How to reduce Return to Origin (RTO) rate in logistics?

shipsy

How to reduce Return to Origin (RTO) rate in logistics?

Logistics and transportation play a significant role in the success and growth of every business. The prime aim of a business’s logistics and transportation is to ensure safe and timely delivery of goods from the warehouse to the customer’s place. To ensure the same, there are plenty of processes that need to be performed in a way to bring perfection and accuracy in operations.

Some of these processes include allocating orders intelligently, optimizing and planning routes efficiently, creating and managing trips properly, and providing end-to-end visibility. Just like we missed, many businesses also forget to count “reverse logistics” while considering the important aspects of logistics and transportation.

While the truth is, reverse logistics is closely related to customer satisfaction. It includes the processes involved in sending the goods from the customer’s place to the warehouse or the hub. In simple words, when a customer raises a return request for the product(s) that are either faulty or didn’t meet his/her expectations.

Since huge shipping costs are involved in moving a product from the warehouse to the customer’s doorstep, a business has to incur huge losses on return orders. But the great thing is that by adopting a few measures you can reduce the rate of RTO. And, this article is all about that only.

5 Ways To Reduce The Return To Origin Orders:

Real-time tracking

Real-time tracking provides the end-user with an updated status of the order. They can check if the product is in the warehouse, nearest hub, in transit, or out for delivery. To offer this feature to your customers, you can choose a logistics management software. Along with providing real-time tracking, an LMS also offers other features such as smart order allocation, route optimization, driver app, and more.

On-time delivery

These days when most of the businesses offer same-day or next-day deliveries, customers cannot afford an order to get delayed. This is one of the biggest reasons why a customer chooses to return the order. To understand the same, let’s take an example. A customer has ordered a specific dress for Halloween or Christmas, but it didn’t deliver by the occasion. What would you expect a customer to do? Obviously, raise a return request. By automating your entire logistics operations and providing efficient routes, you can ensure timely delivery for all your orders.

Safe delivery

Apart from the two reasons, mentioned earlier in this article, for raising returns, another major cause of hitting the “return order” button is the customer received a damaged product. Now, the damage might have happened at the warehouse and it could also be due to improper loading or unloading. Another reason why the product damages are its incorrect placement in the vehicle.

It is true that if the delivery professionals don’t load the orders properly, it might cause damage. Logistics or transportation management software can help you get rid of this problem. The software considers all the necessary parameters of the product and then assigns the right vehicle for its delivery. Moreover, it also shows the order in which loading and unloading of the product should be done. Doing this not only reduces the rate of return to origin but also utilizes the vehicle’s capacity completely, which further minimizes the fuel cost and driving time.

Transparency

If the customer is not able to find out where the order is or how to contact the person assigned for the delivery, then he might cancel the order, which is either in transit or out for delivery. Therefore, providing end-user visibility to all your customers is necessary to minimize the return orders. You can do this by integrating a logistics management software that comes up with an end-user visibility feature to make customers reschedule deliveries, track their order, and more.

Time-slot selection and other delivery-related preferences

By providing customers with the option to select preferred time slots for the delivery along with the other options such as reschedule the delivery, you can minimize the return order rate. Wondering how? So, if the customers receive a message that the order will deliver today or any other specific date, but they already know that they won’t be available at the address on that date. And if they don’t have an option to inform the same to the delivery agent or the customer support team, it would result in a failed delivery. After a few failed deliveries, your logistics partner will send it back to the source.

By adopting a logistics or transportation management software, you can get rid of all the problems that result in “return order”. This software can be purchased from one of the reliable LMS providers such as Shipsy. Get it today!

Share

Related Posts