How to Automate E-commerce Returns & Exchanges in 5 Steps?

A customer’s return experience is one factor determining whether website visitors will convert to customers and if a customer will buy from you again. Return automation is a sure-shot way to give the best customer experience, and in turn, also helps you build trust with your customers and help you retain them.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to automate your returns and make them more efficient!

5 Ways to help you automate returns for your website!

1. Choose how customers will communicate with you:

When offering returns, the first step after drafting a good return policy is choosing whether you want customers to have in-order returns or a separate return page.

You don’t have to have a returns page for in-order returns, customers can easily return a product from the orders page.

Apart from this, you can also have a returns page where your customer can request a return, which you can approve automatically or manually depending on your chosen setting, upon which you can initiate pick-up from your courier partner.

Shipway gives its customers a return page for their website wherein they can edit the page title, and choose to have labels like order ID, email ID, and phone number. These can be edited, along with the color of the button and the final page can be previewed.

2. Streamline return-related backend operations with automation:

Your backend operations directly impact your returns.

Shipway’s return automation suite helps you manage the below functions to make your return operations smoother:

Return Window: You can define a return window, a time period beyond which returns will be denied.
Partial returns: If your customer ordered more than one item but wants to return not all but a few of them then you can allow them to make a partial return.
Refunds & Exchange: Allow customers to exchange products and provide quick and seamless refunds.
Product images: Ask customers to upload product images.
No pick-up return: Sometimes the logistics cost of getting a product back is more than the value of the product, in this case picking up a returned product is not a good move. To determine which product to pick and what not you can set a limit on the amount and if the cost is less than the given limit a refund is sent without a pickup.

3. Provide Seamless and fast refunds:

Seamless returns are a foolproof way to protect yourself from losing customer trust and any negative reviews. These in a way decide if a customer trusts you with their money enough to shop from you again.

Shipway helps make your refunds quick and seamless:

Choose the payment options through which the customers will get their refunds-store credits, bank accounts, UPI, Paytm, or gift cards.
You can integrate Cashfree with Shipway to Validate bank and UPI details from the customer
You can easily push back the status of returns on Shopify
If you do not want to offer refunds for certain products you can easily add their product tags and type.

All this would ensure a refund process that is not cumbersome for a customer and help build trust with customers which is bound to bring them back.

4. Allow Exchanges:

Returns are a bane to businesses as they lead to losses because of the reverse logistics cost, blocked inventories, and often damages to the returned product. An easy option to prevent most of this loss is to urge customers to exchange instead of return. But exchanges come with their own set of issues like unavailability of different sizes in the same product, customers wanting something else entirely and not the same product, etc.

In this situation, a partner like Shipway is all you need to simplify your exchanges as follows:

Shipway offers multiple options among which you can choose how would you like your customer’s product to be replaced
1. With the same product but different sizes
2. With another variant of the same product like color, prints, etc
3. With an entirely different product

You can also hide the variants that are out of stock or the pricey ones.

Like refunds, you can easily push back the status of exchanges orders on Shopify automatically
You can also select the products for which you do not want to allow exchanges.

In some cases the product that the customer wants is out of stock, in such cases, you can offer them store credit. This helps you in 2 ways- the customer’s trust is maintained and this makes sure that the customer will come back to you to buy another product.

5. Communicate with customers at every step:

The moment a customer receives a product and finds it unsatisfactory the anxiety starts and they always go to the worst-case scenario where they lose the money they spent and it continues till they finally receive a refund or exchange.

This is one reason to make returns easy for customers and always update them on every step of the return process.

With Shipway you can update customers about the return status at every step and also record the reason for the return for the future, this will alleviate the anxiety of your customers and give them a great experience that will bring them back to your store.

Conclusion

From this blog one thing you’ll learn is that inefficient and difficult returns are directly proportional to a bad customer experience which in turn leads to customer churn. In the day and age where businesses are chasing after retention automating your returns process should be at the top of your list if you want customers to come back.

Return automation has immense benefits apart from a great customer experience- it helps you save a ton of money, helps a smooth running inventory, and saves you a lot of time as well.

With Shipway’s all-in-one shipping solution, you can streamline your entire logistics and order fulfillment process and have a super smooth return process not just for you but also for your customers!