Company Overview

Alp-n-Rock specializes in taking its time and choosing conscientious suppliers to ensure its carefully crafted women’s styles reflect its ethics as well as its aesthetic. The brand prides itself in providing exceptional customer service, impeccable styles, and incorporating its shopper’s feedback into the product design process.

Business Challenges

Alp-n-Rock strives for a rock-solid customer experience, but a manual returns process was making life difficult for shoppers and customer service staff alike.

High Touch Points

Alp-n-Rock thrives and depends on loyal customers and a personal touch. But the time it was taking to process returns and exchanges wasn’t good for anybody— the shoppers kept waiting for Alp-n-Rock’s customer service agents to handle every request via email and phone and then manually process each transaction.

Despite the individual attention, it was difficult for Alp-n-Rock to enforce its return policy, especially for complex returns and exchanges. And the e-commerce retailer wasn’t getting actionable feedback from customers on the reasons for the return or exchange – particularly on fit, a high priority for the company’s designers.

The poor experience with returns conflicted with the personal touch Alp-n-Rock strives to create, and representatives were forced to balance company policies with the desires of the customers.

Lack of Actionable Data

Alp-n-Rock was also eager for detailed customer feedback. All designs are hand-sketched by the CEO, striving to create the perfect fit. But not every customer gave a reason for a return or exchange on the return form, and if they did it was too generic to be useful.

We have a lot of back and forth with customers trying to figure out the perfect size… For each one, I had to manually field. If someone wanted to exchange an item, that would be a phone call and several direct emails. It took a lot of time and a lot of work on the back end.

Tara Woodward, Customer Service Manager

 

Goal

Alp-n-Rock needed an automated returns management solution that would deliver the level of service and quality shoppers have come to expect, while also providing clear and concise methods for the customer service team to enforce policies and collect feedback for design purposes.

Solution

Being an all-encompassing Shopify returns solution, ReturnLogic proved to be the answer to all of Alp-n-Rock’s returns management challenges.

Streamlined Returns & Exchanges

ReturnLogic’s front-end shopper-facing solution streamlined the initiation of returns and exchanges: instead of a long string of emails, customers simply click through a streamlined, branded self-service return center that reduces the transaction to just a few clicks. This simplicity for shoppers also allows Alp-n-Rock to collect high-quality and actionable feedback regarding product sizing, style, and fit. Automated emails at every step of the process keep shoppers up to date on their transactions. In addition to all of this newfound automation, Alp-n-Rock’s return policies and business rules were seamlessly integrated throughout the entire returns process.

Effective Back-end Automation

ReturnLogic’s returns management solution streamlines back-end processes, facilitating clear communication between customer service and the warehouse teams. ReturnLogic reduces the complexity typically found with transactions involving product exchanges, saving time and money. ReturnLogic also keeps track of the entire process, including shipping and inventory information, ensuring that mistakes and errors are minimized.

Powerful Insights & Analytics

ReturnLogic’s analytics tools provide new visibility into what products are being returned – and why – to uncover and address issues that drive returns. Instead of a tedious spreadsheet filled with styles, SKUs, numbers and stats, Alp-n-Rock’s staff can now view an image of each product, return rate data and customer comments all in the same place, creating a much more compelling view of the reasons for customer returns.

 

Results

ReturnLogic transformed Alp-n-Rock’s returns process, turning a time-consuming headache into a streamlined, customer-friendly process that saves time and delivers the insights designers crave.

Streamlined Returns for Shoppers

Instead of hours or days of back-and-forth emails, customers now get a fast, streamlined way to initiate their own returns and exchanges. “This has made it super easy and they just don’t have to reach out to us as much,” Woodward says.

Consistent Return Policy Enforcement

We didn’t really have a buffer before even though we had a return policy on our website,” Woodward says. “People just weren’t reading it or choosing to ignore it but now they can’t. It’s fantastic.” Now rules get applied automatically, and Customer Service staff can choose to intervene and make adjustments based on the lifetime value of the customer.

Actionable Product Feedback

By collecting and analyzing specific feedback on returns reasons, ReturnLogic is delivering actionable insights. For example, Alp-n-Rock learned that fit is a key driver of its returns, with nearly 40% of the returned product reported as too big.

Trend Detection and Increased Visibility

ReturnLogic’s visually enabled trends reporting is helping the retailer’s staff gain a better understanding of customer feedback. “Just recognizing it visually and being able to picture what they’re saying and how it might look for that customer makes it easier to find trends,” Woodward says. “We use this information to make better buying and marketing decisions,” Woodward added.

Less Churn, Increased Sales

Taking the hassle out of exchanges supports Alp-n-Rock’s goal to retain more customers through a better shopping experience. Instead of returning an item in frustration and walking away, they’re making an exchange to get just what they wanted. “Customers are probably more likely to try an exchange now just because it is so much more accessible,” says Woodward. “It’s highly likely that that is turning into better sales for us.”.

The Verdict

With ReturnLogic managing and streamlining the returns and exchanges process, Alp-n-Rock has conquered the issues that were holding back its customer experience and bogging down its back-end processes. The richer insights they’re getting on fit and other product characteristics are making it even easier to craft unique designs with just the right sizing. And a better exchange experience means customers get the products they want and come back to spend more.