Started tracking my FBM error rate and it’s way higher than I thought, is 3% acceptable for pick and pack or am I terrible at this?

Decided to actually document every fulfillment mistake over the past two months instead of just dealing with them individually as they come up. Out of roughly 1000 orders: 31 errors. Wrong color, wrong size, wrong quantity, and one time I shipped someone’s order to a completely different address which was a fun conversation to have.

The thing is most of these happen because I’m doing this after my day job when I’m tired, the spare room is cluttered, I’m rushing to get everything out before midnight. Of course the error rate reflects that environment. But I also thought I was doing a reasonably good job until I looked at actual numbers and realized 3% means every month I’m generating dozens of disappointed customers, some of whom I never even hear from because they just leave quietly and buy from someone else next time.

Each error costs me roughly $15 to $20 between return shipping, replacement product, and the time to resolve it. Over a month that’s $500+ in avoidable costs on a side business where every dollar matters.

For people who went from doing their own pick and pack to outsourcing it, did accuracy actually improve or did you just trade your own tired midnight mistakes for someone else’s mistakes? And what’s considered a normal error rate in this space?