The State Of Returns: How To Protect Your Business And The Environment

15 Feb

Guest: Dana von der Heide

Meet Dana, the mastermind behind Parcel Perform, a world-class platform tracking packages from over 950 logistics carriers. As the Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, she's the globe-trotting trailblazer steering the company's growth and devising commercial strategies, making sure your parcel is never MIA again!

Key Takeaways:

Optimise the Post-Purchase Experience: Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by ensuring a seamless post-purchase experience. This includes transparent and timely communication about shipping, easy tracking, and a hassle-free returns process. Investing in a smooth post-purchase journey not only boosts customer retention but also differentiates your brand in a crowded marketplace.
Leverage Data for Better Decision Making: Utilise data analytics to monitor and evaluate the performance of your shipping carriers, understand customer preferences, and tailor your delivery options accordingly. Data-driven insights allow you to optimise shipping routes, reduce costs, and improve delivery times, enhancing the overall customer experience and operational efficiency.
Sustainability as a Competitive Advantage: With growing consumer awareness and concern for environmental impact, integrating sustainable practices into your eCommerce operations can serve as a significant differentiator. From eco-friendly packaging and green shipping options to encouraging mindful consumer behaviour, such as reducing returns through better product descriptions and size guides, sustainability can not only reduce your carbon footprint but also attract a loyal customer base.

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Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now, the eCommerce Podcast is all about helping you deliver eCommerce well, and to help us do just that today, I'm chatting with Dana von der Heide from Parcel Perform about the state of returns, how to protect your business and the environment.
We're getting into all things delivery. We're getting into all things returns. Not a usual conversation for eCommerce Podcasts, but one we definitely need to talk about in the eCommerce world. Let me tell you a quick story why I'm excited about this conversation. When I figured this out for one of my own eCommerce businesses, we saved thousands.
Let me tell you. Let me tell you. It was significant how much money we saved. So I know you're going to enjoy this. I think you're involved in eCommerce. But before we get into the conversation, let me tell you about the newsletter. If you're not already subscribed, head over to the website, ecommercepodcast.
net. Hit the button that says subscribe, put in your name and [00:01:00] email address and you will get the notes, the links and all that sort of stuff sent to you free every time we broadcast. No, yes, it all comes to you and it's worth subscribing to. So make sure you do that. And also while you're there, check out the sponsor of this podcast.
Yes, the fabulous eCommerce Cohort, our membership group, where we do amazing things every month. We have expert workshops. In fact, at the time of recording the workshop by Claire Daniels has just dropped on how to define your marketing proposition. Let me tell you what a great workshop that is.
Claire's been a guest on the show, Claire Daniels from Trio Media. She talked about how to market to Gen Z or Gen Zed if you're from the UK and that was a great show. Lots of great feedback from that. And Claire kindly has come back to do some teaching on Cohort, so you're definitely going to want to check that out.
Prices start just 14. 99. There's a new offer on, because it's our first year anniversary of cohorts. So check it out while the price is still low. Do come and join us for more information. Check it [00:02:00] out@ecommercecohort.com. That's eCommerce cohort oh one word.com. Okay. Forgive my cold, by the way, dear listener.
Yes. I have slightly nasal tones today because I've succumbed to that. Most nasty of illnesses at this time of year, man flu. I've not yet called the paramedics, but I'm tempted at some point. Hopefully it won't be during the recording of this show. Now let's talk to Dana, the mastermind behind Parcel Perform, a world class platform tracking package from over, not what, packages the information from over 950.
As the founder and chief commercial officer, she's the globe trotting trailblazer. The reason I'm slightly smirking when I read this is four hours ago, Dana was telling me she just landed back in from Singapore, so she's fighting jets. That's lag at the moment but we're going to get into what's going on in the whole thing of packaging, [00:03:00] parceling, returns.
We're going to pick Dana's brains. Oh yes. And what's going on at Parcel Perform. So Dana, welcome to the show. Great to have you. How are we doing today?
Dana von der Heide: Very good, Matt. Really excited to be here and yeah, talking about something this exciting, it's going to fight my jet lag very
Matt Edmundson: easily. That's good news, that's good news.
So you've flown in from Singapore to just, if people can't figure out by your accent, just let everybody know where you actually are in the world.
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, I'm in Berlin at the moment unfortunately really hard to hide my accent, so I'm German obviously, but interestingly enough, two Germans started a company in Singapore, that's our head office.
