Return Label in the Box: Pros and Cons for E-commerce

It certainly must have happened to you and you won’t have taken it well. A customer buys on your e-commerce and after a few days, when you picture him satisfied with his product, he contacts you because something went wrong.

A wrong size, an unforeseen event that damaged the item during shipment, a different colour than expected.

And so you find yourself having to manage a return and you seriously risk losing your customer forever. Or receiving a negative review that will endanger all your efforts.

How can you prevent this problem and offer a positive post-purchase experience to your customer? With the prepaid return label.

That is  a label that you print, pack and ship with the order. In this way, the customer can manage the return independently.

How can you offer this solution? What are the pros and cons? In this article we tell you everything you need to know.

All the pros of the prepaid return label

Offering your e-commerce costumer an impeccable return service is the best way to transform a possible damage to you and your business into an opportunity.

Accepting his requests and preventing his complaints will make you unassailable, even if you sent the wrong item.

Let’s see in detail what are the advantages of providing the customer with the prepaid return label:

1. Convenience and attention to customer needs. Convenience both for you, since you are not forced to communicate complicated instructions to the client, and for the customer, who can do everything by himself. According to Forbes, creating an easy and transparent return policy is the only way for a brand owner to sustainably manage his business. The companies that send the return label along with the product, like Zalando, gained great credibility, because the customer wants to trust and be sure they can go back.
2. A powerful marketing tool. How many e-commerce businesses can boast such a useful service as a prepaid return label? Certainly not a lot, so it is easy to understand how giving this possibility can be a powerful marketing tool. Tell your client: “Do you know that if you do not receive the desired object you can return it very comfortably with our return label?”, will differentiate your business in a very positive way compared to your competitors.
3. Increase in checkout conversion rate and reduction of cart abandonment. Offering the customer the possibility of an easy, comfortable and safe return will increase the checkout conversion rate and reduce the cart abandonment. Simply, when people find themselves deciding whether to buy from you or not, they will have no doubts and you will no longer see the cart abandonment rate go up. Always remember to give space, on your site, to the service you offer. It is essential that potential customers know this right away, as they land on your home page.  In this way, they will remember it at the time of purchase.

When you decide to offer a prepaid return label, it’s not a bed of roses. Read on to find out the disadvantages you might face.

The 4 disadvantages of the prepaid return label

Now let’s see why offering the return label together with the shipped product is not always an advantage.

1. Higher return rate. It is true that with the return labels you will increase the conversion rate of your e-commerce, but you will also increase the return rate. The customer won’ have to face a thousand obstacles before returning an object and, in case of doubt, the return label will convince him to go ahead.
2. Lack of direct contact with the customer and loss of insight on the reason for the return. If the entire return procedure is entrusted to the customer, you may never know what went wrong. Instead, optimizing the whole process with a return automation software would allow you to understand the real motivation of your customer and improve your offer.
3. Hidden support costs. You properly packed the return label along with the purchased product. The customer receives the package, unpacks it and, paying attention only to the product, throws away everything else. That sweater he ordered, however, is the wrong size and s/he wants to return it, but in the meantime the return label is lost somewhere. Then he contacts you and in the end you are forced to waste precious time and send another one. A nice nuisance, don’t you think?
4. Contingencies in the management of the return. With the prepaid return label the entire return process is entrusted to the customer. But what if something goes wrong? If the customer has not read or understood the instructions on your return page, he may have doubts or problems returning the product to you. So make sure you adopt a return policy clear and easy to understand, even for those who have never returned an object.

As you have seen, there are many pros and cons when you offer a prepaid return label. You can reassure the customer and increase the conversion rate of your e-commerce, but you may also face problems, especially if you encounter a customer who wants to speculate on the return.

There is, however, a way to automate and easily manage the return process, saving time and offering your customers an outstanding post-purchase experience.

ShippyPro Easy Return: the best solution to manage your E-commerce returns

With ShippyPro Easy Return you can finally manage your e-commerce returns with confidence. You will stop wasting time printing the return labels and you will offer a safe and easy-to-use service. Here are all the benefits for your e-commerce:

• Manage returns easily: you can establish the price threshold beyond which give the possibility of making a return or for example indicate the States from which the return is accepted.

• Autonomous return request: by integrating ShippyPro Easy Return on your e-commerce, the customer can complete the return request independently, also indicating the reason, and you can decide whether to accept it or not.

• Print the return label: each customer can indicate the reason for the return and easily print the return label in one click.

• Return statistics: you can always keep the return statistics under control, in order to understand why customers are not satisfied and offer the best possible assistance.

In short, as you can see, all you have to do is integrate ShippyPro Easy Return on your e-commerce to enjoy all the advantages of the return label and forget the problems that may arise from a dissatisfied customer.

Turn your returns into new purchases with ShippyPro Easy Return. You will have no worries and plenty of time to sell!