Overcoming the Reverse logistics challenge

How online retailers are turning reverse logistics challenges into competitive advantages and new revenue streams
In the cancellations and returns section on its website, e-commerce poster boy Flipkart says, "We want you to have an absolutely headache-free shopping experienceIn case there is an issue with the product you have received, our Free & Easy Returns promise has got you covered." On its part, lifestyle products portal Jabong.com touts a "30-day no questions asked return policy." The concerned section on the website says, "Though we strive to give you a great customer experience each time you shop with us, if at all you are not 100 per cent satisfied with your purchase, you can return your order for a full refund of paid price." Snapdeal.com, which describes itself as India's favourite online mall, also guarantees a full refund if a customer is not satisfied with a product. The website claims, "Guaranteed resolution of complaints within a maximum of 30 days/Full refund if not resolved." Get the drift? If attracting consumers to pay up for a product they could neither touch nor feel was the biggest task in the first phase of the industry's growth, handling product exchanges and returns is emerging as the next battlefront of e-commerce companies in India. It is easy to see how easy return can offer an e-commerce site a strategic advantage: The two windows open to customers to get a feel of an e-commerce brand are the website interface and the order fulfilment process. If customers see there is something missing in either of these, chances are they will never get back for a repeat purchase. Needless to say, with very differentiation in terms of products on offer and customer interfaces, e-commerce sites are bending over backwards to make sure consumers are at ease even when they revoke an order or send back a purchase. This is a particularly big headache for lifestyle products companies. "The industry average would be under 20 per cent but the return rate can be as high as 60 per cent in the case of fashion apparel," says Devangshu Dutta, chief executive officer, Third Eyesight. "In categories where products are more or less standardised, such as, books and DVDs, returns are low-may be in the 7 per cent range," he adds. Like with everything else, it is easy to claim you have a great return policy but it is difficult to pull it off without a hitch. To be fair, the whole process of return management can leave you in a daze. First, reverse logistics is much more than just management of product returns. It involves putting together checks that minimise the number or possibility of returns, disposal, gatekeeping as well as all other supply chain issues after the sale of a product. "In 70 per cent of the cases, the cost to process the return (pick up, ship back, depreciation, refurbishment) can be higher than the value of the product," says Hitendra Chaturvedi, founder & CEO, Green Dust, a pioneer in reverse logistics. Now look at the kind of imponderables it entails. The uncertainty regarding the kind or quality of return, the generation time or the distribution of the reverse logistics makes it difficult to put it down to a routine. Also, the scale benefits of storage and transportation would not apply to returns/exchange due to the random and sporadic nature of product transfer. Third is the problem of cash flow. If cash on delivery (COD) has made life easier for customers, it has also added to the misery of merchants in case of a return. The problem is that the COD system creates a delay in a payment to go through. Courier companies generally hold the money for two weeks, which means the e-commerce company has to restock inventory before the cash from its last sale has arrived. Then there is the logistics fee. Major logistics companies charge the e-commerce firm a transaction fee (Rs 50) plus a percentage of the amount (about 1 per cent) collected. Some courier company also charges an extra Rs 50 to Rs 100 as return fees to ship the merchandise back to the point of origin.

