brands are ready to send back their returns tech

Returns threaten the retail industry. Just ask the NRF, which estimates $890 billion in returns in 2024. Ouch.

Brands want to give customers a great end-to-end experience by providing free returns, but too often, the offer comes with issues. Customers order more than they need and return what they don’t want. Returns are a nightmare to manage, as it’s usually cheaper to throw away a return than repackage it and put it back on shelves. It’s no wonder technology has been built to streamline the situation.

Unfortunately, the tech available to brands doesn’t seem to be helping. Brand leaders tell us that investments in mainstream returns software are barely worth it. Brands note that returns platforms are pricey, service is dismal, and some delays hurt customer relationships.

This holiday returns season should be focused on minimizing pain and expenses and maintaining relationships with loyal and valuable customers. When returns tech doesn’t cut it, communication can ease the pain. Consumers want to know what’s up with their package, so helping them track their return, making sure it’s obvious where they can drop it off, and being upfront about the cost can all be beneficial tactics when your returns platform is lacking.

Besides streamlining customer communication around returns, once the holiday season is over, it might be time to upgrade to a returns platform that will actually deliver ROI next year. 

Here’s what brand leaders have to say about their returns tech:

"Well, for returns we're using Loop. And I'd probably give them a score of five. In terms of what they do, I think from a returns perspective, they offer decent customer experience… I think there are more innovative platforms on the market that do an equal or better job for the same price point or possibly even better, like Happy Returns. Although, they got bought and sold two or three times, which to me is always a red flag. So for now, I think I'm stuck with Loop but returns are something that I would like a better solution."

DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS
$1B-10B BRAND PORTFOLIO COMPANY

"Narvar is an interesting one. So, I'm unimpressed with them, they've been around a long time and they offer a lot of different solutions. So, they're offering, obviously return communications, confirmations, they have a whole service of suites that they do. But I feel like they got too big for what their account service levels can offer. We had tremendous delays and challenges with them and frankly they're too expensive and they're not great. So, there are other competitors out there that were just a little bit, they couldn't do everything that we needed but I know that we will move away from them when some of the other competitors in that landscape are a little bit further along."

VP, OPERATIONS
$100M-500M FOOTWEAR RETAILER

"Loop is probably a six. It does the job. I think, again, they're picking up some stuff from an international perspective shortly on their roadmap, so that'll be nice for us. We've got a pretty poor international return and exchange platform right now, so that will be good. It just doesn't feel as feature-rich. It feels like one of those things that has a product manager that's never done the thing that they're managing from a product perspective, where it's like it works. But it feels like if they could just... I don't know. If they'd have one year of someone roadmapping out and doing some customer surveys about what people need. They'd have an amazing product, which is where it was when it first started. They just haven't kept that philosophy up."

VP, OPERATIONS
$1M-10M SPORTSWEAR BRAND

"We use Narvar for two different things. I'll just give a general score for all and all. Not happy with them so I would say a two… We moved to them when we were on Returnly and Returnly shut down so that was a quick decision, not super happy… So my customer service team is not the most tech-savvy. With Returnly, they were able to just get a quick snapshot of what's going on, and now Narvar is asking my team more to help pull information for them, which is just at the end of the day, it's not helping anyone. Our parent company, for the most part, they're all using ReturnLogic so we're going to be moving to ReturnLogic."

DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS
$10M-100M COSMETICS GROUP