4 Ways to Optimize the Post-Purchase Experience
Solving for reverse logistics may be an ongoing challenge for brands and logistics providers alike, but returns also give retailers a chance to have one additional touchpoint with their consumers.
That touchpoint could be critical in creating—or deterring—repeat customers for a brand.
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At Sourcing Journal’s annual Fall Summit on Nov. 1, Girish Jaguste, vice president sales, retail supply chain group for Liquidity Services, and Heidi Isern, vice president, experience for Narvar, spoke about how retailers can work to ease the pain points of returns, both for brands and for the consumer.
Even though returns can be a challenge, Isern said, brands should look at them as a way to connect with their customer.
“When you return, that actually is an opportunity to buy more, or to exchange or to have a very intimate relationship with the brand and have something so easy and flawless—and maybe you’re incentivized to shop with them again. So I don’t think returns are inherently bad. I actually think they’re positive as an engagement moment,” she said.
In order to create better experiences for the consumer, though, brands will need to optimize their reverse logistics operations.
Jaguste advised retailers to focus on four key areas when considering ways to optimize returns: how to minimize the number of returns, create a better customer experience and retain loyalty, quickly recover and resell returns, reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Isern’s team focuses heavily on customer experience and loyalty—meeting consumers where they are, even when schedules vary from day to day, matters, she said.
“The more options you have, and the more you can showcase, ‘Hey, we have all these amazing options in your daily path, regardless of what your daily path is,’ the better you’re going to be able to serve your customers,” Isern said.
Part of driving loyalty comes from transparency, the speakers said—both around the initial purchase and around the return process.
“Transparency, a lot of times, starts with the product itself. How do you present the product? One of the reasons why online returns are much higher than in-store returns is consumers can’t touch the product, they can’t feel the product. So how do you display that information and how do you present it? [That] plays a big role,” Jaguste said.
Isern said after consumers drop off mail-in returns, many expect an immediate refund. Transparency around when a consumer will receive that refund can also help boost customer experience, she said.
Even when brands work to develop stronger customer experience, returns still cost them a not-insignificant chunk of change. Isern said returns can cost a retailer nearly one-third of the product’s retail price. Keeping those dollars with the brand could be a way to help retailers recover some of the lost capital, she said.
Isern suggested brands incentivize their customers to instead make an exchange, or to take a store credit or gift card for their return, rather than defaulting to a direct refund.
“People always want free stuff, and so if you can incentivize them with something to benefit them, they will be more likely to keep their money with you on a gift card,” she said.
Isern and Jaguste agreed that many retailers have a long way to go on returns—both from the perspective of enhancing customer experience and the perspective of decreasing costs and optimizing processes. But even as retailers, 67 percent of whom admit their reverse logistics processes are inefficient, refine their strategies, they shouldn’t expect immediate growth and change, Jaguste said.
“You can’t just turn it around within a day, or in a month. It takes time. And if you have [a] holistic view, you [can] start with the areas that give you the maximum impact,” he said.