Together with my co founder, Arne, we started Parcel
Matt Edmundson: Perform. Two Germans. It sounds like the title of a book two Germans starting a company in Singapore and it sounds like it could make a very interesting book. So how did, what, I mean I guess there's a lot of questions involved there, Dana, like why were you in Singapore and why did you decide to start a company while you were over there?[00:04:00]
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, really good one. So first of all, I love Singapore just for the pure lifestyle of it. Anyone that hasn't been, it's like constant
Matt Edmundson: summer, no seasons. It's an amazing place. Yeah. Yeah.
Dana von der Heide: So I really love it, but I was also very fortunate that my former employer DHL actually sent me there in 2012.
I then met my co founder, Arne. We were working together in logistics and became really passionate about helping merchants grow their businesses. And obviously Southeast Asia was a really interesting place to start. eCommerce is growing like crazy. There's a lot of mobile adoption. Customer experience is in high demand.
So it was our starting point to kick off the company. And by now fortunately we managed to grow quite sizably. So we have six different offices and operate in 160 markets globally.
Matt Edmundson: Yes, it's quite sizable. I'll give you that. But it all started in Singapore and you're right. For those who haven't been to Singapore, you should definitely put it on your bucket list.
It's an amazing place. I [00:05:00] really like Singapore. I love the underground network, how you can just walk underground to pretty much most places in Singapore. It's quite an extraordinary thing to do. But yeah great city. So you you were part of DHL, did you say your former employer was DHL?
And so you went from that to starting Parcel Perform is that right? Or was that something in the middle?
Dana von der Heide: No, actually, you're right. I worked at DHL, absolutely loved it. I was part of their corporate strategy team, working a lot on their global eCommerce strategy. And then Asia was obviously one of the focus markets.
I got to travel Asia, had eCommerce merchants there when I was working at DHL. But then eventually, the startup bug caught us all and we wanted to do something that allows us to be a bit more dynamic. Transcribed
So
Matt Edmundson: what was the gap then that you saw in the market? What was the, you're working at DHL, it's a massive global [00:06:00] company, obviously a German company, and you're you get the entrepreneurial Michael Gerber calls it an entrepreneurial seizure, which I think is such a great phrase. I have an entrepreneurial seizure and you obviously saw a gap in the market.
What was the gap you saw that you thought, if I could just get in here, we can do some great stuff?
Dana von der Heide: Yeah. Thanks for the question. I think one of the interesting things is if we think about track and trace, and that was the project that I worked on back there as well, obviously every carrier is giving you updates where your pass is.
But the interesting thing is everyone does it in a different fashion, right? There's like, All the different languages, all the different status events, all the different time zones, locations. So there's no global standard for how people convey the status of a parcel. And we saw a lot of merchants trying to figure this out themselves.
And then if you're in Singapore, like I was a customer there and Stuff comes from China. It's all in Chinese. It's in a different time zone. I don't even get it, right? What happened to my past? I paid something at an [00:07:00] eCommerce website, but then no one is helping me to figure out when it's going to arrive at my doorstep.
And that was the inflection point where we said, okay, someone has to come in and streamline all this data and, not just help the end consumer, but more so even importantly is to help the merchants.
So you want to make sure that you know where to go so you can help your customers as well. It's
Matt Edmundson: really, it's a really clever idea and I'll tell you why, Don, as you're talking, I'm listening and I'm thinking, I, we have as the listeners will know, I run my own eCommerce companies as well as do the whole cohort and coaching thing and all that sort of stuff.
And I, I get to listen to our customer service agents, when they're on the phone to customers or when they're looking at emails. And I'm thinking of one company specifically that does global delivery. So we ship from the UK all over the world. Apart from that, I think there's one or two countries we don't ship to.
But on the whole, we ship [00:08:00] all over the world and the amount of time they spend. So you ship a parcel to another country. Using a system here in the uk whatever system that is it gets shipped out obviously when it hits another country. It then goes with a local courier who then has their own system and so they spend an inordinate amount of time.
From people in overseas going, where's my parcel? You go we sent it from here to here. And then you have to then contact that courier to go where is it now? And then the fight, the last man is the time tracking international deliveries spent by the staff is quite extraordinary.
So I'm really intrigued that you guys seem to have a solution for this. Yeah,
Dana von der Heide: 100%. And it's so frustrating for everyone involved, right? So I think you brought up the customer service example that creates a lot of costs. You usually get a call when a customer is already frustrated. So it's a bit too late at that point, right?
Of course, it's also the marketing angle. And this becomes more and more [00:09:00] important because everyone is building on customer retention. Everyone is used to tick Amazon, right? And I think you speak about this a lot in your podcast as well, is we are trying to recreate something that consumers learned at Amazon, where they check out, they know exactly when the parcel will arrive, they know exactly where it is, and they don't have to go anywhere else to find out.
And that sort of integrates. That on brand experience is, of course, important to make sure that they come back to your website and shop with you directly. So that's a big aspect, but then, of course, also why is Amazon doing this? Not just to be nice to their customers and build customer retention, but a big element is cost, right?