You can imagine the plight of merchants. Now let's look at the options available to e-commerce companies by way of managing the whole process efficiently and keeping the costs down. Mix and match Quite simply, there could be two kinds of returns in the e-commerce space: first is the pre-payment return. This is peculiar to cash on delivery and happens when the customer rejects the item delivered to her either because she has changed her mind or she no longer wants it or something like that. Indeed, industry analysts say the COD payment model has very high pre-delivery return rates. "Because of COD, the refusal rate at the door-step are anywhere between 10 and 15 per cent depending on the category; books have less and apparel have higher," says Sanjiv Kathuria, co-founder & CEO, DotZot, an e-retail logistics specialist from DTDC. Granted, the model, pioneered by Flipkart, actually led to the take-off of e-commerce in India and remains the more popular payment option to this day, but the high return rate has led players to really think hard about the way out. And not just returns; a COD transaction costs more as we explained earlier. Little wonder, companies like Myntra and Zivame are now charging for COD orders in long-tail locations where they deliver via third party logistics companies. Also, most companies now double check with the consumers before shipping COD orders. While e-commerce companies can't do much about COD, they can certainly work on reducing post-purchase returns. Easy return policies are de rigueur for categories like lifestyle and apparel due to non-standardisation of sizes and therefore, a higher possibility of returns. Online fashion and lifestyle retailer Myntra.com, which has returns in the range of 7-9 per cent, says close to 70 per cent of all product returns in the apparel and footwear category are due to size and fitment issues. Since Myntra manages its own inventory, it can also offer a quick and easy exchange policy. This gives shoppers an option to exchange an existing product for a different size without having to first return and then re-order the product. Myntra's delivery boy will come with the new product and take back the old one in the same visit, bringing down the logistics cost significantly. "Return is good cholesterol," says Ganesh Subramaniyam, COO, Myntra. "Customers really appreciate if the process is easy and if they get their money back quickly." Delhi-based lifestyle e-retailer Yebhi.com has a try-and-buy policy, where customers can order three products simultaneously, try them, buy one and return the rest. "The try-and-buy scheme has led to a rise in the return rates but it is an excellent customer acquisition and retention tool," says Nikhil Roongta, COO, Yebhi.com. Gurgaon-based e-retailer Jabong.com has a 30-day returns policy. However, it does not apply to innerwear, fragrances, beauty products, jewellery, socks, furniture, CDs, pens and books. It also offers drop ship for returns at certain locations. If customers in these locations want to return their products, they can visit the nearest drop-off point and leave the unwanted product. And yes, this is a free service. Mind you, this is the easy part; what makes things difficult is that e-commerce is now all-pervasive. With close to 60 per cent of the orders coming from Tier-II and Tier-III cities, handling distribution or collecting rejects from far-flung areas by in-house logistics arms sometimes don't justify the costs involved. In come specialist companies like Green Dust that pick up, bring back, refurbish and resell rejects and do a revenue share with the supplier. "Amazon outsources the whole return process in the US, this can be replicated in India as well," says Hitendra Chaturvedi of Green Dust, which handles reverse logistics for Homeshop18, Futurebazar.com and Flipkart (for north India); Amazon expected to hop on board soon. "Transportation companies are not reverse logistics experts," he says. "They are not efficient in managing returns.

The strategic nature of reverse logistics demands that one separates information from the product and inform relevant partners," says Chaturvedi. Not everyone is sold on the idea of outsourcing logistics. "The overall cost of return could be around 1 per cent of the total revenue of a company if managed in house. It can go up for companies that decide to outsource it," says Subramaniyam of Myntra. "Innovations like 'try and buy' are possible only if you manage your own logistics," says Roongta of Yebhi, which has a well-oiled in-house logistics team on the stand-by. "With an in-house team you can save 10-15 per cent on the return cost, if there is scale," says Praveen Sinha, co-founder & MD, Jabong.com. Perhaps to get that scale, Jabong.com now handles the logistics of a handful of other e-commerce companies through its in-house arm JaVAS. Some e-commerce companies use more than one logistics provider and may rope in a clutch of small mostly ecommerce focused firms that service a certain city/region - such as Ecom Express, Chhotu and Delhivery. Large logistics companies such as Bluedart, DTDC and Gati also have their dedicated services for online retailers. All these logistics companies have started offering special training to their staff to manage COD transactions. "Most vendors want third party logistics companies to collect the return as fast as possible so that they are able to bring it back into the inventory," says Vikas Anand, COO, DHL Supply Chain. "There is need to invest in mechanisms that reduce the turn-around time." To address the issue of delays in payment Dotzot collects value of the invoice at the time of delivery and remits it immediately by RTGS (or real time gross settlement system, set up, operated and maintained by the Reserve Bank of India to enable funds settlement on a real-time basis across RTGS enabled banks in the country; this is the fastest possible money transfer system through the banking channel) or NEFT (or national electronic funds transfer; funds transferred under NEFT are credited to the beneficiary's account on the same day). Take Gati. Around 70 per cent of the e-commerce deliveries for this firm are in cash. "Managing cash requires special skills," says Bablu Tewari, COO, GATI-KWE. "We have a dedicated customer care centre that monitors such return shipments and provides real time information to companies. We SMS the customer about shipping details and then the customer care centre follows up with them." Technology is a saviour for delivery companies. "We will install new technology for handling COD orders; we will equip the delivery boys with tablets so that customers can just enter their CVV numbers and pay through their credit cards. We are also planning pick and drop facilities in Tier-II/Tier-III cities,'' adds Tewari. In Tier-II and Tier-III cites, DHL Supply Chain is planning to set up walk-in centres with swipe card facility where customers can deposit returns or collect delivery. "Consolidating the shipment, instead of collecting from homes where every shipment is standalone shipment will cut both forward and return logistics costs," says DHL's Anand. To sum up, we will use a piece of advice from your moral science textbook: prevention is better than cure. The best way to cut return costs would be to bring the return rates down. Keep the visual representation as close to the real thing as possible. Don't give the buyer a chance to change her mind. If at all she does and there is a need to exchange or return, don't give her a reason to complain.

