Product Return

This article mainly talks about product returns, this common phenomenon happen to every company or every customers. It is cannot be completely avoided. However, through this article, the product returns can be divided into two category: controllable returns and uncontrollable returns.

As for controllable returns, this happened mostly due to companies' or providers' responsibility, this kind of returns are often the result of products' poor quality, problems, errors or difficulty to use. And all this factors mentioned above can be eliminated by proper strategies; by improving the supply chain; by having a better market forecasting and so on. Here is a perfect example i have been through, last week I order a food deliver which is sweet pork on rice, on the "Campus food .com," but what I received after an hour waiting is 5 pieces chicken nuggets! I was kind of mad and I called the customer service to return this wrong order, of course the representive said it is a mistake and they will send the right order and give coupon on next order. Well, I am satisfied now with a free chicken nuggets, but unexpected, I never receive that right order, this is why I never order on that website anymore. As we can see that order mistake can be eliminated by accurate information transmission in logistics process. However, the uncontrollable returns are often inevitable. For instance, customer suddenly do not want the product anymore or find they order more than need, the return is happening. What company can do is that first eliminate the root causes of controllable returns, then set a good process for dealing with uncontrollable returns. Here comes five stages that a good product returns process should have.

First is receive, of course, without receiving anything, the following steps cannot be execute. The return product may be various type, find a proper way to receive the product have a huge impact on following steps.

Second is sort and stage. After receiving the return product, to be more efficiency, products should be sorted in order, this order can based on variety of product or how the product been returned, even the size or number of the product.

Third one is process. After sort the returning product, the product transfer to the process station to recorded the information on label and send to the administrative area.

The fourth one is analyze. I strongly believe this is the most important one in this whole process. The employees who is working on this part must be highly trained, must be familiar with every detail that product has. Their task is to analyze why our customer return this? Think what customer may think, if I were the customer why would I return this? This part will cause extremely impact on company's improvement.

The final step is support. In this part, all the decisions have been made, the returning product goes where it belongs, maybe back to the stock, back to