Tips to manage returns on e-commerce

Customer returns is an unavoidable bane in retail. Its a factor that affects both the topline and bottom line of your business. The hard fought sale that you converted after all that sales and marketing effort goes away and it adds costs to complete the return and resell it again. If not managed properly, this can negatively impact your business to a great extent. Categories such as automotive parts and fashion see amongst the highest returns while pharma and hard goods see the lowest return percentage. Data suggests that irrespective of the industry, ecommerce channels face higher returns at close to 20% compared to offline retail at 9%.

So why exactly does e-commerce specifically see higher returns?

The touch and feel element that the customer has while shopping offline ensures that customers have a greater understanding of what they are buying into. The chances of a later disillusionment with the product is vastly less. Typical return reasons like size, fit, expectation mismatch, delivery are addressed in the nature of offline shopping. In e-commerce, these issues have to be resolved through other tools.

What steps as a business owner can you take to reduce returns?

Here are some top tips that are guaranteed to reduce returns irrespective of the industry you operate in.

Improve Cataloguing quality

Amongst the other levers this lever makes the most difference?in making or breaking your returns more manageable.

Unlike a customer who is shopping from offline retail, online customer doesn’t have the product physically in front of him / her to evaluate it. The quality of your catalogue determines how well you help the customer to experience the product virtually. The better the experience, lesser the chances of return

• Have descriptive and elaborate content: Include as much details as possible about the product or service. You could never go wrong with sharing more. Include details of sizes, dimensions, specifications, texture, country of origin, color palette etc. In case of experiential products such as perfumes & vacations - description of feelings, sharing vicarious experiences, describing the end result helps customers imagine using the product.?In categories such as fashion, having content that solves for customer's understanding of right sizing and fit would help reduce returns radically.
• Have plenty of images: Pictures have the power of 1000 words they say. Having multiple images help customers visualize the product better. Each image should add value and share additional information to the customers. For example close up shots that define the texture, shots focusing on specific features, shots that show the product in action, shots that show the size of the item in relation to a person etc. Adding 360 degree images or videos also enhances customer experience. While using images, it is a good practice to compare them with the actual product to ensure that the color shades, features are true to reality.
• Using Virtual reality tech: There’s nothing like simulating the product in the customer’s location that can show the customer how the product would look like on him / her or their house. Home furnishings, eyewear, apparel, jewelry can all benefit from this feature by showing the customer a fairly accurate representation of the product in action when they use it. Ikea Living app has used this tech to great success to simulate how a piece of furniture would look in the customer’s home. Recently Walmart bought Zeekit which uses this VR to simulate how a piece of apparel would look on the customer.

Presales Support

However much we might have tried to pre-empt the customer’s need for information, there would always be the case where a customer requires additional personal support. This could be because some of the information was unclear, not covered or simply not read through properly. Nevertheless, having an option during the purchase consideration cycle to reach out in real time to a product expert can help address some of those nagging doubts or clarify some details which can help the customer take an informed choice. It’s like the helpful store staff standing nearby incase you require assistance. Once the doubts are cleared, the chances of customer’s expectations mismatching gets reduced and hence so does chances of return. Insights from consistent pre-sales support asks could be used to improve your cataloguing quality.

Post-Sales support

Once the customer has received the product, there might still be some issues that the customer faces. Maybe the usage instructions are not clear, assembly support is required, parts of the order might be missing etc. In the absence of help, customer would be tempted to return the product and be safe. With Post-Sales support, business gets to clarify or help resolve such post sales issues and reduce the need for customer to return the item. Post Sales support could also help address issues like buyer’s remorse by reassuring the customer’s purchase decision and possibly top it up with an added loyalty voucher.

Rich customer feedback and ratings

Customers would always have reason to doubt your claim and not be sure of the exact value of the product. This is where rich content from your customer community helps. Images of customers using the product or describing the utility they derived from the product would help your potential new customers to understand how the product behaves in the real world. Often buyer community also addresses questions from other buyers (like Amazon FAQ that appears under product catalogue). This helps customers better understand the product and set expectations so that post purchase experience is as close to what they visualized at the time of purchase.

Improving packaging

Your products go through an arduous journey till the time it reaches the customer’s home. There is a high likelihood of the items getting damaged during this journey if the packaging is not good enough. Have a great packaging elevates the customer experience while receiving the product and also ensures that your valuable products remain safe until the time it reaches the customer. The slightest hint of damages, discoloration or mishandling of the product can immediately prompt the customer to return the item than take the risk of using a compromised product.

Control of Delivery experience

Enabling your customers to track and control their product deliveries helps manage expectations and reduce chances of undelivered packages. Customer schedules and availability can change. Using easy touch points such as your app, whatsapp, call centre etc, it should be easy for the customer to track the whereabouts of their package and modify delivery timings if required. This can increase the chances of a successful delivery attempt. Even in the case of failed delivery attempts, similar touch points with the customers can be established to identify opportunities for redelivery.??Its equally important to stick to your delivery promise. Late deliveries can result in customer dissatisfaction and greatly increase the chances of product returns.

Exchange facility

Despite all these measures, customers would still return your items. Well, why not retain your customers by offering the option to replace the item with a better or similar product. Replacing an item is definitely additional cost but when compared to parameters such as the cost of acquiring a new customer, gaining customer loyalty and retaining the customer, this is better off. This is an opportunity to negate the returns with fresh sales to the same customer. And this time, the chances of return should be lesser as the customer has better understanding of your product and service.

What other steps have worked for you to reduce returns on your e-commerce business?

Posted from: Tips to Manage returns on ecommerce – Ashick Ali