How Loop can help you master peak season returns: Webinar recap
Samir Kamnani
·October 9, 2024
In our most recent webinar, Mastering Peak Season Returns, we showcased a suite of new products and features that we’ve recently launched to help our merchants deliver a best-in-class returns experience for their customers—through peak season and beyond.
In the webinar, Senior Product Marketing Manager Samir Kamnani, Product Manager Rachel Feeney, Product Manager Anthony Musolino, and Sr. Partner Marketing Manager Emma Kimmerley showcased the benefits and use cases of our new products Offset and Track; detailed our new fraud model; and showcased improvements to our Customer Portal. They also gave a sneak peek for some “coming soon” features still in development.
For the full scoop, watch the webinar—or keep reading to get more details on the latest innovations at Loop.
About Loop
Loop is a returns and reverse logistics platform that’s custom-built for Shopify brands, originally founded in 2017. We started with three merchants, Chubbies, Allbirds, and Cotopaxi, and have grown to support over 4,000 Shopify brands in the years since. “We’re especially proud of the fact that we still have those first three we started with working with us today,” says Kamnani.
Loop now processes over 2 million returns per month, and we power returns for over 15% of Shopify’s merchant global market value.
With peak season quickly approaching, and peak returns season right on its heels, “you want to make sure that your [returns] partner is someone who can handle that volume,” says Kamnani. “And so we really do hold ourselves to a high standard and deliver enterprise-level service, stability, and security.”
To better prepare for 2024’s upcoming peak returns season, we’ve listened to our merchants and responded by launching a suite of innovative products that support them with their pain points.
Here’s a closer look at our Loop product launches.
Fight rising return costs with Offset
The cost of managing returns is continually rising, with shipping costs escalating by over 7% YoY. For many ecommerce merchants, it’s rapidly becoming unsustainable to offer free return shipping to their customers.
But the tide is turning on expectations around free returns: Today, over 60% of Loop merchants are charging return fees in an effort to recoup those costs, representing a 47% increase in the practice since 2020. And as it turns out, charging return fees isn’t pushing customers away.
“Our wonderful data team was able to study all of our merchants that were doing free returns and are now charging for returns,” says Kamnani. “We see that return rates and repeat purchase rates remain stable after implementing return fees. And so this really tells us that consumers are willing to pay for returns, and they value more of the product quality, the CX, and the brand loyalty over having to pay for a return.”
Loop also conducted a customer survey to confirm these findings, and found that 70% of shoppers say they’re willing to pay for a convenient returns experience. “So that really got us thinking on a solution that allows brands to save on return costs while still maintaining that top-notch experience, and that’s where Offset was born,” says Kamnani.
Offset is a pre-purchase consumer paid return solution that allows shoppers to pay a small fee for a return at checkout, which guarantees them a free return later.
How it works:
When a customer is checking out, Offset is auto-added as a removable option. Offset adds a small fee to their total price to pay the cost of free return shipping later, recouping return shipping expenses that would otherwise be paid by the merchant.
Offset is available in two models:
Offset Free is applied to all domestic orders, except for final sale and non-returnable orders, with Offset fees set by and collected by Loop. By signing up for Offset Free, you’ll receive free access to Loop’s software and all of its advanced features, as well as coverage for label fees and Return Bar® fees.
Offset Flex enables brands to customize the returns experience by setting their own prices for Offset and determining when and how to use it, with personalized handling fees based on different customer segments and return outcomes. Brands that use Offset Flex will still be responsible for Loop’s subscription fees and other handling fees, but have full control of their Offset revenue stream.
In our Beta tests with Offset, Loop merchants found that 80% of the customers offered Offset signed up for the product. It led to a 10% increase in AOV, and had no impact on overall return rates. “Customers value that peace of mind of knowing they can return for free later if needed,” says Kamnani.
Offset your return costs
Learn morePrevent and reduce returns fraud and abuse
Along with rising return costs, fraud is another major factor contributing to lower profit margins. Merchants lose $24B to returns fraud annually, with fraud and abuse levels jumping by 13.7% from 2022 to 2023.
