It is festival season and there will be sales everywhere! India too has joined the cashless bandwagon and so millions of people will be purchasing online, it is a good thing BUT behind every silver lining stands a issue as well, many eCommerce owners are facing ‘Returns owes’, customers are returning back the goods for various reasons, and as per statistics about 5% to 25% of these returns are not genuine.
The problem becomes more severe when it is a COD transaction. As a cash on delivery option doesn’t even cover the shipping charges for a online store owner, so the loss is more.
For bigger guys like amazon, flipkart, snapdeal or ebay there isn’t much to lose as they are multi vendor stores and they earn via the commissions they make from these multi vendors. So it is the actual multi vendors who face the wrath of these customers.
Of course unfair reviews is another weapon the customers have in their hands, even for minor issues the store owners get a bad review. Customer is the king and they can’t do much about it BUT to face the competition and deliver better.
COD is a major attraction in countries like India where cashless era has just begun so this has to be continued for few more months and after that ofcourse the websites can afford to drop this payment method.
As Indians are more than willing to pay to via their credit cards.
Often returns happen due to damage in goods, and this can happen while shipping or in warehouse as well. So proper shipping methods and proper storing methods can help reduce the returns.
A good customer service can work our well in the long run, in the hurry of delivering a order often we tend to forget the size or the color of the product that is being ordered and a wrong product gets delivered after a week or so and this results in a return of the product plus a bad review!
So providing a good customer service can help a lot, call it quality check or customer service it is all about taking care of your customer.