03/10/2022
Drive Customer Loyalty with an efficient returns management solution
An easy returns process can influence a purchase decision and make you stand out.
With the intensification of e-commerce competition, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate your offer. Consumers know this well — as do an increasing number of business buyers, incidentally — and details, such as an easy and convenient returns process, can affect a buying decision. Indeed, low- or no-cost expedited delivery and a flexible and easy returns policy are great conversion drivers.
Easy returns make happy customers
When they purchase online, customers cannot see, touch or try your product, and for those very reasons, the possibility to easily return unsuitable products makes online shopping very convenient… If it weren't for the repacking and the trip to the drop-off station or post office.
In fact, handling returns is a painful process for you, but also for your customers. Close to 90% of them check your return policy before finalizing their purchase, showing that an easy returns process is a strong conversion and loyalty driver. Especially when you know that another 90% of them will not buy from you again if they experience a poor return experience.
On the other hand, customers returning goods tend to be repeat shoppers, and according to a study by CX specialist Navar, 95% of shoppers happy with a returns process would purchase again from the same retailer. Returns policies contribute to the bottom line, so all a retailer needs to do is make it simple, give options, and keep the communication flowing.
A good returns management process is a strategic lever to increase customer loyalty
Like all aspects of a top-end customer experience, there is an element of a swan gliding over a placid lake surface: it looks smooth, but there’s a great deal of activity hidden under the surface. On a very small scale, it is possible to hand-nurture the entire returns process, but with large volumes, it is clearly impossible.
Your goal must be to achieve cost-effective, fast, and effortless shipping and returns. However, building interfaces between e-commerce facilities, distribution, warehouse systems, and logistics providers is extremely complicated — and therefore, expensive to achieve and a constant resource drain to maintain.
In fact, for an effective fulfillment and returns operation to work correctly and ensure a positive customer experience, the twin elements of physical logistics and digital systems need to work together harmoniously. And although returns management software platforms exist, the physical logistics usually need to be outsourced, which can prove expensive and difficult to manage.
Do you have a project to adapt your e-commerce with your customers' expectation?
Coordinated physical logistics and digital systems for an efficient returns management process
Hopefully, you can choose a reliable logistics partner that will handle both physical logistics and digital systems and provide a perfect and seamless experience to your customers from the return request to the initiation of the refund process.
Make sure you set up a satisfactory and cost-effective returns management process by choosing the right partner. Here are the services you should be looking for:
- A proven experience and expertise in logistics and distribution.
- A returns management software platform that works seamlessly and transparently with the one you use for your logistics department.
- Quick integration of the returns management platform with your software stack.
- Full compliance with your returns policy.
- Adaptable to your business organization: brick and mortar retail, e-commerce or omnichannel.
- Scalable to accommodate activity variations.
- A user-friendly interface that allows your customer to initiate a return and choose either pick-up at home or drop-off at a collection point.
- Real-time tracking
- Collection and transportation of the returned goods to the warehouse, as well as the entire process of checking, sorting, repacking or even recycling.
- Real-time order and return status and inventory levels.
There’s only one company that can provide these twin capabilities at any scale, to any degree required — and all as a unified service.