“We sit in a unique position at the intersection between orders, customers returns and warehouse data,” says Musolino. “And this puts us in an optimal position to then solve fraud in a way that we believe no one else can.”
Loop is leveraging sophisticated machine learning to create a fraud model, which can evaluate each return request in real-time to monitor for likely signs of fraud or other high-risk behavior. The free fraud model can be used to automatically block or create alerts around potentially risky returns to help merchants reduce losses without tying up their team’s bandwidth on risk assessment.
To date, the model is correctly flagging 62% of fraudulent returns and 87% of fraudulent return value—and, because it’s learning from each new transaction, it’s getting better all the time. “Our goal is to deliver a tool to protect your revenue without drastically impacting your budget or bandwidth in the busiest season of the year,” says Musolino.
Increase brand affinity with custom tracking
“Branded tracking pages are the number one page your customers are going to look at,” says Kimmerley. “Some customers might check it multiple times a day.”
To that end, Track by Loop offers a new opportunity to build affinity with your customers, with a branded tracking page that you can easily customize with your brand colors and fonts. You can build the page directly within Loop or self-host it on your own Shopify site.
Along with up-to-date order tracking details, the page can include product recommendations: “Because this is your number one most viewed page in the shopper journey, you should absolutely be taking advantage of the real estate on your order tracking page to cross-sell and upsell with product recommendations,” says Kimmerley.
Track by Loop makes it easy for shoppers to see the progress of their orders, with integrated carrier updates, and to start a return directly from the tracking page. This seamless approach to self-service order tracking can reduce the burden on customer support teams to field requests related to order status and returns.
One of our merchants, a jewelry shop called Electric Picks, recently implemented Track By Loop, and saw dramatic improvements: “In the first three months, they saw their Where Is My Order (WMO) ticket volume go from 10% of their total ticket volume down to just 3%,” says Kimmerley. “That’s reducing their customer service costs, and frees up their support team to answer some of those more important questions that might lead to upsell opportunities.”
Other Loop updates
What else is new?
- Enhanced returns flowWe’ve updated our customer portal to streamline the workflows. “When we tested our existing portal flows with customers, we learned that around 80% of shoppers actually already know whether they want a refund or an exchange before they actually get into Loop and start that return,” says Feeney. “So we've built this adapted flow to show shoppers all of their options early on and help them execute their desired path as smoothly as possible.” With the improved navigation, shoppers are able to complete their return up to 14% faster. (This option is currently in Beta, but will be rolling out to all merchants in mid-October.)
- Poshmark integrationIf shoppers have purchased items that are non-returnable, whether they’re outside of the return window or final sale, they now have the option to publish the item directly to Poshmark from Loop. This integration can “delight shoppers with an easy way to help them recoup some costs and reduce waste on those non-returnable items,” says Feeney. “And you can also build brand awareness through being on this social commerce marketplace.”
- Split refundsOur new “split refunds” option offers better customization when a shopper’s return includes items that are only eligible for store credit. Your customer can get a refund to the original payment method, alongside a store credit refund, when their return includes multiple items and at least one is only eligible for store credit.
- New integrations
- Cross-borderLoop is adding to our network of international logistics partners to improve the cross-border commerce experience, with new integrations with GlobalE (closed beta), ReBound, and SEKO.
- Inventory managementLoop’s new integrations with Peoplevox (a warehouse management system) and Linnworks (an inventory and order management platform) automate RMA data coming from Loop, reducing error in orders, streamlining warehouse operations, and helping to prevent fraud.
What’s next?
Coming in the near future, Loop will be adding features including:
- Shipping enhancementsLoop will add shipping protection on outbound orders as part of Offset, protecting shipments from loss, damage, and theft. On the returns side, you’ll be able to generate multiple labels for returns that require more than one box, and third parties will be able to generate labels for Loop returns through an API call.
- Shopify native exchangeLoop will support exchanges via Shopifyʼs native exchange Infrastructure, simplifying reporting and reconciliation, and eliminating many common exchange challenges.
Want to get a walk-through of all our new products and features? Book a demo to see how Loop can help your brand optimize returns for peak season and beyond.
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With Loop, your brand can offer everything from refunds to direct exchanges to shopper incentives and more. Even better? These exchanges build your business.