Top Return Management Services Myths—Busted

There was a time when if you bought a faulty or defective product, you either took it back to the store for a replacement, or you got your money back. Nowadays, returns are a bit more complex. There are policies, costs, and debates around which solutions are available for returned goods once they’ve come back.

With these return complexities come a lot of myths. If you have a return management solutions process going for your company, you have to know the truth to operate more efficiently.

Here are five return management services myths, busted and debunked, along with some advice on how to deal with them:

1. Your Time is Unlimited

It’s always a good idea to perform a quality job no matter what the fulfillment duty. But the idea that you can take as much time as you want to deal with a returned item is simply not true. For one, your clients will likely want you to act quickly to rectify the problem for what’s being returned. For another, if you want to get anything back from that returned item on the secondary market or through resale, delayed times will reduce their value.

2. Returned Items Become Garbage

Some retailers get their returned products back and then toss them in the trash. This is wasteful and denies a little-known fact: the item is returned not because it’s defective but because the client simply didn’t want it. So remember that you can still get a resale value for it if it’s in good shape without throwing away unnecessary revenue.

3. Return Management is not a Pressing Matter

Brushing return management off as a secondary job or assigning it to someone further down in the company hierarchy is not an advisable tactic. It’s best to have professionals address those concerns so that clients are kept happy and returned items are dealt with accordingly.

4. You Don’t Need Any New Technology

Not only should you not brush off return management as a secondary duty, you should also use the correct tools to achieve the best possible results. These days, retailers are upgrading their inventory and packaging processes with new technology to speed up work time while keeping tabs on stock numbers, jobs that need to be completed, and order histories. There’s no reason why return management should be any different. Your returns department should have the best software that can track an item’s status and any notes that the return management services professional has made. These days, a lot of dashboard technologies make the whole return endeavor easy to manage and access at any given moment.

5. There’s No Need for Customer Involvement

While it’s true that you want to be left to do your job properly without clients standing over your shoulder, excluding them from the return process shows an unbecoming level of disrespect. Having a fully accessible customer interface online, where customers can see their orders, labels, and logistics tracking is a great way to add an extra interface. Offering such a service to customers that have returned items is a great way to build solid client relations.

You want to deliver great services all around. You also want to be operating truthfully. Debunking return management solutions myths allows you to see what problems exist in your company, enabling you to improve it thereafter.

Need solutions to your product fulfillment problems? APS Fulfillment, Inc. has the knowledge and services to make your direct mail and product fulfillment ventures more successful. Contact APS Fulfillment, Inc. by e-mail at info@apsfulfillment.com, visit their web site at www.apsfulfillment.com, or phone at (954) 582-7450.