ReturnX
Designed and developed a scalable system that allowed 100s of online stores globally to change their mind about returns as being a loss to, returns as the last step to building a loyal customer to boost profitability.
ReturnX
Deliverables
ReturnX Branding, Product and Marketing
Year
2022-2023
Role
Product and Development
With the growing active stores in Shopify in 2022, Shopify still hadn’t figured out how to solve eCommerce returns. If you’re a small mom-n-pop store with only a few hundred orders a month, you can manually do it. But, if you’ve got volume, (I’m talking 10,000-100,000 orders a month: let’s call them GIANTS from now on) you’re in big trouble.
GIANTS like this have scaled evenly and already solved this problem with in-house tech to handle this. Can’t be said about fast-growing brands that don’t have the resources or the time to do so. Our now loyal customers were sometimes having teams of people handling this MANUALLY. Now that’s a beautiful problem to solve.
I first looked at the kind of stores and spoke to 100s of brands to figure out why customers are returning their products in the first place. 95% of these brands were apparel brands and 99% of the reasons they were returning was “it just didn’t fit” This could be because of the vast sizing disparity in the fashion world. A size Small in US is a Medium in India and a thousand other different sizes in different countries
Excel. Yes. Excel!
You’d be shocked to find how much manual involvement is involved in making a return. Here’s a manual process flowchart that we drew up.
They used to manage all communications either through email, phone calls, or the in-browser chat with customers.
This tedious process took about 10 mins per customer to solve.
how big was the problem actually?
To explain this problem better, let’s do some math!
Monthly orders: 5,000 (targeting growing stores)
Return rate (Avg.): 20%
Return orders: 1,000
Time spent: 10 mins/customer
10,000 mins wasted a month and that’s not even counting the refund amounts, all to give the customer a good experience. Just to put it into context that’s almost 1 week a month of continuously solving this issue.
How I planned to solve this
A solution built to be customisable to the brands that allow them to add custom dates to return according to their return policy, returns reasons, adding images, QC for return pickups, AI analytics for returns and the biggest of all, exchanges!
All this had to sync with your Shopify inventory and even create shipping labels, while also being SIMPLE.
The below flowchart looks complex but the time-savings through using a UI and complex rule-based operations makes the entire process only 5 mins! There would be 2 parts to the solution of ReturnX.
1. Returns Portal
The Returns Portal is a user-friendly, customizable webpage seamlessly integrated into the eCommerce store's existing website. It simplifies the returns experience for customers by offering clear, step-by-step guidance through the returns or exchange process. Specifically designed to promote product exchanges rather than direct refunds, our Returns Portal helps merchants reduce revenue losses by encouraging customers to choose alternative products, maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Key features:
Easy customization to match the merchant’s branding.
Streamlined user experience that guides customers intuitively.
Focused prompts encouraging exchanges to minimize refunds.
2. Merchant Portal
The Merchant Portal provides merchants with a centralized dashboard to efficiently manage all returns and exchanges. Integrated seamlessly with the merchant’s eCommerce backend, this intuitive interface allows merchants to effortlessly track, process, and analyze returns data, significantly reducing administrative workload and improving operational efficiency.
Key features:
Comprehensive overview and management of return requests.
Real-time updates and notifications.
Insights and analytics to better understand return patterns and customer behavior.
Simple integration with existing eCommerce systems for minimal disruption.
The ReturnX Customer Portal
