Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, it’s time to start thinking about how to manage your Black Friday returns.
1 in every 3 customers returns what they buy on Black Friday, with around 30 million unwanted products being sent back each year. For eCommerce stores, this sudden spike in returns can be a major logistical and business challenge.
Use these tips to manage your eCommerce Black Friday returns more efficiently and minimize the impact on your bottom line.
How to Manage eCommerce Returns after Black Friday and Cyber Monday
What can you do to manage all of your eCommerce Black Friday returns efficiently and without too much stress? Here are a few tips:
Analyze Sales Data
Analyzing your sales data from Black Friday and Cyber Monday can help you better manage your product returns.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales data helps you understand which products are most in demand and which get returned most frequently. By tracking this data, you can determine which products are most popular and identify any trends. This information can help you plan your inventory and marketing to maximize future sales.
Looking over your sales data can provide important insights into your customers’ needs and wants. This, in turn, can help you improve your products and services.
Stay ahead of the competition and keep your business thriving by analyzing your customers and sales patterns.
Automate Your Returns
The best way to manage the influx of returns that comes after eCommerce Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to automate your returns process. This will help you to keep track of returns and ensure that they are processed quickly and efficiently.
Automate your returns by implementing a returns management system that will automate the return process from start to finish.
Integrate your returns system with your chosen shipping providers to ship and exchange products; this can save you time and money and help you easily keep track of your return shipments.
By automating your eCommerce returns, you can speed up the return process and make it more efficient, which saves you time and money and helps keep your customers happy.
Offer Self-Service Returns
Offering self-service returns with a branded return portal is a great way to streamline your returns process and provide a great customer experience. By enabling customers to initiate their own returns and track their progress, you can reduce the burden on your customer service team and improve customer satisfaction.
Self-service returns also have the added benefit of reducing return processing time, as customers can enter all the necessary information themselves and you can set up automation rules to speed up the process even more. This can be a huge time-saver, especially during peak return seasons such as after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
If you’re not already offering self-service returns, now is a great time to start. Your customers will appreciate the convenience and you’ll be able to free up your team to focus on other tasks.
Follow Up With Customers
While it can be easy to get caught up in the post-holiday sales frenzy, it’s important to remember to follow up with your customers after they’ve made a purchase.
Sending a “thank you” email is a great way to show your appreciation for your customers’ business. While it may not result directly in another sale, it can make customers think positively about your brand – which could lead to new sales in the future.
You can also use this opportunity to ask for feedback or offer a coupon for their next purchase. If you offer excellent customer service, your customers will be more likely to come back the next time they need something.
Simple, automated “thank you” emails have double the open rate of dedicated marketing emails. “Thank you” emails are about more than just thanking customers for their purchase – they’re about creating a customer experience that keeps them coming back.
Take the time to reach out to customers after they’ve done business with you to build customer relationships and ensure customer satisfaction.
Turn Refunds into Exchanges
Product exchanges are a great way to keep your customers happy and keep your return rate low. Encourage customers to request an exchange instead of a refund after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Offer discounts or other incentives for exchanging products to encourage customers to request an exchange instead of a refund. This can help to reduce your refund rate and improve customer satisfaction.
Exchange incentives can take many forms, such as offering a discount on the exchanged item, giving store credit that can be used for future purchases, or providing free shipping on exchanges. Whatever form the incentives take, they should be designed to make the exchange process as smooth and easy as possible for your customers.
Encourage product exchanges to show that you are committed to customer satisfaction and that you are willing to go the extra mile to make sure your customers are happy.
Look Ahead to the December Shopping Holidays
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the busiest shopping days of the year, the holiday shopping season is far from over.
As the winter holidays approach, now is the time to reflect on the successes of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and use those profits to invest in attracting even more customers in December.
Analyze your sales data and Black Friday returns to identify what strategies worked well and replicate them to drive even more success.
Many time-consuming tasks associated with product returns can be automated with software like ReturnGO. This holiday season, automate your returns process to free up your time and set your business up for a successful end to the year.
