Reverse Logistics Services – Returns

When you’re seeing increases in the order volume of your booming ecommerce brand, you will soon face increases in complexity when doing your own order fulfillment. There are four key elements that you need to fulfill high volumes of orders effectively and efficiently: Technology, Processes, People, and Locations. How can a 3PL like Fulfillment.com take the extra pressure off by serving you with excellence?

Returns Process Servicing

Returns processing, or reverse logistics as it is sometimes called, is as important to your business as sales. If your return process is challenging or leaves customers frustrated, that negativity can lead to—at the least—losing any future sales from those customers, and—at the worst—those customers going on a social media tirade against your company because of the poor service they received.

Fulfillment.com’s comprehensive return logistics program ensures that there is minimal merchandise waste while providing outstanding customer service when processing your product returns for inventory stock.

Although the concept of reverse logistics suggests that you can just backtrack your outbound process, this is not actually the case. To successfully manage the process, equal attention must be given to all aspects of the sales cycle course. Reverse logistics can be viewed as the part of the supply chain process involving the business of returning, repairing, exchanging, refurbishing, restocking or re-marketing products. Many companies are so focused on increasing sales for outgoing orders that they lose sight of the importance of their returns process and how a poor returns process can negatively impact their revenue.

However, at FDC, our efficient returns practices are integrated into our complete end-to-end process. Consider an electronic product purchase that is returned: your policy may be to not accept open products directly back into inventory, so Fulfillment.com can ship these returns to you for refurbishing, retooling, or re-packaging, allowing you to recoup some, or all, of the original order’s value.

Keeping your growing brand at the forefront of customer service best practices

Fulfillment.com realizes that product returns provide one more point of contact with customers and should be treated as an opportunity to create a positive experience for them to support your brand's reputation. FDC’s returns process aligns with the fulfillment industry's best practices, providing top-notch customer service for our clients while saving them time and money.

We manage your product delivery from start to finish, whether that finish means delivery to the customer or processing a product returned by the customer thus making the product available for another purchase.
The goal of a good returns policy is twofold: first, to make the process as quick and painless for customers as possible, and second, to minimize the financial impact to you.

How FDC’s Returns Process Works

Central to everything we do is FDC’s proprietary technology, BestOMS, designed to save our customers both time and money. Our methods of address validation virtually eliminate shipments of incorrectly addressed orders.

As part of FDC’s kitting and assembly services, we can include a return label with every order we fulfill for you.

Additionally, our order-grouping function automatically combine separate orders received by us within any 15-minute period 24/7/365, and being delivered to the same customer and address (typically “upsells”), dramatically reducing fulfillment fees for our customers. FDC order-grouping has saved a client almost $250,000 over a year!

FDC’s Returns Team monitors inventory compliance and provides a central source of data for our customers via the BestOMS dashboard. BestOMS provides inventory access in real time, so when a product is returned to inventory the return information is immediately available and linked to the original order, so you can provide a timely response to your customer’s request for a refund or credit.

Speed Matters

FDC’s Returns Team is dedicated to quickly processing product returns the same day we receive them.  One of the primary reasons for product returns is customer choice, and the best way to maintain customer satisfaction in these instances is to simply accept and process the return. Our team inspects each product return, evaluating its suitability for adding back into inventory, per your instructions. Incases where a product is opened, damaged, or otherwise not able to be re-stocked, Fulfillment.com has systems in place for proper recycling, disposition, or shipping of the product back to your vendor based on client preferences. FDC’s comprehensive recycling program for these types of non-stockable returned products furthermore allows our customers to distinguish themselves as environmentally responsible.

FDC’s product management and operational efficiencies help reduce rates for the other top product return reasons: inferior quality, delivery delays or product backlogs, error in order fulfillment, and misrepresentation of product. Since catalog and Internet sales orders are returned at a higher frequency than sales through standard brick and mortar distribution channels, FDC’s solid returns process ensures that our clients minimize loss of revenue and product stock on ecommerce sales. If you are looking for ways to save time and money, search no further than Fulfillment.com.