In the past few years, direct-to-customer (D2C) companies have made their presence felt loud and clear. Going by the chatter online and reports in the media, everyone has an opinion on D2C brands. While a lot of people absolutely love buying from D2C brands, there are a few who love to hate them.
Whatever the case, one thing is sure – they are the talk of the town. On the other hand, D2C companies are loving the attention and are regularly upgrading themselves to ensure they offer good customer experience and top-of-the-line products.
However, what is quite heartbreaking for them is customers putting up a request to return a product after purchasing it.
Interesting Read: Learn How To Sell on Amazon With This Detailed Guide
If you are a founder who runs a D2C company and is looking to reduce your return volume, this article will list out practical suggestions that might help you.
Before jumping right in, let’s first see if there are more reasons for your D2C company to face returns, other than customers initiating it.
Why do D2C brands have to deal with returns?
A large chunk of returns that D2C brands face can be traced back to customers. However, there are other reasons as well why products return to the origin address after getting shipped.
- Wrong address: Very often customers put the wrong address or pin code due to which the delivery company has to bring the package back to the warehouse or the origin.
- Refusal to accept the product: This might sound like a made-up reason, but it’s very much true. Very often customers who choose to pay cash on delivery, straight out refuse to accept the order or don’t open the door. This usually happens if they bought the product on impulse and later realise they don’t want it as much.
- Bulk order: Since returns have become so common, customers tend to buy different sizes or colours of the same product to see which one fits or looks better. Once they decide, they place a return request for the rest of the products.
- Wrong product: This is one of the most common reasons for returns. Your customers will return the product if they receive a product that is not what they bought. It can either be of the wrong size, colour, material, or even a totally different product.
- Broken in transit: Products that need to be handled with care sometimes face wear and tear. In several cases, products like furniture or glass items break during transit. Customers will understandably return such products.
Three ways D2C brands can reduce returns
- Clear product description and multiple images
One reason your customers might be returning products is they didn’t have clear product descriptions or saw enough pictures from all angles before buying. Since they think they can anyway return the product if they don’t like it, they go ahead and purchase it even if they don’t fully know if this is what they are looking for.
So, the first thing you should look at fixing is your product pages.
Do your product pages have detailed information about the product? Have you uploaded enough pictures and at least a video showing how the product works? Do you have clear measurements of the product and instructions for customers to guide them on how to measure their body or feet size?
If not, then it’s quite important that you enable these on all the product pages.
Interesting Read: Elevate Your D2C Brand with Paytm Payment Gateway
In addition to these, you should also include warnings, in case you are selling electronic items or anything else that requires customers to be aware of how not to use the product. You can also add information about how to increase the life of the product. For example, if you are selling cast iron pans or skillets, include tips on their usage and cleaning procedures.
- Improve delivery package
You should ideally spend a good amount of time researching and finalising the type of packaging your product needs for safe delivery. If your product is uniquely shaped or is made up of a material that can easily break or get damaged due to change in temperature, manual pressure, etc, design packaging keeping these points in mind.
When customers place return requests because the product was damaged in transit, you not only have to face the extra charges for return delivery but also stand to lose customers’ confidence in your brand.
If you sell more than one type of product, customise the packaging based on the product instead of using the same type of packing material for all products.
- Proof of damage
As a D2C brand that wants to reduce returns, you should seek to strike a balance between letting customers return products for genuine reasons and those who exploit the return facility for the sake of it.
First of all, you should have a long and detailed return policy mentioned on the website and every product page. It should mention how the return works, when and for what reasons customers can place return requests, etc. Your return policy language should be simple and clear, leaving no room for doubt.
Once a customer places a return request, ask for a picture of the product that shows the damage or any other reason for return such as the wrong size or colour. Process return of only those products that pass the return policy rules.
How Paytm Payment Gateway can fast-pace refunds
The above-mentioned tips can help you control return requests, but it’s almost impossible to stop them. It has now become a part and parcel of online shopping and selling.
The other very important aspect related to returns is refunding the money to the customer if you have accepted payment digitally.
Interesting Read: Better Refund Processes with Paytm Payment Gateway
Timely refund plays a big part in shaping customer experience with a D2C brand. How quickly you can process and credit the money back into the customer’s account can determine whether the customer is going to shop from you or not.
Paytm Payment Gateway can process refunds to your customers instantly. Once you integrate Paytm Payment Gateway into your e-commerce you can start issuing refunds when needed within minutes.
You can either do this from the dashboard or Paytm for Business app. Both Paytm Wallet and Paytm Postpaid are equipped with instant refunds.
How does Paytm Instant Refunds work?
If your customer has paid online using either Paytm Wallet or Paytm Postpaid, you can use Paytm dashboard to instantly refund the money to your customer. Alternatively, if the transaction was done via debit or credit card, UPI, or net banking, you need to follow the same procedure and the refund will be done within a couple of minutes.
Here is how the refund process works:
- Either you or the customer will have to raise the refund request
- If the transaction is via Paytm Wallet or Paytm Postpaid, the refund is done instantly. For other modes, Paytm will check their eligibility.
- Once the eligibility of the payment method is cleared, the user can either enter their bank account details or choose a pre-saved account/wallet to transfer the money into.
- Paytm will validate the bank account and return an asset token for reference.
- Our API then activates the refund using this token and the amount is credited to the customer’s account.
- Paytm posts the complete information to the merchant’s callback URL for easy tracking via Success Refund Webhook or Refund Status API.
Conclusion
Reducing returns and expediting refunds are the two very important aspects of running a successful D2C company. One will ensure you don’t lose revenue on products that are already sold, while another helps you close legit returns quickly and in turn gain customer loyalty.
Paytm Payment Gateway can actively enable your D2C platform with the latter.
