. For each:

• Identify the metric that caused the dip and the driver or route responsible.
• Note the action you took — a coaching conversation, a route adjustment, retraining.
• Show the recovery: if the metric came back the following week, that is evidence your process worked.

If you have had a run of consistently Fantastic Plus weeks, document that too — a clean track record with no annotation needed is still a story worth presenting clearly.

Compliance documentation to have ready

Driver compliance is the area where unprepared DSPs tend to have gaps — not because the documents do not exist, but because they are spread across email, paper files, and someone's spreadsheet. Before any review:

• Right-to-work: Confirm you hold a current, verified copy for every active driver, including any agency or temporary staff. Share codes for the Home Office online service are the gold standard where applicable.
• Driving licences: Verify expiry dates and endorsements for every driver on the rota. DVLA check codes expire after 21 days — run fresh ones shortly before the review rather than relying on checks done months ago.
• Amazon training: Confirm every active DA has completed the required modules. Check for any accounts flagged as incomplete in the DA portal and resolve them before the meeting.
• Working hours records: Under the Working Time Regulations 1998 you must be able to produce daily and weekly hour records for each worker. Have at least the last three months available.

Fleet and vehicle readiness

An operational review will often ask for evidence of your vehicle maintenance and inspection regime, even if no one physically walks the yard. Pull together:

• A log of daily pre-dispatch walkaround checks for the last 30 days, per vehicle. Paper checklists work, but timestamped digital records are harder to dispute.
• MOT certificates and service records for every vehicle in the fleet.
• Fleet insurance documents, including the date of the current policy and confirmation that every driver is named or covered under the commercial vehicle policy.
• A record of any vehicle damage incidents in the review period and how they were reported, assessed, and resolved.

What reviewers look for beyond the numbers

Amazon Operations Managers have seen dozens of DSPs. The ones that stand out are not always the ones with the highest scorecard status — they are the ones where the operator clearly understands their own operation.

That means being able to name your top-performing drivers without looking at a list. It means knowing which route consistently underperforms and being able to explain why. It means having a regular rhythm — morning huddles, weekly reviews, driver one-to-ones — and being able to describe it without hesitation.

If you are reactive — pulling data only when something goes wrong, or running to check records when the reviewer asks a question — that reads as risk, regardless of what the numbers say. Operational confidence comes from having a live view of the business, not from preparing a one-off report.

How DSPOps can help you stay review-ready

DSPOps keeps your scorecard data, driver compliance records, and fleet inspection logs in one place — not because you need them for a review once a year, but because running the operation day-to-day is easier when everything is current. When a review is called, the evidence is already there: driver licence expiry dates, inspection logs, weekly scorecard trends, and coaching notes that show you manage proactively.

If you want to see how your DSP's data looks inside DSPOps, you can book a 20-minute demo — we will walk through your actual numbers during the call.