Customers are increasingly concerned about the topic of sustainability from the brands they buy. In a World Business Council for Sustainable Development survey, over half the respondents said they would pay for environmentally friendly products and services. These customers also think that brands–like yours–bear as much responsibility as governments when it comes to sustainability. 

That means your customers care about sustainable practices. And it doesn’t just stop at packaging. As many as 90% of e-commerce customers today are interested in sustainable shipping options. While these statistics are mainly focused on outbound logistics, it also applies to inbound logistics. 

Today, leading retailers are exploring ways to offer sustainable returns. Interestingly enough, offering sustainable returns can also help your business reduce costs. That means retailers and brands can implement a sustainable returns process while keeping costs to a bare minimum. 

When you consider customer satisfaction, the higher chances of repurchase, and the recapture of revenue, you can even think of returns as a profit center rather than a cost center. In this article, we share some methods that your brands can adopt to keep returns manageable, and sustainable. 

Reduce return rates to minimize wastage and emissions

Reducing unnecessary returns is somewhat of a low-hanging fruit for e-commerce businesses. To ensure your returns process is more sustainable and environmentally friendly, you would first have to reduce the number of unnecessary returns requests your business is receiving.

However, it’s easier said than done. There is a sweet spot for rate of returns. Too low, and it means your business is not seeing the volume it should. Too high, and you could be losing money to shipping costs, and inventory errors. 

There is no standard sweet spot for all online businesses. But several online sources put that number somewhere between 10% to 25%. To find your returns sweet spot or drivers, you would have to start tracking returns and layer the data with other sources of business intelligence.

Reduce returns: Give your customers fewer reasons to return purchases

Customers return their orders for a variety of reasons. One of the most common reasons is that the customer bought the wrong product. It could the wrong size or the product does not meet the customers’ needs. 

To overcome this problem, you can create a comprehensive size or buying guide to help your customers fully understand the product, and eventually make the right choice. By providing up-to-date, and easy-to-understand information, you help customers make informed decisions and reduce the chances of them returning an item. 

This approach can also improve customer satisfaction, and even encourage repeat purchases because your customers get what they want each time. If you have a rating capability, you can get answers that can help you find out why customers return your product, and how you can improve on your products to ensure customers keep their purchases, and continue to buy from you. 

Reduce returns: Collect reviews and reward customers for it

Collecting reviews from customers can difficult. Happy customers are satisfied with what they bought and are less likely to provide feedback and reviews. On the other hand, disgruntled customers are more likely to review a disappointing product. Both types of reviews are extremely valuable to your business. 

Positive reviews, help you understand what your customers love, whereas negative reviews reveal gaps in your business that you can improve on. To incentivize happy customers to provide feedback, you can use a delivery platform’s delivery notification feature to engage customers once they receive their orders. 

For instance, in the “successful delivery” notification, you can include discounts that are only applicable when the customer submits a review. This can encourage your customers–happy or otherwise–to leave feedback that you can use to improve your business to keep your returns rate healthy. 

Reduce returns: Implement measures to prevent returns fraud

Returns fraud is a common problem for e-commerce businesses. Some customers intentionally commit fraud to make a profit, while others indulge in fraudulent shopping practices like “wardrobing” or “bracketing.” Friendly or not, fraudulent returns can increase your costs exponentially. 

To combat it, you’d need to have a robust but dynamic returns policy. When it’s configured properly into your digital returns management system, you can automatically reject non-eligible items from being returned. The system can ensure that only once items have been approved for return, can the customer print a return label to ship an item back. 

To control “bracketing” you can invest in creating a comprehensive size guide to manage size uncertainty. For “wardrobing” you can define a shorter return window, or offer exchanges and store credits 

Reduce returns: Give customers the best possible customer service:

Excellent customer service goes a long way to prevent returns. When your team is equipped with accurate information, they can answer customer queries confidently, and promptly. They can also quickly resolve any concerns your customers may have regarding your products. When your customers know all they need to know about their purchase, they are less likely to return it. 

During the delivery phase, keeping customer service updated about the delivery status of an order also prevents the likelihood of customers returning an order. When your customer service teams can assure the customer that an order is on its way, they are providing reliability and predictability to the customer. This helps improve customer satisfaction, which can lower the chances of a customer returning an item. 

If your customer service teams have access to estimated date of arrival prediction capabilities, the reliability factor is further enhanced. Your customers will start planning around their purchase, and the thought of returning it diminishes. 

Take a critical look at packaging and shipping

Reducing returns is a great way to lower your returns carbon footprint. However, there are also other ways your business can make returns as sustainable and cost-effective as possible. Besides the obvious approach of using recyclable materials, you can also invest in packaging design to minimize the use of packaging materials and waste. This can help on multiple fronts. 

The overall size and weight of the package are reduced, making shipping cheaper, and generating fewer carbon emissions. Using fewer materials also means you spend less money on packaging. More importantly, well-designed packaging can be repurposed if your customers decide to return the product. All they need to do is seal the returned item, use a QR code to print the necessary return label, and send the item.  

To further save on returns shipping costs and reduce emissions, you can also work with well-integrated returns solutions providers with a large carrier network. If your solutions provider works with many carriers, they can give your business more drop-off points where customers can drop their returns. 

The main reason why drop-off points are rising in popularity is because of the convenience it gives your customers. At the same time, it also reduces the fuel (and its costs) needed to get the item to the carrier. This mix of convenience, emission reduction, and cost savings means that merchants and brands should consider this option when trying to improve sustainability and cost savings. 

Digitization of a highly manual returns process 

Returns used to be a highly manual process for e-commerce businesses. Human capital is needed for each step of the process, from returns initiation, verification, inspection, and restock, to the eventual refund or exchange. Many businesses avoid returns because of the significant amount of effort involved. 

But digitization of the process has eliminated almost all manual labor. Returns initiation can now be entirely self-served, while verification, inspection, and refund can all be automated and processed before the returned product even reaches the drop-off box. 

For many businesses, however, restocking is still a challenge. A good digital returns solution takes that fully into account. It should have a smart returns flow in place so that your business has full visibility of what’s coming in, and can plan where it should go. 

That helps you plan stock levels in advance, so that even if customers return items, you won’t end up with a wasteful surplus of goods that use up resources, and take up precious space in your warehouse. The impact this has on your business could seem small, but it adds up.

Use returns data to improve the entire business

One of the most important outcomes of digitization of your processes is data. A digital returns solution not only streamlines your processes to make it more sustainable and cost-effective, it also gives you large stores of information that you can turn into actionable insights. 

A returns solution with embedded analytics features, can enable you to analyze returns data and understand what your customers want or in this case, don’t want. This is extremely powerful information that can help guide your business toward success. 

For instance, if a product made from a new type of material is constantly being sent back, you’d know–with a glance at your analytics dashboard–that the new material is not winning customers over. With advanced returns analytics, you can even get insights into sizing issues or quality control issues.

As long as you know why customers are returning, you know how to overcome these issues. Not only will this help you prevent returns, it can also improve your entire business–making it more cost-effective and sustainable beyond just returns. To find out how you can get started with Parcel Perform's digital returns solution, request a personalized demo with one of our e-commerce experts today.