Leaving the Returns to the Pros

Your customer-facing logistics are still running like a well-oiled machine, but every time a return comes in (which is happening more and more), your supply chain grinds to a halt to handle it. The problem is that unlike forward-facing logistics, where you’re working with fairly uniform things in a volume that you can better control, reverse logistics puts all sorts of things in front of you, packed in ways you might not expect and often in conditions that you weren’t counting on. In short, forward-facing logistics is the cure-all to reverse logistics’ screaming chaos. And chaos isn’t a thing you have time for.

This is just one reason to outsource to a returns management specialist, here are a few more:

• • Specialists are faster and better at grading returns and sorting them quickly. It’s not that you can’t do the job, it’s just that they can do it a lot faster because they’re using dedicated equipment in a facility that does nothing but returns all day long.

• • They have systems in place that make decisions based on fixed variables. There’s not such a thing as a hard and fast rule about which items are graded how; in a big facility, it’s determined by a combination of client input and a platform designed to use available information to more accurately grade returned goods. When your team is making value judgments instead of looking at data because you can’t justify the expense of these same platforms, you’re going to find a lot less consistency in how returns are graded and sorted.

• • Returns specialists know the right people to move your products where they’ll sell best. Depending on the nature of your returns, there are any number of people who are thinking about buying that very thing right now.
    Reverse logistics companies have relationships with refurbishers, liquidators, recyclers and others who can get your product out of the way and recapture some of the value that it originally held.

Recovering the most money and reducing the environmental impact of your returns are the end goals. If you can hire an outside company that’s capable of pulling enough value out of your unwanted items to pay its own monthly fee, then the whole eCommerce world can be your oyster.

The post 3 Reasons Why Outsourcing Returns Makes For Better Business first appeared on Smart Returns.

The company has set goals to achieve zero waste in facilities located in Canada, Japan, the UK and the United States by 2025. Behind the scenes, the big box giant has already been making mighty strides toward this goal. For example, by the end of 2017, 81 percent of unsold products, packaging and other waste was diverted from U.S. landfills. Globally, 78 percent was diverted.

This has been an ongoing project for Walmart with the planning process starting way back in 2005. The company not only intends to reduce the waste created by its own stores and warehouses, it intends to reduce waste throughout the rest of its supply chain.

Speaking to its Audience

Green supply chains aren’t anything new, there’s been enthusiastic chatter about them for well over a decade, but it has been hard to get companies on the green bandwagon, especially during the recession. However, today’s economic environment is a very different place, customers feel more like they can spend money and brands are coming back swinging.

But today’s consumer is a considerably different person than they were a decade ago.

Environmental protection and basic sustainability are vital goals for Millennials, the generation that everyone wants to woo. Walmart did what any smart retailer would do. It got in front of the competition and started going green before anyone else was willing to make the investment.

What Walmart’s Green Initiative Means for Your Business

Walmart’s making its supply chains as efficient as possible is a move that will affect each and every member of the retail world.

Customers may no longer stop at “Is this a good deal?” and instead add “How green is this company?” to their product purchase consideration. A zero-waste approach is just one way to leverage an under-utilized benefit that Millennials appreciate.

Does this mean that your business has to go green right now? No, of course not. But it will mean you need to move toward reusing more and throwing less away. If your in-house returns management team can’t handle the added burden, many established reverse logistics companies have long-standing relationships with secondary market supplies and recyclers that can reduce your impact on the planet.

It will be interesting to see what happens to transportation and manufacturing costs as Walmart encourages them to reduce their own waste production. Will prices go up? Will they stay the same? They almost certainly won’t go down much.

The post What Walmart’s Zero Waste Approach Means For Your Reverse Logistics first appeared on Smart Returns.

Not only is returns management time-consuming, it’s costly, and without a good reverse logistics team in place, it can literally eat you out of house and home. That’s why some businesses require RMAs prior to accepting returns. RMAs can keep everything tidy and neat on your end and create a more formal return experience for the customer.

How Does an RMA Work in Returns Management?

