6 Essential Best Practices for Implementing Returns Management Software

Introduction

Business owners love nothing more than hearing good things and positive product feedback. As good as this sounds, the flipside is dealing with inevitable returns. Product returns are a downside of order fulfillment, and businesses take them very seriously to avoid answerability about their reputation. This means optimising their returns management process to meet the rising customer expectations of online shoppers.

They deal with all kinds of reasons for the returned product. For example, damaged or wrong items delivered to recipients are the most common customer returns cases. Handling the reverse delivery flow can be challenging without returns management software. The average ecommerce return rate stands at around 20% globally. According to the 'India Reverse Logistics Market Report 2022-2027', the Indian returns market is expected to reach USD 39.81 billion by 2027 with a CAGR of 6.15%. It means businesses have to gear up their reverse logistics efforts.

Let's find out the best practices for reverse logistics software!

Importance of Returns Management

Returns are unavoidable to e-commerce businesses, and returns management plays a huge role in the retail industry. It is important because brands want to ensure a hassle-free returns process, making it easier for customer service teams to receive the returned item and ready it for resale. By managing returns properly, brands can satisfy customers, make data-driven decisions, reduce reverse logistics fraud, and elevate brand reputation. It can even integrate with inventory management systems

A efficient returns management system can make processing returns much simpler and reduce costs, especially shipping costs measurably. A returns management policy offers transparency to brands and customers through a clear list of rules. Brands can gain trust and advantage by sharing this policy with their audiences. Today, enterprises depend on returns management software and use automation to oversee the process comprehensively.

6 Best Practices When Adopting Returns Management Software

With returns management software, businesses can streamline their reverse logistics process. A returns software helps generate returns labels, performs quality checks, and eliminates errors. Here are a few of the returns management best practices for online stores - 

1. Offer a Clear Returns Policy

A clear returns policy with returns rules can offer a great customer experience. It gives a solid understanding of how the company operates its returns operations and allows customers to become confident with the brand. For customers, trust is a major deciding factor. A clear returns policy can increase the number of repeat customers.  

Also, according to certain regional compliances, it is compulsory to have a returns policy to ship products and carry out business operations. A brand that prioritizes a clear return policy can increase customer retention and improve brand loyalty.

2. Review Cost of Product Returns

Brands are required to assess each returned item to fetch costs. This helps them evaluate the total expenses in the reverse logistics process and make adjustments with speed and route optimization. The procedure can take time and manual intervention, costing businesses time and money. Reviewing the returned items through an automated returns software can get things done faster and smoother. 

The software calculates the best prices and affordability for businesses to make informed decisions and manage their expenses accordingly. It also allows you to keep your customers informed. If possible, offer free return shipping, even for in store returns. Providing online store credit can also keep costs coming back to you.

3. Analyze data from Returns

The best opportunity to learn about products and the customer standpoint is by addressing their pain points and their overall returns data. It can give you clarity about what you did right and what was wrong. To do that, you can also go through customer feedback and understand their responses. By going in-depth with returns, you are learning about the serial returners and customer behavior for those who have a habit of returning products.

Business owners can send promotional emails to these buyers and expect more purchases from their businesses, which works for brick and mortar stores as well. It can help normalise supply chains and is one of the best practices for implementing a returns management platform. This can also be a means of preventing returns fraud, ensuring better inventory control, and speeding up refund processing.

4. Offer a Self-service Returns Portal

A self-service portal is an integral offering of returns management software and another one of returns management best practices. It lets customers place return requests for quick pickups and refund/replacement initiation. The portal gives customers more confidence and allows them to select a window based on their availability for the pickup. By giving more control to customers, brands gain their trust and increase the number of repeat customers.

Unlike the traditional returns process, the self-serve returns portal reduces refund times and decreases “Where is my refund?” calls and queries. Also, customers may choose their preferred return methods, view previous interactions with the teams, and receive updates.

5. Provide Returns Tracking

Businesses offer visibility and transparency by providing tracking information to customers expecting their orders to be delivered. The same occurs when a return is initiated, and customers want to know the status of their return or refund process. To keep the process visible, brands use a software solution and send automatic notifications at different stages starting from returns initiation to the successful refund process.

Customers are much more satisfied when they can access returns-related information at their fingertips. Plus, it helps enterprises streamline their returns management supply chain. 

6. Identify Ways to Prevent Returns

This is probably the best practice when adopting returns management software. As they say, prevention is better than cure, brands take it very seriously and try their best to prevent product returns in the first place. After studying and gathering enough about their customers, brands figure out ways to improve customers' experiences with their returns data. They set clear delivery expectations, provide easy exchange options, and offer purchase communication to reduce returns.

A brand that can operate its business effectively and efficiently with lesser returns gains a more competitive edge and enhances customer retention rates. That's where returns data plays a vital role in maintaining customer satisfaction when dealing with online purchases. Online retailers and ecommerce businesses often need to consider this in their reverse logistics returns management process.

Master Returns Management with ClickPost’s Automated Offerings

ClickPost is a logistics intelligence platform that allows businesses to deliver excellent post-purchase experiences to customers. ClickPost’s software offerings include Returns management, NDR management, a Carrier recommendation engine, real-time tracking, EDD Predictions, and APIs. It made significant delivery differences for several businesses and helped them achieve maximum customer satisfaction.

When it comes to returns management, ClickPost offers its ReturnsPro and Returns Plus offerings to help you simplify customer returns. These are useful for businesses handling any number of product returns. From providing a self service portal to automating customer communications, this system plays a major role in effective returns management for ecommerce stores. To find out more about these platforms, get on a call with the ClickPost team.

Bottom Line

E-commerce returns come with several complex prerequisites, and managing them without prior knowledge and experience can hamper brand recognition. Businesses try to save existing customers from switching to competitors by offering a positive return experience. Following some of the returns management best practices can play a huge role in this. Ecommerce Returns management software always comes in handy to help brands oversee the reverse logistics flows. The practices mentioned in this article will empower brands and individuals to choose a returns management technology.