So customer service. It needs to be more efficient. The logistics guys actually want to do performance measurements because they want to know who is actually the better provider, but all these reports are not standardized. So there's a, just heaps of intransparency that make decision making extremely hard for eCommerce merchants, cost them a lot of money and has an impact on customer retention.
So [00:10:00] all those, we see as the key drivers why it's worth investing
Matt Edmundson: in this area. It's a very good point. And I. I think part of the reason I think Amazon do Amazon does this, well to reduce costs. But I think because many other people can't, it differentiates them a little bit. At least we think we can't, right?
Which is obviously where you guys come in and help. And it you made a comment there about. How on, if you go onto the Amazon website, you order products and it says, this will be with you on this day. And it's usually pretty accurate, right? And then on the day you'll get a text message or an email saying, we're going to be with you between, three and four or whatever it is.
And a lot of couriers now do this in the UK. I had some parcels delivered this morning to the house, got a text message. It's going to be with you between eight 30 this morning. And sure enough, it was pretty much almost, and you can track the parcel, which is cool. Amazon do this.
It's not something I see on many websites outside of Amazon because it's very hard to predict when your parcel is going to arrive. Now, if you order in the UK, I can [00:11:00] pretty much say, if you order it now, I'm going to send it out now, the chances are very strong you're going to get it tomorrow, right? Because we've, I'm pretty safe with what's going on in the UK.
However, somebody from Portugal orders the parcel. I've no idea when that's going to arrive. So how do I, how do I. I suppose my first question is it possible for me to have something like that on my website where customers around the world, we know where they are, and we can say if you're from Portugal, we think you're going to get it in six days.
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, the easy answer is yes. And quite a few people try to do it with the rules, but I think that's one of the problems. And that's also why Amazon does it a lot better. Let's say you have a contract with a carrier, they usually give you a rule of, my transit time to Portugal is three days, so hopefully better depending on what you're negotiating.
But the problem is that it's not just the carrier that impacts the delivery time, it's also your warehouse, right? Then let's say it's a Saturday or Sunday [00:12:00] or in times of COVID or peak volume, it's all going to take longer. So if you do a rule based, what we call, prediction at checkout, which customers rely on because that's when they decide whether they buy at your website or somewhere else.
They really just want to know how fast they can get it and which day exactly. Then doing it rule based has a big issue because that's usually too conservative. No one wants to disappoint the customer. So that's how we see all this. Oh, in five to seven days, in five to seven days, I don't know where I am.
Maybe I'm traveling. That's not good enough. So what we are now doing and that's the huge power of data and everyone talks about machine learning applications and that kind of stuff. But they are really powerful to now create exactly this data point. So we are able even on a product page already.
So before checkout, but then let this act check out to give a day accurate prediction on when that stuff arrives. And that has a huge increase in your checkout conversion rate, which. That's exactly what you want to [00:13:00] optimize for and that's exactly why Amazon does it because with fulfillment, they have full control and they can exactly calculate that too.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, fantastic. Very good. And I can see the benefit of adding that to my website, your parcel will arrive in however many days. One of the things that, and I don't know if you've got experience with this Dana, and I'm curious, since Brexit let's talk about Brexit for a second because obviously that was a big deal here in the UK and across Europe.
If you're outside of the UK and Europe, Brexit was the time when England decided at about, I think the vote was like, I don't know, it was 50 50 pretty much. We decided we'd want to leave the European Union. The implications of that. was sending parcels from the UK to Europe. Now, if I send parcels all over the world, right?
With our eCommerce companies, it is easier for me to ship to the US and to Australia. And in some respects quicker than to ship to Europe, even though, I can throw a [00:14:00] stone and I'm in Europe from the UK. What's your, what's your insider information on shipping from the UK to Europe at the moment?
Do you see it getting better and I guess what should I think about in a post Brexit world? European Union.
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, that's the thing about predictability, right? Yeah, it's getting better. Obviously, big messes are hopefully behind us. And we have figured out what the rules are again. And the custom regulations are a bit clearer.
One because I think that was the big knowledge gap first and no one was prepared for it. To be honest, it was Pretty much a mess in the first few months. And we see that stabilizing, but we still see the issue on both sides. So we have a lot of customer shipping from the UK inside Europe, but the other way around also is huge, right?
We have customers that have. The trade lanes going from Germany to the UK, for example, and it just still is a little bit more [00:15:00] unpredictable. So I think what we see people doing is, first of all, diversification of carriers. . So if you think one area will help you to ship into every European market, that usually doesn't work out well for you
So if you have a. Also, the best idea is to look at diversification there on the carrier setup. And then the other thing is, and that's why we believe in like the power of data so much is, again, if you just use a rule and you say, okay, the last month it was like this. So the transit time is going to be the same in December at peak.
