It’s no secret that customers hate to pay to return things that they’ve bought online and have decided that they don’t want. If you run an e-commerce store and are currently charging for customers to return their items, you could actually be better off by instead adopting a smart returns policy and offering free of charge returns of unwanted items to your shoppers. When you offer free returns to your customers, your company has a better method of tracking data in order to improve in the future, and most importantly, you will be able to provide a much better quality of customer service.

Keeping Customers Satisfied

When you run an e-commerce store, customer satisfaction is absolutely vital. Without customers, your store would not be able to run, therefore it is of utmost importance that you do whatever possible to ensure that your customers are happy with the service that they have been provided with and keep coming back for more. Unfortunately, when you charge for returns, you place your customers in a difficult position where they can either keep an item that they don’t like or is wrong, or pay out of their own pocket to return it. This can soon earn your company a bad reputation, and some customers may not buy from your store again due to this.

Tracking Mistakes

When you charge for returns, there’s a high likelihood that customers simply won’t bother returning the item and will instead sell it on or try to do something with it themselves and put it to use, even if it wasn’t suitable. However, with almost thirty percent of returned items due to the wrong item being shipped and just over twenty percent of returns due to damage, this can be damaging for your company as you have no way of tracking your items and understanding what is going wrong when it comes to customer returns. When you do not charge your customers to return any faulty, damaged or unsuitable items, you will be able to get all the details from them as to why they are returning a particular item, making it easier for you to track issues and work on improving them to keep your customers satisfied.

A Smart Return Policy Pays Off

Research carried out at Washington and Lee University about the effectiveness of offering free returns to customers found that it really does pay off. The research found that customers who had had to foot the bill for their own returns with particular retailers dramatically reduced the amount of purchases that they made from them in the future, whilst those who were offered free returns did the complete opposite, with free returns enticing customers to spend anything from 160-450% more with that retailer in the future. By having a smart return policy in place, you can actually make more money!

Nobody likes to pay to return stuff that they don’t want, and charging your customers to return items could actually be costing you! Taking a smart approach and offering free returns is not only great for your customers, but also for your business.