The term Reverse Logistics is not new if you are in the field of manufacturing and retailing. Most businesses tackle arbitrarily in managing the logistics flow of returned goods for decades afore, but still, some companies overlook this area when managing order fulfilment processes and forward logistics; unfortunately making them lose their customer trust and uneventfully demote themselves to lower market positions. Today we will be providing you with an educational piece on what and how you must manage your company’s reverse logistics.
Reverse Logistics are also termed as Retrogistics, Aftermarket Logistics or Aftermarket Supply Chain by some e-commerce dwellers. To elaborate more on its definition, Reverse Logistics- as the name suggests- is a set of activities that must be exerted after the product meets the end consumer when the consumer returns the product. This can be due to many reasons; a customer will return a product if:
- The product is a defect.
- The product is not up to the customer’s desired specification.
- The customer no longer needs the product.
- If the amount of product is not as mentioned in the site
- If the delivery time was too long
- The product needs to be serviced.
- The product needs to be refurbished or recycled, and more.
Reverse logistics also monitor the lifecycle of the products, which may include actions like:
- Assessing the potentiality of the products to be reused
- The disposal of used containers of the products
- Analysing ways to create value on expired products and more.
Apprehending the importance of your company’s Reverse Logistics
- Determining the shipping procedures of your returned goods
- Undergoing Quality Tests to study the defect to identify what caused the damage
- Proactively updated databases to archive information about the problems faced during reverse logistics
- Also, you can predetermine the processes of repairing, disassembling, recycling or restocking the product returned by the customer using reverse logistics data.
- Monitoring Reverse Logistics to capture resourceful data like:
- The volumes of stock that are likely to be returned and why
- The rate of sales lost due to returns
- A comprehensive description of the after-condition of the product
- Research data to recover lost financial values due to product returns and more
Technology and Reverse Logistics
Wrap Up
- You have to identify why your products have been returned or why they are ineffectively managed after it reached the end consumer,
- Secondly, you have to be well-apprehended on how to elevate customer experiences through eventful reverse logistics operations,
- Finally, you must carefully harness holistic visualisation on your reverse logistics processes to level up its efficiency.