When a customer needs to return an item to a company that uses RMAs (short for Return Merchandise Authorization), there’s a process involved to help save that company both time and money. The product won’t be accepted under any circumstances without an associated RMA number, so if something comes in unauthorized, you can simply ignore it (or choose to act in good faith and call the customer about the lack of an RMA).

Having an RMA makes your reverse logistics a lot easier, despite how it may look. There are several steps between the customer’s urge to return the item and your actually receiving it. These steps of the returns process include:

The customer submitting proof of a problem with the item. Whether that proof is in the form of photographs or a detailed explanation of what’s going wrong, asking for a little effort on the customer’s part can help save you a lot of time in the returns process.

Your evaluating the evidence to determine if it’s an acceptable reason for return. You’ll have to put in a little time to figure out if your suppliers will warranty the problem the customer is having or if you’ll have to take care of it yourself. This may determine whether or not you’ll be willing to accept the product back.

Your issuing an RMA number and determining if the customer needs to return the item or perform some other action. When you issue the RMA number for the case, you can also choose to go ahead and issue a refund if the situation is catastrophic or wait for the product to arrive for proper diagnosis.

If returned, your reverse logistics team inspecting, diagnosing and fixing the problem. Once the item is in your facility, it will be tracked by its RMA number throughout the process. Someone will inspect the item and then either move to diagnosing it or send it to a team that deals with that task. If the problem is fixable, the item will be repaired and returned to the customer, if not, a refund can be issued at this point.

Using RMAs can make it easier to track returns as they move through your facility, but they can also be cumbersome for customers. An alternative is to send a smart label for the return, that way you get all the advantages of tracking with an RMA number without giving the customer the hassle of trying to get one.

The post What Is An RMA And Why Does It Matter For Your Reverse Logistics? first appeared on Smart Returns.

Real life and the virtual one are slowly becoming indistinguishable, especially when it comes to shopping.

The digital sea isn’t what it used to be, now there are ferries crossing it constantly to make connections between online-first companies and their brick and mortar shops, as well as joining the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers with their shiny new eCommerce sites. In the midst of all of this, everyone still has to keep omnichannel in mind.

Omnichannel, the New Consumer Constant

It wasn’t that long ago that you’d go to the store and buy what you needed, or you’d check your email from home.

The first iPhone, released just a decade ago, started the world down the rabbit hole that has become omnichannel shopping. You can shop from your home PC, then add something to the same cart with your tablet on your commute, pay for it all on your smartphone and then pick it up in person at a nearby store.

The logistics of all of this are incredible, and only getting more interesting. Some experts are predicting a future with a high level of engagement with autonomous vehicles that might act as delivery drones, as well as mobile fulfillment hubs that keep both stores and warehouses stocked with the right merchandise at the right times. The retail supply chain has forever been altered by the expansion of omnichannel practices.

Retailers in the 21st Century

Staying ahead of the eCommerce wave can be terrifying for anyone with a brick-and-mortar store, but you don’t have to fear death by returns management or sheer progress and evolution. Your brand is still relevant in an omnichannel world, provided you make it one that people care about. More in-store engagement can keep customers coming in the doors, especially if you marry the in-store experience with well-branded eCommerce.

Start with easy changes like accepting returns in your store rather than forcing customers to mail them back to your reverse logistics facility. While they’re in your shop, they might feel like browsing a bit and then pick up a few items they weren’t expecting to find. Or maybe your branded app will generate an alert about a flash sale that you’re having while they happen to be in the parking lot.

There are lots of ways to do retail and omnichannel, but the most successful retailers make sure to add something extra to the in-store and online experiences. Omnichannel isn’t just about moving between devices anymore, it’s about staying inside the branded experience as you do.

The post Retail and The Continuing Growth of Omnichannel first appeared on Smart Returns.

The team has to be trained to pay attention to detail, but to do so quickly, the equipment and tools have to be optimized to allow as many returns as possible to move through that department each day, as efficiently as possible.

