Hello, everyone, welcome back to Herb's hot takes, we're continuing a series here on herbs outtakes talking about returns, so we've outlined the problem of returns over the past two episodes. We talked about how they're growing in size, the impact of online as well, and then talked a little bit more just about what happens to returns once they've actually been given back to the retailer. And so today we're outlining best practices, and joining me once again is her Billings, the VP of technology strategy at data scan. Welcome back to The show. How are you? I'm doing great today. Tyler, how are you? I am doing well. I'm excited to talk best practices today and get into some solutions when it comes to returns. I think this is an exciting topic, and I'm ready to dive in. Yes, certainly we've talked about problems. So far. Now what the heck do we do about them? And that's the exciting part. You know, just sort of a recap. The early online Sellers are what forced retail to evolve to offer free and easy returns. You mentioned Zappos in a previous episode. Yes, they were one. They've been bought by Amazon, of course, and Amazon has continued the free and easy return process. Gone are the days of the disincentives to return items so that, you know, now it's a very easy process. Everybody's expecting that. Given that some categories experience between 30% and 40% returns, it should be thought of as an integral part of the purchase process, not just some separate process that you have to think about, that you have to finish up before you can say that we are an omnichannel retailer. If you get this returns process right from the consumer's perspective, you will have a customer for life. If you get it wrong, I'll shop at another retailer. It's a great point. So as we think about this process and what it looks like and how to make it a customer centric approach to returns, what's the first step in that process? Yes well, it's really good to understand that 2/3 of online shoppers research the returns policy prior to making their purchase. Wow so with that understood that policy needs to be easy to read, it must be intuitively obvious to the reader, or it's going to be too cumbersome. They'll shop elsewhere. It should have no ifs, ands, or buts. To me, that complex is up any wording. Simplifying is hard. If it's not an all always returnable product, then making that a simple thing to understand is very, very difficult. The next thing it needs to be as easy to find. Again, back to the 2/3 of shoppers review the policy. First, they need to be able to find it if they can't find it again. There's going to be another website with a similar or identical item that they can buy. It needs to be throughout the navigation on the website or the app easy to find from the home page if they first get there on the details page, if that's when they think about it. Certainly in the cart before they commit and then on the receipt. Absolutely so once that returns decision has been made that the consumer has decided, OK, I'm returning this item. And we've talked about the returns policy. What happens next? What's the next step? Well, certainly once that decision has been made to return it, it needs to be painless. And you'll hear me say painless a lot. You need to start with the online portal. So wherever they purchased it, that needs to be certainly a good starting point for where to return it. Include a pre-paid shipping label with the shipment, if appropriate. If not, enable them to download one from the site. Gather as much information as you can to feed your analytics process. So that you can continuously improve your returns, but you don't want that information gathering to be burdensome. If it's difficult, the customer is going to pencil, whip it and just answer whatever is the first answer in your list, and you won't get good, good information from that. So when we talk about consumer expectations, where are people expecting to be engaging in returns or are people expecting to go into a store? Or are they expecting to be able to ship it back? Give us a little bit of insight there on what the consumer expectations are for location. The consumers are interested in the easiest possible return, so it depends upon size. It depends upon the item, it depends upon how many they have. You need to allow them to ship it back. But more and more the retailers are accepting returns in their brick and mortar stores, regardless of where the item was purchased. Even if that item is not normally for sale in the brick and mortar store, customers are now able to return it to that store. That works really well for the MacY's, the Penney's, the Nordstrom's of the world. But what if you're an online business and you don't actually have brick and mortar locations? You can partner with one of these returns companies that facilitate returns primarily for online retail, but also other brick and mortar retailers with limited footprints. They can accept at, say, every staples store. So it's an easy you're running an errand. You drop into the Staples. You drop it off and it's handled from there. Whatever is the easiest process is what you want to do. Another thing sort of related to that. How many times have we tried to return something and try to get it exactly the way it looked when it came in? I'm thinking of a shirt with pins in it. Yes and you try to fold it up and get the exact creases and get those pins in the right spot. Package list returns are something that's, you know, getting attention in the retail industry where you just take the item. You doesn't matter whether you have the plastic or the box or the pens or whatever it came in, you just return it. And that's another way to make it even less painful. Offer a full refund. People are typically fine with store credits if it's a brick and mortar purchase. Online purchases. Refunds are the norm. what impact has the pandemic had on the world of returns and what consumers expect from returns? Well, the pandemic certainly has impacted returns. They take longer to process now because they have to be cleaned. But from the consumer's perspective, and the best practice seems to be going in the direction of contactless returns, where the consumer drops it off and does not. The store associate doesn't have to handle it and there's much less contact involved. Well, I've enjoyed talking about some solutions here today here on the third episode of our series here on returns. Tie a bow on it for us. Give us a summary of what we've discussed here today. Sure, Tyler. One thing to make sure everybody knows in the retail world that your best shoppers are often the ones with the highest return rate, so it's important to take care of them. You make a difficult process specifically to minimize the returns that you have to deal with, and you will also be minimizing the number of customers you have to deal with. And that's a bad thing. In-store returns are really should be viewed as an opportunity to convert an online buyer. That might be somebody who hasn't shopped in your brick and mortar store before, and now they're returning an item there in the store, likely to buy something else. The process again needs to be easy and painless. The amount of investment you put into this will be a good return in the long run. So now that we've talked about some best practices for returns coming up in the next episode, we're going to be talking about how you can minimize returns in the first place. That's going to be an exciting episode you won't want to miss, but for this one, her Billings. Thanks for joining me once again. Thank you, Tyler. Absolutely And everyone, we'll see you on the next episode of herbs that takes.
