Five top tips for revolutionising returns Delivering maximum business profit with omnichannel returns

As a retailer, you know just how service-conscious today’s shoppers are. But do you really understand the role that your returns policies play in delivering business success? For many organisations, returns incur a significant cost to the business. Yet they could be generating revenue.

Omnichannel return policies are increasingly important to purchasers – in a recent survey, 40% of customers say they would buy more online if they could return to stores. Yet many retailers are still struggling to move away from unfriendly legacy processes: charging people to return across channels, offering short return windows, and having complex receipt requirements.

But there’s more at stake than just customer experience. Better returns management can help you to stop margin erosion. Because making returned stock visible and available across your network enables you to deliver every transaction with maximum profit.

It’s not rocket science. Read on to see our top five tips for formulating more successful business outcomes from omnichannel customer returns.

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“Nearly 100% of our customers offer omnichannel returns, but most of them say they don’t like the way they do it.”

Scott Fenwick, Manhattan Associates director of product strategy

A hassle-free cross-channel return experience can convince customers to buy from you

Rapid returns processing reduces markdowns and leads to better business outcomes

Quite simply, businesses that make it easy for customers to returns items across channels will see an increase in sales revenue too. The proof? In a recent survey, 30% of customers said they’d chosen to buy from the retailers with more flexible returns policies.

Choose an intelligent Order Management system to give your staff instant access to complete customer order information from any location, so online orders can be quickly and efficiently returned to any store. It’s a scientific approach to delivering the functionality and high levels of personal service that keeps them coming back, and delivering the impressive sales revenues you want.

When online orders come back to a store, it can be difficult to know what to do with the returned stock. Integrating items into the store’s inventory seems the quickest way to get them back on sale – but it’s not always the smartest choice.

The right Order Management system determines in real time the most profitable location for your returned items: adding them to the store shelves, making them available for a ship-from-store order, or returning them to a central distribution centre. Rules - and capacity-based algorithms successfully automate these complex fulfilment decisions in seconds, reducing your exposure to markdown losses and maximising the margins on every order.

Take returns into account when making restocking decisions

Make the maximum stock available to customers without the restrictive returns policies

Implementing cross-channel returns can create complexity in businesses with separate inventories. Items sold from online stock, for example, are replenished regardless of whether there have been returns to a store. It’s a recipe for over-investment in stock and a drop in your profitability.

A robust Order Management platform helps you to right-size your inventory, bringing together all of your stock channels to create a single inventory pool that’s visible and available across your entire business. Any in-store returns are visible as soon as they’re processed, becoming instantly available for fulfilment in any location or channel. It means replenishment decisions are always made on the basis of complete insight, improving your turn rate and leading to greater profitability.

Online orders returned to stores aren’t always processed in the most effective way. Adding items to the returning store’s inventory adds to a silo of stock that can’t be accessed for use in other channels, even when they’re out of stock.

Intelligent Order Management systems allow you to deliver true omnichannel operations, managing returns efficiently and cost-effectively, no matter how, where or when an item is made. You’ll increase customer loyalty too, creating an endless aisle where products returned anywhere in the network are available for sale immediately from any location. You’ll see higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to higher levels of sales and more repeat visits.

Get the most from every returning customer with in-store incentives

Enabling omnichannel returns delivers an important change in behaviour – getting online customers to visit a physical store. And every purchase these shoppers make while they’re in-store is highly valuable incremental revenue. It’s why some retailers have adapted their store layouts to put the customer returns team in a strategic location, or to display on-sale items at the tills.

It’s easy to automate the printing of highly relevant in-store offers and opportunities on a customer’s returns note. With a highly sophisticated Order Management platform, you’ll bring together insight from multiple sources, including the customer’s purchase history and inventory and latest stock information, to generate targeted offers for each customer. It’s yet another reason for customers to choose you over the competition.

Hassle-free returns, for you and your customersTalk to Manhattan Associates today about how you can quickly and easily deliver a new approach to returns for your business. Integrate returns into your inventory, reduce the risks and costs of markdowns and start delivering the service that your customers are demanding.

Contact us now on 0118 922 8076 or uk@manh.com.

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