This includes software, and the software has to be right. There are lots of options when it comes to the bits and bytes, both those resident on your computer and those offered as software as a service (SaaS). How do you know when you’ve found the right one?

Finding the Best Returns Management Software for Your Team

Each team will have its own needs when it comes to reverse logistics software, but there are some important elements to watch for no matter what segment you’re in. These are factors that make the process simple for the customer and increase processing speeds for you both.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Automation is everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure you’ll need to automate today, look for as much automation as is possible in your budget. As your returns (and business!) grow, you’re not going to be able to handle it all manually in a reasonable amount of time, automating the tedious parts of the process will help speed things up.Customers can be trusted to initiate their own returns, your system can be trusted to send out automated emails with instructions to them about what to do next. If you want to offer instant credits, let the system handle that, too.
• Label printing saves time and energy. Smart labels are a particular piece of automation that should always be given particular attention because of their high value versus the low input on your part. Even if you don’t want to allow your system to do anything else, let it do this for you.Smart labels allow you to match incoming packages to invoices, speeding up the returns process by giving your team a heads up about what should be in each box before it even arrives. These simple labels cut down on mistakes and move products back into inventory faster.
• Reporting and dashboards are non-negotiable. Data is everything in the supply chain. It can tell you where your inefficiencies are and where you’re doing great. It can even help you figure out why you’re getting so many green shirts returned all of a sudden.So, if you choose a software that doesn’t offer robust reporting tools and dashboards, you’re really doing yourself a disservice, aren’t you? Data can be a game changer, but you have to have the software to make sense of it.

Wading through the different returns management software options can be challenging. They all pretty much sound the same after a while and frankly, start to blur together. Take it one package at a time and cut a long list down to a short list of five or six, then re-evaluate your options. SaaS bundles are particularly attractive these days because of their high level of portability, but if you’d prefer to keep all your data in-house, old fashioned packages will do the job.

The post 3 Tips For Choosing The Best Returns Management Software first appeared on Smart Returns.

In fact, it’s almost the direct result of the intense competition eCommerce business owners have drummed up over cheap deals for holiday gifts and an increasing reliance on online shopping during the winter. That big day is known as National Returns Day.

National Returns Day in a Nutshell

In the same way that Black Friday is a big deal for outbound 3rd party logistics firms, National Returns Day is a giant event for returns management departments.

This date marks the day in the yearly retail cycle when UPS returns the most packages to businesses. In 2017, that was January 5, but it always appears in the first week of January. This year, 1.3 million returns were shipped back to their origination points because they were the wrong size, wrong color or were just entirely wrong.

What’s more is that first week of January actually totaled 5.8 million return packages this year. No matter the size of your business, that’s a huge amount of orders to reprocess, repackage and return to your sales systems. National Returns Day will push your reverse logistics team to its limits, and if you’ve prepped well, your team will make it look easy.

You can get ready for National Returns Day today by implementing some good returns practices now, including:

• Offering free returns. Free returns are becoming a bigger and bigger concern for online shoppers, even though only about 44 percent have returned an online purchase in the last year, according to UPS.Well over half (60 percent) of respondents listed free return shipping as a vital part of their shopping experience. Free returns ensure you get to pick the shipper and your package is handled in the way you’d prefer.
• Establishing a hassle-free returns policy. Although it’s a very good idea to get some sense of what’s wrong with any return, there’s a lot to be said about making returns easy.Since 45 percent of shoppers made an additional purchase last year when returning items, it should go without saying that turning them off of buying again is counterproductive.
• Making it easy to find a return label. Having a return label included in each box or allowing customers to print their own is more than a convenience for them, it’s a convenience for your returns management team.This way, all returns labels are in the same format, speeding up the returns process and getting re-sellable items back on the market quickly.

This year when you plan your Black Friday sales events, remember that what goes out sometimes comes back in. Having a plan for the glut of packages you’ll get around National Returns Day not only makes your company look like a superstar when it comes to customer service, it saves you big money, too!

The post What Is National Returns Day? first appeared on Smart Returns.