We all know that's never going to happen. And then if it's snowing, it's going to get worse. I want this on strike as well. And there's so much issues that can potentially arise. And even more importantly, this is why we track every single passer. This is why we do a prediction based on every single parcel, and also taking into account what happened to the previous parcels before.
So if yesterday, everything. and customs in a certain market. And it wasn't a Sunday because that's the rule. They don't do it on a Sunday. [00:16:00] Then we see that there's probably a trend and we can then update our predictions based on that. But yeah, every market has its single perks if you want to frame it in a positive way.
Best
Matt Edmundson: has its own perks. I like that. Yeah. It has definitely has its own perks. The UK probably being the most perky of them all, in a lot of ways. So So yeah, it's a very valid point, actually, I suppose what you're doing, because you're, I think I mentioned in the bio, there's 950, I'm sure, carriers that you're connected to, you can monitor the data from those carriers, and I guess you can see where the hotspots are, where the problems are.
And also you get this predictability, which I think, I like it, I like, I think I can see how that's going to work. I can see how that would benefit my. ECommerce Business to have that predictability on sites. So let's switch gears slightly because we were also talking about return. So this is sending a parcel out.
Obviously the standard rules apply. Get it out quick, get it [00:17:00] out right and give the customer tracking information so they don't have to keep bothering you with, trying to find the parcel. But let's let's go to the other end of it. I've sent the parcel out. I I'm gonna, I ordered some trainers from a website called Noble and I ordered some trainers from them.
The prices were in Sterling. I remember this. And so I just assumed and bearing in mind I know what I'm doing with e-Comm. I made the wrong assumption here, Dana. It's totally my fault in a lot of ways. I assume they were coming from the uk and I assume because the prices were in English, the shoe sizes were also the English shoe sizes.
They weren't, they were us shoe sizes. That's not easy to say, . So when these shoes came over from the us they cleared customs, but it just meant that they were taken longer to get here, longer than I expected. And of course, when they arrived, they were entirely the wrong size. So returning those shoes to the States was gonna cost me a small fortune almost as much as the cost of the trainer.
I went I'll give the [00:18:00] trainers away and I'll just won't buy from them again. And so they lost a customer in a lot of ways because of this return issue and also because they weren't clear about where they were shipping from. But that's another story. Returns. Let's talk about returns.
Let's start at the top, big overview. Obviously in an eCommerce world, you're going to have to deal with returns. What sort of percentages? Over returns, do you think we have to deal with in various different industries?
Dana von der Heide: Yeah very different by industry. Also value of the goods really depends.
But of course, if we look at like apparel no, you look at about 50 percent right? Stuff yeah, which is really high and everyone is struggling with it, which means you have two options, right? And I have a lot of discussions with this with the retailers. Similar to your case, right? Some say, okay, let's just make it hard to return something.
So this doesn't happen, but that's just not the reality of business, right? That's not going to work for you because. [00:19:00] You lose customers and right now the biggest you have to optimize for in times where it's so hard to acquire new customers, customer retention, so you want to keep them in a happy journey.
So making it possible or really hard is not the solution, but if you make it too easy, you get too many returns and then facilitating a return is really difficult as well. So I think. Yeah, it's a fine line on how to deal with it. But our top recommendation, first of all, is to be transparent about what's your return policy, because already at checkout, you spoke about the different generations that are shopping right now.
If you look at Gen X, Gen Z, they probably just expect that it's returnable. They also want sustainable solution. That's a whole different area as well, but that's also why a lot of them don't appreciate to actually have a return label in the box. That's something that we hear a lot. So there's really a whole lot of debate in this, but our standpoint on this is let's make sure that return can in a [00:20:00] way be a profitable kind of operation for an eCommerce merchants where you make sure that the way the return is handled from a customer perspective is a smooth process that doesn't encourage, over encourage them to return it, but makes it profitable.
Relatively easy to do it. So you don't, they don't stop buying from you. And then more importantly, we've got to find really easy ways to make sure that you can handle the returns internally. And then it's a bit of an ops setup, right? Whether you do a domestic return consolidation you might resell it in the market or you ship it back and back to then restock in your warehouse.
I think that's the logistics consolidation, but the part that we are handling mainly is to make sure that all the user experience for. The Merchant, but also for the customers working really nicely.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's top head. But I remember I'm just going to tell all my stories now. You're just, you're triggering them in my memory, Dana.
