How Two Boxes effortlessly improves your ecommerce ecosystem

Your ecommerce operation does much more than sell products. From production to post-purchase, there are many steps involved in delivering a best-in-class brand experience.

One of the most overlooked steps? Returns processing.

Returns often take a back seat to sales and marketing — to the detriment of customer profitability. A poor experience at this stage can leave your brand scrambling in the face of customer complaints and backlogged returns.

A fully realized customer journey requires technology that supports your entire supply chain, including returns. Two Boxes helps streamline returns from warehouse receipt to back-to-stock, transforming them into a competitive advantage.

Ecommerce tech stacks that overlook returns processing limit your ability to scale

Typical ecommerce tools only address the basic functions of an online business:

Inventory management tracks stock levels to keep products available for purchase.
Payment processing enables secure transactions for a smooth checkout process.
Fulfillment manages logistics and shipping for each placed order.
Customer service provides product support and handles any inquiries or issues.

Notice a conspicuous absence?

It’s no wonder brands often overlook the importance of returns when ecommerce tools fail to prioritize them in the first place. Instead, brands usually opt to invest in sales and marketing. But if they successfully scale with that investment, returns will also increase. In other words, omitting a comprehensive returns solution will leave you fighting against manual processes, inconsistent data, and inefficient returns — all at the same scale as your brand growth.

Manual processes

Most brands manage returns with external partners like 3PLs and return merchandise authorization (RMA) providers. But there’s a snag: these partners often don’t have systems in place to address complex SOPs and vague returns guidelines. The lack of clarity forces brands to implement manual processes as stopgaps. These can range from data entry to subjective inspections of returned items to updating inventory by hand.

These shortsighted, reactionary responses introduce human error, creating further returns process delays. When Kyle Hency was CEO of Chubbies, he once visited their 3PL partner and watched their returns processing team thumbing through a thick binder of SOPs as they tried to figure out how to process returns for Chubbies’ 4,000 styles.

The process was so manual that there was no opportunity for efficiency improvements over time. It also opened the door for human error like marking a product as damaged when it could actually be repaired and sold for a profit.

Inconsistent data

Fragmented processes also produce inconsistent or incomplete data, which can harm company learnings down the line. A lack of comprehensive data prevents you from spotting opportunities for quality improvement and patterns in returns. These issues fall into three categories:

Fraud: When the returns box is empty. This is important to note so you don’t issue a refund.
Abuse: A used and harmed product. It’s critical to have data on this so you don’t issue a refund or resell the product.
Quality defects: Problems with the item in the box. Collecting data on this allows you to make quality improvements and run more inspections of your goods.

Failing to collect data on these categories is a significant roadblock to improving customer retention and honing the brand’s reputation.

For example, one of Two Boxes’ customers experienced consistent returns due to a quality defect: faulty zippers. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t have had a way to collect and analyze the data to detect the systemic issue. But, with Two Boxes, they identified the quality defect early on so the customer could take the necessary steps to ensure they fixed the production issue.

Inefficient returns

Inefficient, decentralized returns processing has a fundamental problem: it increases complexity for customers and companies. When remedied, more straightforward returns solutions make brands more efficient and satisfy customers thanks to improved:

Sustainability: When returned items are more easily brought back into stock, they don’t have to donate or discard as many pieces.
Profit margins: The ability to resell undamaged returns more consistently brings in more cash. Catching systemic product issues earlier also ensures that brands don’t lose out on profit over time.
Employee experience: An efficient system eliminates sporadic manual returns processes that bog down team members’ workdays and add useless frustration.
Faster refunds: Efficient returns processing also means shoppers receive refunds more quickly. The fewer days customers spend waiting, the better they’ll feel about your brand, which bolsters the brand experience and drives repeat business.

Brands need a stronger solution for returns processing

To remedy all of these issues as your brand grows, an RMA or 3PL may not be enough to handle increased return volumes and maintain quality standards. Your RMA simply notifies you when customers initiate refunds. In contrast, a return processing solution (RPS) handles the return end-to-end with:

Real-time tracking (through companies like Rocket Shippers) offers current, accurate data that eases staff scheduling and helps you spot return trends as quickly as possible.
Fraudulent returns detection monitors return data for indications that something’s off — in a unified dashboard.
High-priority return identification improves customer service by optimizing returns inventory by prioritizing returns with the highest revenue potential.

All of this adds up to help you reclaim revenue that would’ve otherwise been lost.

Two Boxes fits seamlessly into your ecommerce ecosystem

Efficient returns management saves valuable time and labor. Two Boxes’ superior returns processing gets more inventory back into stock faster so you can drive new profits.

Two Boxes integrates with your existing ecommerce tech stack to speed up returns processing and reduce operational bottlenecks — without changing systems and without disruption. Our RPS solution works with RMAs, 3PLs, and other logistics solutions, no problem.

By collecting returns data throughout the returns process, including comprehensive warehouse KPIs, Two Boxes empowers you to improve supply chain performance.

Take it from Thursday Boots, a footwear brand that needed accurate fulfillment to resell its high-quality products. Using Two Boxes eliminated subjectivity from their returns for faster, accurate processing. This decreased returns-related customer inquiries and boosted returns efficiency by 300%.