How online retailers can turn returns into an opportunity

By Leo Matthews, director at Xigen

Global fashion retailer ASOS recently announced it is making changes to its returns policy to  crackdown in on serial returners — those who might wear an outfit once and then return it.

ASOS is among the first to take this approach that can cost the fashion industry, in particular, a huge amount of money.

However, what those in e-commerce should be focused on is looking beyond tweaking policies and terms and conditions around returns. They should instead look at the bigger picture, at the wider customer journey, because there's an opportunity for retailers to achieve standout by delivering a better customer experience around returns — and this goes far beyond simply offering free returns as standard.

There is no getting away from returns. They are a fact of life in the e-commerce age, with research highlighting that today more than 20% of all purchases made online are returned. And with additional research by YouGov communicating that 74% of consumers are likely to switch retailers due to poor returns management it's vital that online retailers make the returns process as easy and straightforward as possible to ensure their customers remain loyal.

Partner with a high street retailer

If you are an e-commerce retailer, to deliver a better customer experience and standout in a crowded marketplace, why not offer increased convenience as part of the returns process by partnering with a non-competitive retailer with a high street presence to handle your returns? Such an arrangement will benefit both parties — with increased footfall and sales for the physical retailer, and improving the customer experience, as well as potentially reducing the cost of returns for the e-commerce retailer. Or another option could be to offer return bins in the high street or shopping centers to make it easier for your customers to return product.

Use the latest technology

Embrace the technology available to improve the returns experience and even up sell. Technology can be used to deliver proactive notifications, or micro-moments, about the re-fund status of the customer's order via SMS and email, so they can clearly see how it's progressing. Also, these micro-moments could be used to deliver personalized communications that upsell alternative products to the ones returned to encourage a purchase, based on previous transactional data and additional insight on the customer.

Analyze, learn and personalize

To constantly improve the customer experience, and your bottom line, closely analyze data from the returns process to inform and improve your product range and targeting of customers. Are certain products being returned more than others, if so why? Use the feedback on why the customer has returned the item to inform future personalized communications targeted at that customer.

Automate the returns process

To help reduce the cost and increase the speed of turning around items and getting them back out on sale invest in technology to automate as much of it as possible. Such an approach will also remove the potential for any delays caused by human error.

Those in e-commerce with the foresight to see the big opportunity in delivering a returns process which delivers a standout customer experience will be richly rewarded in a highly competitive e-commerce space. This means thinking about the bigger picture in improving the customer journey — from entering into partnerships with high street retailers to investing in better technology.