I ordered some shoes from a website called vivobarefoot here in the UK. They're like a barefoot style [00:21:00] shoe. And they had this policy, which says you, you basically you buy the shoe from them. And if after the. You've got a hundred days to try it, right? And you can wear it outside. They've made it so easy for you to get their product, to try it and return it with no questions asked that I've bought countless pairs of shoes from.
Cause I know if I've got an issue, I'm going to send it back. And I've sent shoes back. But I think. As a result of their policy, my lifetime value to them as a company is quite high because I'm buying shoes for me, for the kids, for everybody, right? You just buy them from Vivo. And they're not cheap shoes either.
So I, I think a lot of their costing incorporates the fact that they've been generous, I think, with this sort of returns policy. And the other company that I've seen do it really well in the clothing sector is Thrudark. So Thrudark are a clothing brand here in the UK and they've recently I don't know what they've done recently in terms of whether it's an internal policy change or what but I ordered some clothes from them.
[00:22:00] I'd inadvertently ordered the wrong size. And within three clicks, not only have I printed off a returns label I'm not paying for the returns, but they've sent me the right size out in the meantime. So they're not waiting for that one to get back. They're, oh, we'll send you this one out in the meantime.
By the way, if you don't send us the other one back, we are going to bill you for it, fair enough. But the whole process was done in such a way that I thought, geez, you guys are good. And I think it, the lifetime value for me with Thrudark is also quite high, much to my wife's unhappiness in many ways.
You buy more clothes from Thrudark. But it's part of it is because of this returns policy and the importance of that can't be overstated, right?
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, a hundred percent. And the question is, how do you make it available? So I think it all starts. What we do is we first look at click and trace, right?
So let's say you see all your delivery data within the eCommerce website. You know exactly when the parcel arrives. You get nice branded email communication, but then you want to [00:23:00] return something. You don't want to go to a separate portal to then start a completely separate process. You want to go to where exactly you already went in your order summary.
You want to click a button. You want to select those items that you want to return. And then either you want to label. That's perfect. Okay, great. If they do that, but if you, for example, look at Germany now, is there's a lot of QR codes, right? Because not everyone has a printer at home. So you also, as a retailer, want to make sure that you offer all the different available services to this.
Quality Item, High Margin. Then you might even offer a pickup and we see that happening as well. So then you need to schedule the pickup time, make it really convenient for your customers. And all that needs to be an end to end flow in our experience within the same interface to make it really smooth for the customer.
Now we could say, okay, it's more for the customer. What does have the retailer to gain from it? The visibility to also plan for your returns, right? Because the biggest gap that retailers are having, if the time [00:24:00] between something is returned to hitting your warehouse is very long, you might lose the opportunity to resell it, right?
Because then you're waiting to get surprised in the warehouse. The warehouse workers are not prepared for it. That's a lot of cost, but it's also much later than back in stock on your store. So by having end to end visibility, not just for your customers, but by them basically informing the merchants very early on to say, I have an intention to return this, by then making sure that as soon as they drop it off, the retailer gets an information back into their warehouse, because that's the point when you can put it back in stock.
And then by giving full visibility end to end on when the return hit the warehouse, we can then also increase. Basically The payback to the customer, right? So you can do the cash remittance, which then increases the chance of you buying again. You are more likely to hit the, yeah, I wanna buy the same thing in a different size again.
Yeah. If you know that you actually have your money back and you're not just giving a free credit to an e-commerce
Matt Edmundson: store as well. Yeah. Yeah. That's really powerful. [00:25:00] So who do you see doing this well?
Dana von der Heide: One example we already spoke about, right? The big marketplaces tend to have this well covered, especially those that kind of operate their own supply chain. We see this also with quite a lot of merchants doing it quite well in an integrated manner. I think that's great. It really depends on also their setup, right?
We see a few merchants, we can now argue, I'd love to get your opinion on this, whether they're doing it well or not, but there's a big trend also to charge for returns in the hope that. On the one hand, maybe stops the customer a little bit from returning too much and have a more deliberate choice when they hit checkout into not putting too many items in there.
But at the same time, also, of course, to recover some of your costs. I think there's a big debate on what is the better solution, but I think we see the market moving to some sort of a Customer kind of costing to [00:26:00] make sure that they understand that returns has a price attached to it as well. And for that, you get the convenience of ordering everything to your house.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I've seen that. Dana, you're right. I, going back to the through dark example, they clearly stay on their website. They're gonna charge like a five pound fee which in the grand scheme of things is not a lot of money, but. It's enough for you to make you go, oh, that's interesting, and change.
I I think it does change consumer behavior. Now, I have to say, to Thrudark's credit, whenever I've returned something it's mainly because I want to change the size and I think they've, whether they've got this internal policy, which goes, oh, there's Matt's, Matt's a good customer.
