How a Good Return Experience Encourages Customers to Purchase Again

Majorly, customers come back for repeat purchases when they receive a good purchase experience alongside receiving a good quality product.

Across the variety of industries, retaining current customers seems to be difficult but is more profitable than acquiring a new customer.

Increasing sales with the passing time cannot be done only by focusing on new customers but by ensuring that you get more purchase orders from your existing customers as well.

According to a survey conducted by Marketing Matrix, the probability of selling something to new customers is only 5-10%, whereas the probability of selling something to the existing customers is 60-70%.

Importance of customer retention in eCommerce

Not all but some customers will become your best customers that will come back for repeat purchase, impressed by your products/services and the eCommerce shopping experience they had with you.

Customer retention is critical as it increases your customers’ lifetime value and helps you to improve the revenue.

Customer return experience helps a lot to build an amazing relationship with your customers when they were not so impressed with your product, forcing them to return it. 

The return period is a critical time for customers as well, their trust is shaken up. Now they will not easily invest their money in your brand again.

For their invested valuable money, give them a valuable experience in exchange.

How can an improved return experience increase repeat purchases?

Returns have become an ignored plague in the growing eCommerce industry. But no worries, every return problem of D2C eCommerce brands can be solved with a premium solution.

Currently, the e-commerce industry is receiving returns against 30% of the total online purchases, which makes it worth $600 billion.

The ease of returning products has definitely increased the number of return requests, considering that the biggest issues of the industry are the high volume of return orders, their costing, and their on-time resolution.

These return numbers are difficult to decrease, they will not easily go down. But, you can take up this opportunity to turn these customers into repeat customers.

Give them the best return experience they would ever have. An improved return eCommerce experience has a lot to say for itself than you think.

Whether it is customers’ overall branded experience or ecommerce return experience, it surely matters. Because not intentionally but somehow you have disappointed your customer, some or the other way that they had to return their purchased product.

You cannot undo it, but you can definitely ensure that they shall not have any more bad experiences with you.

You can start with making their ecommerce return experience memorable!

1. Memorable return experience

You can make your customers’ return journey memorable at every single step by creating a simple and easier process of return.

• Making clear visibility of the return page on your eCommerce store.
• Hassle-free log-in to return a product (not too many details asked).
• Ask for the return reason, allow them to share images if they want to (do not make it mandatory in every case).
• For exchange, clearly mention the available and out-of-stock variants of the products. Making it super easy for the customer to select the desired variant.
• For refund, provide all the available payment methods like UPI, Credit/Debit Card, direct bank account transfer, Paytm, Paypal, etc.
• Send regular updates to your customers regarding their return such as expected pick-up for exchange, expected delivery of the exchanged product, expected time for a refund, refund initiated, etc.

2. Ask about their return experience

After the return journey is complete, ask your customers for feedback on their return experience. Take follow-ups with customers after a few days of their return.

Ask them,

• Was their issue successfully resolved?
• Are they happy with their purchase/return?
• If there was any problem they faced?
• Would they like to rate their return experience? (If yes, then how much on the scale of 1-10.)

The questions can be asked over mail, message, or IVR call.

You can use this feedback to improve your services and enhance the customers’ branded experience based on the difficulty they faced (if any).

3. Use special promotions and offers

Send your customers a special promotional offer or discount. Use this return event to make them feel extra special. 

You can’t take this return event lightly as you will not only lose these customers permanently but will invite a bitter word-of-mouth through them, remember the social media game is very strong.

Give your customers incentives and turn their negative experiences into positive ecommerce experience that too, a memorable one.

4. Treat customers with return orders, royally

Use these return event windows to convert disappointed customers into loyal customers. Make sure to treat them royally.

Provide them with some exclusive discounts. You can even customize the discounts based on their previous customer points, membership levels, or spending.

Give them discounts, coupons, gift cards for their next purchase, or you can issue a simple gift or personalized gift on their next purchase.

Try and convince these customers for the next purchase, they are more likely to become loyal customers as they have had a good branded experience with you.

5. Improve product and services regularly

Use your return data to reduce future returns. Regularly optimize your products and services.

Return reasons can be of real help to fix many things such as issues with the sizing chart, color variants, product images, product description, etc.

Look at the feedback carefully and update the features which are increasing your return rate along with other necessary changes.

The earlier you make the changes, the less time it will be the time to reduce the return rate.

Conclusion

Customers’ return journey leaves its impact on both customers and your brand. Also, the repeat purchase is interrelated with their experience in eCommerce returns.

See it like this, they already had a disappointing experience with your brand so that they had to return the purchased product. Now there exist only two possibilities. One, they will be happy with your gestures and will repeat the purchase otherwise they will hate your brand and never shop with you again.

So, when you have a possibility to turn them into a repeat customer, make it a better use and make them your loyal customers. Provide them such extraordinary eCommerce return experience that they shall intent to purchase again with you.

Turn your power back by transforming the return into profit!