Managing returns efficiently

Expert Take
With falling margins and increasing return ratios, return management is a big challenge for e-commerce

companies. Once a product is returned, there is a very little chance of the same product getting back into saleable stocks directly without a refurbishment/service intervention. Moreover, the movements of a product (from mother warehouse of an e-commerce company to their regional warehouses and then to customer and now back from customer to the regional warehouse) mean more chances of physical damage. Little wonder, cost effectiveness is the top priority in an industry where the service/ refurbishment/reverse logistics spends are in the range of 5-6 per cent of the total revenues. Given this, the key levers of managing returns are: * Increase the customer acceptance probability of CoD products: There are many ways of increasing the acceptance ratios. One could separate the 'delivery' charges from the product price and collect the same from the customer whether the product is accepted or not. This is difficult to implement but is worth the effort to reduce those regular offenders who order and do not accept. Educate the customer on COD as a convenience offered against a customer managing the delivery on their own. * Prevention is better than cure: A small spend on quality checks can reduce the return numbers significantly. Also, consolidation on shipment routes is critical in reducing unnecessary movements of goods before a sale. * Ensure fast turnaround of returned units (from defective to salable stock): It is good to have an inhouse refurbishing service to avoid delays. * Develop an effective mechanism to identify returned goods: Categorise them as repair or scrap or sell as is and take quick action on the basis of this categorisation. There is no point spending a lot of money (labour plus parts plus resale efforts) on a returned product that has already lost some value in the process * Appoint outsourced return hubs: If the e-commerce player has a country-wide presence, this makes business sense; at the same time it requires enough volumes to make it interesting for the outsourced vendor * Make customer support operations efficient: Despite India being the largest player on the BPO map, in many cases there is a clear disconnect between the service issue generation/ reporting teams and resolution teams. For example, the call centre (which is the first team reporting/ recording customer issues) has no control on the logistics/service teams and hence cannot commit any concrete resolution, mostly. The lack of training and standardisation besides low visibility (due to non-standard systems and processes) make it worse. Most importantly, the lack of support from the leadership towards reverse logistics or after market service (AMS) results in poor customer satisfactions and cost escalations. Reverse logistics and AMS are seen as an obligation rather than an important part of the supply chain management. Players that have realised the importance of this aspect are thinking along the following lines: * Centralising support operations (call centre, field operations, logistics support), so that it becomes part of one value chain * Implementing AMS-specific CRM systems to provide visibility and control; a small spend here gives great opportunities to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost * Consolidating returns/reverse logistics operations. For instance, a Samsung has the same problem as that of an LG or a Panasonic. It is high time to consolidate returns like in the Western countries. P Sreevathsa

Founder & CEO, The Service Solutions

Questions:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Explain the Forward Logistics & Reverse Logistics systems for an online retailer. What are the challenges associated with Reverse Logistics for online retailers? How can these problems/challenges be prevented from occurring? Why is it important for online retailers to accept cancellations & returns from customers inspite of the challenges? 5. Describe the various ways through which online retailers are converting reverse logistics challenges into competitive advantages and new revenue streams. How sustainable are these solutions?