Common Reasons for Customer Sales Return
There are many reasons why customers return items. Sales Return doesn’t necessarily mean that the items your company is selling are sub-standard; Sales return reasons may vary from your product marketing, delivery process, market trend, customer perception and many more.
Wrong Item Received
Of course, nobody will get something they do not want or need. Wrong item received doesn’t only pertain to a customer receiving a completely different product from the one he/she originally ordered, but it can also mean that the customer received a different color, size, or texture (or any other attribute).
This happens because of two main reasons:
1. The website or sales process is chaotic
The data on the website is not aligned on the data on the internal sales and inventory management which leads to confusion. (e.g. product codes on the website are different from the product codes in the inventory management)
2. Logistics tagging/process is not streamlined
The system being used might be difficult to use for your staff and produces incorrect barcodes, or the staff might have placed wrong codes to the product resulting to wrong product picking and delivered items to the customers.
Damaged Upon Delivery
Damaged upon delivery is when products arrived and received by customers with damages (e.g. opened package, tapped holes, deformed packaging/item and the like).
This happens on three main reasons:
1. The stacking and handling are incorrect
The delivery staff could have been stacking the items incorrectly and trying to overload the space in the truck to minimize the effort of going back to the main warehouse to load again resulting in breakage.
2. Packaging is insufficient
Fragile items must come up with sufficient packaging to prevent breakage when stacked or when on-transit to the customer.
3. The delivery staff doesn’t care
Sometimes items don’t break because of the packaging or because of incorrect stacking, but sometimes might be because of staff dropping them carelessly at the front door of the customer.
Item is not the same as what’s on the catalog
Everyone hates the feeling that they have been deceived, especially in this era of mass information. It is very important to capture the sweet balance of correct photoshop edit and actual product look.
Deception/incorrect marketing practices may lead to low site ratings/reviews and may spread like wildfire that will prevent future customers from transacting on your site.
Item is phased–out / recalled by the company
This scenario typically happens on electronic products. Due to the fast pace of digital and hardware development, electronics are nowadays easily left out because some components have been upgraded, and the electronics do not work properly anymore. Another one would be the manufacturer recalling the products due to programming defects or hardware errors. Product recall is the last resort of companies to alleviate damage to their brand and reputation.