How Progress Jiu Jitsu mastered the return experience with Loop

The Challenge: Building a return experience in line with their brand values

Until partnering with Loop a year ago, Progress JJ relied on a completely manual, haphazard returns process—and they were more than ready for a change.

“It was just so many hours of manual labor,” says Phil Lavelle, COO. “Sometimes someone would have put a name on a parcel, and you just had no clue who it was. You were just waiting for an email to come in saying, ‘Have you received my return?’ and just guessing who was who.”

What’s more, the customer return experience didn’t align with the company’s brand values.

“We strongly push ourselves as a high-quality brand, and our brand image is quite high,” says Lavelle. Superior customer service is crucial to the brand experience. “So if customers were able to see that process, it would have been quite embarrassing and damaging towards the brand values that we strongly live by.”

Beyond that, the Progress JJ team wanted to increase their customer retention rate. When customers returned products, “50% to 60% of them requested refunds and never returned again,” says Lavelle. “So we needed to keep them coming back. We needed something in place that could do that.”

Progress JJ went looking for technology to help them deliver a streamlined returns experience for customers that could help them boost their customer lifetime value—and soon found that Loop was their ideal solution.

Retain revenue with Shop Now and Instant Exchange

Progress JJ considered a few different returns management solutions, but “the most important thing that stood out was the Shop Now and Instant Exchange features,” says Lavelle. “It was levels above other platforms.”

With Loop, customers could instantly apply the credit from their returned item towards any other product in the shop, providing a hassle-free experience that helped the brand retain more revenue. When customers initially opted for a refund, Progress JJ would incentivise them to consider an exchange instead by offering Bonus Credit—an offer that 90% of shoppers took the brand up on.

“The number of orders we get from it, the number of Instant Exchanges we get is phenomenal,” says Lavelle.

Shop Now & Later

Retain more revenue and boost customer retention rates

Instant Exchange

Retain more revenue and boost customer retention rates

Reduce return rates with Insights

Another feature that’s had a major impact on the brand is Insights, Loop’s data analytics tool.

Using Insights, Progress JJ can view and analyze historical trends in return rates down to a product level, including the reasons for the product return.

“We can collect so much data in terms of whether an item is too small, too big, or not the right color,” says Lavelle. “It’s made a huge impact on our brand this year, because we've seen that 70 percent of our returns were shorts, and that all of them were because they were too small. It gave us the data that we needed to action something, which we did.”

Progress JJ identified a sizing issue with their shorts product line. Since they still had the product in stock, they notified their customers to size up as a short-term solution. At the same time, they worked with their manufacturer to change the measurements so that they could size the products accurately for future stock. As a result, Progress JJ was able to drastically reduce their return rate, dropping from 17% down to 7%.

Insights

Get data insights to improve your products and lower return rates

Optimise your strategy with personalised support

Throughout their journey with Loop, Progress JJ have been impressed with the personalised, one-on-one merchant support they’ve received along the way. Lavelle appreciates that he can book a call with his Merchant Success Manager, Ash Cunha, on demand. “I think it's so much more powerful to have that one-to-one interaction,” he says. “You see how the passion comes across from someone in the company.”

With the Merchant Success team’s help, he’s been able to learn more about how to implement different Loop features and optimise his brand’s strategy based on Loop’s best practices. Despite being in the UK, while Loop’s support team is based in the US, he hasn’t faced any issues finding availability to chat whenever he needs guidance on the brand’s return management strategy.

“The more of my time I can spend with experts in their field like Ash to grow, learn the system action points, or if I have a question, just get it answered as fast as possible—that's time saved, that's money saved,” says Lavelle. “And I'm learning as well, because Ash can teach me everything. I ask a question, and she doesn't just do it for me. She'll explain how to do it, what to do, and show me how to do it as well, so I know for next time.”

Merchant Success

Personalised guidance from expert advisors to master returns management

The impact: A great returns experience and huge ROI

Since onboarding with Loop, Progress JJ has accomplished exactly what they’d hoped to.

“We wanted less people refunding, more people exchanging, and that is pretty much exactly what we've done over the last 12 months [with Loop],” says Lavelle. “It's been great for us.”

Higher customer retention and retained revenue

He credits much of their success in retaining customers to the Shop Now feature: “I don’t think people realize how powerful that feature is,” says Lavelle. “By offering a mini version of your store in a returns portal, it’s actually making us money. Loop is bringing in revenue so it’s not even an expense. The ROI is brilliant.”

A customer experience to be proud of

Loop has also helped Progress JJ build a return experience that lives up to their brand values, providing a seamless platform that empowers shoppers to complete transactions instantly, rather than waiting on customer support for help. “The amount of customer tickets that have been reduced using Loop is astronomical,” adds Lavelle.

The Shop Now and Instant Exchange features are a hit with customers. “We've had some great reviews because of it across the website and Trustpilot. People love the service,” says Lavelle.

Loop’s return experience offers the brand an ideal opportunity to build customer loyalty: “Every negative in a business is the perfect opportunity to turn it into a lifetime customer. If you give them a wonderful [return] experience, they will never shop anywhere else.”

Lower product return rates

Lavelle also credits Loop for the return insights that led Progress JJ to revamp their shorts products. “Without that data analysis, and the analytics we get from the reports, we would never have known that. We would have just kept guessing and guessing.”

Armed with the right data, they were able to swiftly make sizing corrections to the product line, helping more of their customers get the right fit the first time around, and reducing their overall return rate by 10%.

Overall, Lavelle says, Loop has been a critical tool for the company’s growth. “The one thing we strive to be is the best in our space, so we don't want to leave a stone unturned. I think that's the same with Loop, in terms of everything they offer and how seamless things are, it works hand in hand.”

“We're trying to grow the community. And the only way we can grow is by making sure every customer interaction is a good experience. Having systems like Loop make that happen.”