We're not going to charge him the five bucks because I've never actually, I don't think I've ever paid it. Maybe I have and I don't realize. And but I think just the language on the website, irrespective of whether they've done it or not, I think does alter consumer behavior and I think, I'm thinking of a friend of mine, Jenny she, Jenny's lovely.
She's a [00:27:00] paramedic, Jenny. She's in her mid thirties and for the longest time was at a lodger. She lived with us. She stayed at the house, just a beautiful young lady. And she would shop at ASOS all the time. So the big clothing company, ASOS. And she, no joke the door would go, there'd be a knock on the door and the postman looked like he was having a heart attack because he was carrying so many parcels for Jenny.
And I'm like, how, what? And she goes, Oh, I'm going to send three quarters of them back. And it became this sort of inbuilt thing. It's like you buy loads, you ship a load back and you just keep one or two items. And I think. I think that is slowly changing and companies, like you say, they are realizing we need to change consumer behavior here.
And one of the ways to do that is to introduce cost, unless maybe you're some kind of member or, some high value client and you don't get that, which keeps you, makes you feel a bit more special,
Dana von der Heide: yeah, there's obviously also other cool ways to do this. I just also happened to shop at Zara just [00:28:00] lately, and they smart thing where they basically told you when you add the same item, but in a different size, instead of automatically adding it to the cart, which you would normally do to increase the conversion rate, they actually introduced a pop up where they say, are you sure that you need this item in both sizes?
Here's our measurements guides, or something like that, prevent you to do that. So there's a lot of kind of smart things you can probably also do up front to see if that reduces your return. The other thing that I found really interesting, and again, going back to what you said earlier about Gen Z They really care about sustainability, right?
So I think one thing that we're also seeing is the whole carbon footprinting element in this. So if you are able to communicate this well and say, if you return an item, your overall shipment has a higher carbon footprint. If you order so many more stuff, it's might pass it. That's going to lead to a sustainability impact.
I think there's a new generation that actually cares [00:29:00] about this. So there's quite a few. Tips and tricks out there to encourage people to be a bit more mindful on what they put into their cart.
Matt Edmundson: It's like the hotel, isn't it? You go to the hotels and they've, they cottoned onto this by saying, if you leave your towel on the floor, we will obviously take it away and give you a new towel, but do you really need us to do that?
And just that little card, just cut down the amount of laundry hotels had to do. Tremendously. And it's that kind of thing, isn't it? That how do I nudge consumers to make maybe a more informed choice that's not going to cost both the planet and me a lot of money. That's very true.
There's the whole sustain. How do you see companies? Work in the sustainable angle because obviously e-commerce has its benefits. One of the downsides with e-commerce is everything is shipped. So if you're shipping out and you're also shipping with returns, you've got shipping both ways.
There are some, obviously, there are environmental costs to this that we have to be aware of, and it is a bigger and bigger issue. How do you, [00:30:00] how else do you see companies mitigating this? I know, we can do things like, do you really need the large and the extra large, Matthew, yes or no?
Those kind of questions I think are quite helpful, but how else do you see companies taking the right stance, where sustainability is concerned?
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, I think one thing that of course also helps is, again, I'm talking about a diversification of carriers, right? So there's a lot more greener solutions now out there that actually allow you to do, electric vehicles.
If that's available in metropolitan areas like London, you see a lot of cargo bikes. So that could be a simply first start to make sure that for the eco conscious customer, which are definitely on the rise, You at least offer this as an option. And it's quite interesting. We see that with some kind of, especially higher value items.
People tend to opt for that. You spoke about the metaphor in a hotel. It's a bit like carbon offsetting on your flights. You pay a little bit extra and therefore you get a green delivery. [00:31:00] You're surprised. I was at least surprised. To see that it actually works for some, and then it's just incorporating it into your entire packaging.
Of course that's a big element here. Also the packaging of the clothes. We see again, quite some big fashion retailers in the text, for example, where you don't get the stuff in like plastic wraps anymore, but it's just the clothes based. Fold it into your box. And then when it comes to returns, I think one of the big things that we are seeing is this whole label provision.
I think we briefly spoke about that, right? Having for every order that you ship this sort of label for returns already in the box, which is printed on plastic, which is like glued sticky paper that you then have to kind of ship with every time that you have an outbound order, you just put it in there. I think we now see a very strong trend to say, okay, let's not do that because first of all, that makes it almost too easy to return it, but that's also not a suitable choice.
Let's rather have the customer [00:32:00] inform the merchant that you want to return something, which makes your planning a lot better because you know what's coming and then we can give QR code or print out version as
Matt Edmundson: well. Yeah, it's great. It's interesting. I want to pick up on the fact that you said people are now paying for green deliveries, which I have to be honest with you.
