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Making Returns Resemble an F-14 Tomcat Flown By Abraham Maslow: How Top Gun and Introductory Psychology Can Optimize Your Returns Process

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To ecommerce retailers and their customers alike, returns and refunds are probably a sensitive topic. For retailers, they can be a nuisance – some guy way up in Duluth, Minnesota doesn’t like the product you sent him? Too bad, the customer’s always right, and it’s up to you to process his stuff and properly compensate him for the trouble. Never mind if the product was perfectly fine – as an internet retailer, you’re at the mercy of this guy’s every whim. For customers, they can be frustrating – these people over at Amazon sent you the wrong model of headphone? (You ordered the MH-47 and they sent you the MH-47u. Come on, everyone knows they have vastly different tonal qualities). Well they’d better deal with it. And fast. You get that people make mistakes, but get real; it is their job, after all. No matter your perspective on the matter – the customer, even if they’re wrong, does need to be taken care of. Arguing about the deservedness of this entitlement is pointless. It’s better for both parties if the retailer just does returns the right way, all the time – the customer will come back, and the retailer will probably save money in the process. But this “doing things the right way” isn’t necessarily a universally known, lucid set of steps written by some self-styled returns guru from retail Nirvana. It’s a process that needs to be managed on the individual level with nuance and intelligence and speed. The optimum returns process could be different from one internet retailer to the next. If you’ve read this far, presently you’re probably thinking, wow, this guy just put Top Gun in the title to catch my interest, and now he’s not even going to talk about it. What a jerk. My friend, that’s where you’re wrong. See, there’s one part of returns that customers seem to value more than any other. Like Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell feels about life, customers feel they need one thing when it comes to returns. That thing is speed.

“Speed. I feel the need – the need for speed!”
When asked about what they most value in the returns process, a majority of customers reportedly donned reflective Aviators and began quoting Top Gun – that’s how enthusiastic they were about how fast they get their stuff (not really, obviously, but the sentiment is probably true. Also, keep in mind that speed isn’t the lone priority here – if you send them their stuff (be it a refund or a replacement item) and you mess it up, it doesn’t matter how fast you got it there. So I guess the more accurate expression would be “I feel the need – the need for speed as long as every other aspect is perfect, too”. Remember that as you read the rest of this). So as a retailer, if you work to optimize any aspect of your returns process, this should be it. The speed of your returns process relies on many things – it’s like the Self-Actualization section of your standard hierarchy of needs you learned about in Psych 101: in order to have it, you’ve got to have all of the other needs met first. These lower sections of the pyramid include aspects such as information, automation, and hardware. All of these things must be optimized before you can expect your returns to reach their full potential – that is, to be efficient, accuate, and fast. So I’m here to help you figure out how to build your own Maslow’s Hierarchy…of Returns, and evolve your returns process into a self-actualized and efficient machine.

1. First is information. Having information about your returns is like meeting the physiological needs of a human body. Like a human needs air, food, water, and sleep, you need information about your returned products. Parameters like product number, order number, date ordered, date shipped, date returned, reason for return, and the actual status of the product are all very important for moving forward in the returns process. Many of these parameters are automatically recorded on websites like Amazon and eBay, but on other platforms (like if you have your own website, for example), they may not be. Ensure that you have a way to collect and organize all of this information about your returned products. If you know everything there is to know about a return, decisions about what to do with the product and how to refund the customer can be made very quickly. Once all this information is in place, the process can be made even quicker with the right hardware.

2. Having the right hardware is like meeting the safety needs of a human. Like a human needs shelter and the security of health, family, and resources, you need label printing, barcodes, scanners, and the right software to manage it all. This in itself is helpful, as, for example, scanning a return’s barcode, which automatically enters its information into your computer database or platform which manages it all is much easier than, say, opening the box the return came in, manually figuring out which product number and order number it is, and then entering all that and any other info about it into an excel spreadsheet. Having the right hardware will streamline your returns process significantly. It will also allow you to begin automating the whole thing. Just as you can’t use the hardware without the information, you can’t automate without the hardware.

3. Once the hardware is in place, automation is the next step to completing your own Hierarchy of Returns and hence achieving Self-Actualization, meeting your customers’, and, in spirit, Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s, “need[s] for speed”. Having automation is like a person having strong self-esteem, confidence, and respect for others – unless you have it, your returns process can’t truly reach its potential. Using the hardware you’ve already put in place, you can build automation into that hardware to further optimize the returns process. For instance, automation might allow you to receive a return, process all its information, and then send it through the appropriate channels (namely, to another customer or to the trash) all with very little manual work. The order info might be collected via barcode scanning, and that info might be auto-entered into your computer platform, sorted within that platform, and assigned a status (repackage, refund, etc), with the only human labor being the actual scanning of the barcode itself. This is just one example of how automation can further streamline your returns process.

There it is. Just follow the practices of Abraham Maslow and Maverick Mitchell and your returns process will become speedy and self-actualized. Just remember that it all builds on itself, like Maslow’s hierarchy. First you need information. Once you have that, you can add all the right hardware into your process and automation surely will follow. With all that in place, your returns process will resemble an F-14 Tomcat: a blazing fast, ultra-precise weapon of freedom (it’s a stretch, but the Top Gun metaphor is at stake here). Your customers will experience first-hand this awesome and powerful machine, and tenderly they’ll say to you, “Maverick, you can be my wingman any time”, and of course, you’ll respond, “bullshit. You can be mine”.


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