I've not seen a lot of yet. Maybe it's a British thing. Maybe I don't know if this is more of a worldwide thing. Just talk around that a little minute. So you what? What are some of the things that you're seeing there?
Dana von der Heide: So I think the main trend that we're seeing is that the bigger your kind of operations get, the more you're trying to diversify your carriers, right?
And one thing is the content element. So you want to make sure that, peak surcharges and all that, you want to have an option to move your volume somewhere else. I think that's a really big one. Then secondly, you see a lot of performance issues. Strike, Winter, whatever is the issue, Royal Mail also had a fair share of [00:33:00] that, if I remember correctly.
Matt Edmundson: Every week. Yeah. That's every week there's something going on. Yep.
Dana von der Heide: Also probably good for you to make sure that you have a little bit of alternatives there to work around that. And then you get feedback from your customers and that's also lets you choose maybe different options, especially in metropolitan areas.
And I think. Yeah, we see this quite heavily all across the globe, but the matter is always on whether customers are ready to pay for it or not. So I think a lot of people have a good intention. If it's going to be more expensive than the normal shipping, then that's of course not widely adopted yet.
But yeah, there are some areas also in Southeast Asia where we see this working really well. And people We'll just appreciate a different kind of delivery mode. We see some experiment also throughout our customers to say, Hey, if we deliver to a parcel locker or something like that, there's a lot of more convenience for you because you get it at any point in time, but I can also get a better rate with my carrier.
Plus it seems like a more sustainable thing to do [00:34:00] because the amount of free delivery, relieved deliveries goes down. So a few options, but it depends on your customer sentiments. And I think that's also why it's super important to ask your customers how they like their delivery, right? We see, A lot of merchants optimizing their ratings their feedback for the products that they are shipping.
But I think there's a big opportunity to ask your customers how they perceive the delivery and what they would like to improve or what other options they would like to have. And we have a customer, for example, Snox, a very successful brand selling like underwear and socks. wearing them right now. And they realize that the best time to ask for feedback and to also get the best NPS score is exactly one hour after a successful return.
But for that, you have to actually know, sorry, a successful delivery for that you actually have to know when exactly what was delivered. But that then is the perfect opportunity to ask your customer for feedback. And you can learn a lot from
Matt Edmundson: it. Yeah, [00:35:00] it strikes me. I'm listening to you talk right. And I'm sitting here thinking this is great.
I could give customers the option to choose to have the green delivery or I can send out an email saying, my NPS email like an hour after delivery. And then I'm thinking that is a lot of work because we cover a lot of territories. And I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, that this is where Parcel Perform actually steps in and goes we figured all of that out for you.
We can, this is where we separate ourselves because it, if I'm honest with you, I like the idea of a lot of what you've talked about. It just sounds like a technical nightmare, actually trying to make that work.
Dana von der Heide: 100 percent and I think that's a big challenge for all the eCommerce merchants out there, right?
You have so many good tools, they all sound fantastic, but then you have to integrate heaps of them. And usually those integrations also are not so easy to do and we all don't have time for that on our roadmap. I think everyone has the same challenges there. And that's [00:36:00] exactly why when we built Passive Performance Reset, look it has to be an end to end solution.
So it cannot just stop at, track and trace delivery notification. It needs to do performance analytics. It needs to do the predict prediction at checkout already. And that's also why we are now offering the whole end to end suite for returns. So a customer comes on board with us, they integrate once, they mainly give us their tracking numbers and maybe the account credentials.
Of their carrier if they wanna get the labels from us as well. Otherwise we don't even need that and we can just immediately get started. And I think that's the true power, right? . And especially now in Europe where we all talk about GDPR. I think we all also know it's better to not give you data away to too many different providers.
And that's why we built a solution that can help really end-to-end and offer the full service range. And our customers don't need to do the heavy list lifting once we have the information. Checking numbers, we can handle the rest.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. I like how a part of your [00:37:00] sales and marketing is GDPR, because everyone just goes, oh, GDPR, no.
I like that. Everything Dana we've talked about so far I can see it working for us because we ship, like we ship a lot of parcels around the world, right? And it's a multi million pound brand. And what happens it, everyone that listens to this show are at various stages of their e-comm journey, right?
So some people are a hundred million dollar brands. Some people like me, just few million. But there are people just starting out, or turnover, I don't know, a hundred, 200,000, somewhere around there. A small e-comm brand, and they're just getting going. What's your advice to that group of folks?
Because a lot of this stuff sounds great, if I'm shipping out a thousand parcels, but if I'm only shipping out, I don't know, twenty or thirty parcels, does this all still work? Does it all still make sense or are there some different rules I should think about?
Dana von der Heide: Yeah, very good question. First [00:38:00] of all, congratulations on building such a big business. That's
Matt Edmundson: exciting. I wish I could take the credit.
Dana von der Heide: But no, what we're seeing right now is Historically we all saw that, I'm going to focus on customer experience on making that sort of differentiation later down the line once I have a lot of volume, but we live in a world right now where acquiring customers is incredibly expensive, right?
TikTok, all that, it just costs you a fortune. So the biggest lever you have to grow your business. So the first thing that you need to do is building customer retention for this, you need to expose your brand, not just on your website, but also post purchase, right? All the delivery notifications and all that.
And the second thing that you need to watch out for is cost, right? Whether you ship just a few parcels or hundreds of them, the customer is still going to want an update on that. And do you invest in someone in customer service handling this? What's the actual cost of losing customers because they didn't have a good delivery experience?
[00:39:00] I think we live in a time where there's just so much pressure in the market and so many best practice examples that we already mentioned that might as well get your business if you don't get it right, that right from the beginning, invest in you. Building a brand post purchase, invest in customer retention, make sure that you pick the right carrier and you know how well they are performing.
And that already works with just a few parcels and, obviously smaller brands usually don't have big IT departments. And that's why, for example, we have a plug and play Shopify app connector where You just press two buttons and it all automatically works without you actually having to do any sort of integrations.
So we're trying our best to make it easy and accessible for every brand out there. Of course, the bigger you get the kind of more complex your kind of supply chain is getting. And that's why we also work with a lot of the enterprise clients as well.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Fantastic. Dana, if I've great conversation, I've got as always more [00:40:00] questions, but I'm aware of time.
And like I said, at the start of the show, the reason why I find this sort of thing so fascinating, I've done coaching, eCom coaching with companies all around the world, right? And without exception. There are what I call seven areas of eCommerce that I think eCommerce entrepreneurs need to think about.
One of which we call experience and it's the way we define it is, it's what happens to the customer once they have clicked the pay button, right? So that you do all of these things. We do marketing, we do optimization, all the things that we talk about, and everyone's really excited about and they've clicked the buy now button.
You have got the order. So from that point onwards. What happens and defining that strategy and understanding that and being super intentional in that whole area. Because this is where I think over the years in e-commerce, this is where I think my personal e-commerce brands, where we've made the biggest impact, if that makes sense.
Where we've seen the biggest sort of return on [00:41:00] investment, and with that exception, every brand I've ever done coaching with. We look at that, okay, what happens now once I click buy? And there is always something to improve. There's always something to get better that people just don't think about.
What a big one is shipping and getting the parcel out quick and getting it outright, and then dealing with returns. And when we figured this out, we're talking tens of thousands of pounds, it was the difference was night and day. And so it's good to talk about it because I think it's such a, an important thing.
If people want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about parcel perform, if they want to reach out to you personally, when you're not flying to Singapore, what's the best way to do that? How do they reach you?
Dana von der Heide: Oh, I'm glad you're asking. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Anyone can find me there.
I really enjoy just exchanging thoughts. I'm very happy to get connected there. You just find me under my name, of course, also Parcelperform website, or you just follow us on LinkedIn as well if you want [00:42:00] any updates
Matt Edmundson: there. Fantastic. We will, of course, link to your LinkedIn and to Parcelperform all on the show notes which if you've subscribed to the newsletter, we'll be making their way to your inbox automatically.
If you've not subscribed to the newsletter, you could have to go to the website to get them. So when you're there, just get the newsletter and they'll come to you automatically. Dana, listen it's been great talking to you and thanks for coming on. And sharing your expertise and bearing with me as I've sounded a little bit more nasal than usual.
But it's been fascinating having this conversation. Lovely to meet you. And thanks for just bringing some insane value.
Dana von der Heide: Thank you very much for having me, Matt, and thanks everyone for listening in as well for my end.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Fantastic. What a great conversation. Oh. We do this now. Sorry, Dana, hang on a second.
Let me get the thing set up. Yeah. , let's just turn that off. Okay. So thanks to Dana for joining me today. Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor the e-commerce cohort. Remember to check [00:43:00] out e-commerce cohort@ecommercecohort.com. Come join us. In the Mastermind, come join us in the membership. Be great to see you in there.
Of course, be sure to follow the E-Commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today. Let me be the first dear listener. You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome.
It's just a burden you have to bear. Dana has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes. Episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team, the wonderful team that makes this show possible is the fantastic and beautiful Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak.
Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, hello, over to the website, e-commerce podcast.net, where you can also sign up for the newsletter I've been talking about. That's it from me. That's it [00:44:00] from Dana. Thank you so much for joining us.
Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.