Reverse logistics services provider Newgistics this week suspended the Express Value neighborhood drop-off portion of its ReturnValet service and sent it back to the drawing board for refinements.
The Express Value offering was launched as a test in the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas- Ft. Worth last November. Under the program, online or catalog customers who wanted to return goods to participating merchants could take the items to any in a designated network of neighborhood pack-and-ship locations, get a credit receipt, and complete the return as they would in a store. The mail parcel centers in the network were equipped with software that linked back to the merchant to process the credit transaction. The mail parcel centers receiving the packages held them for pickup by Newgistics' transportation partner, R.R. Donnelley Logistics. Donnelley trucks made the rounds of the centers on a scheduled route at least twice a week.
The idea was to offer customers of participating merchants the convenience of multiple drop-off locations and quicker processing of credit transactions than they’d get by waiting for the returned package to reach the merchant first. The program also was geared toward saving on returns handling costs, by having Donnelly trucks aggregate package pickup at the centers and delivery to the merchants.
The five-market test showed that Newgistics needed to streamline the process by reducing customer transaction times at the mail parcel centers and scale back on the route schedules of the Donnelley trucks. “We got very detailed in getting customers' information at the point of return in the mail parcel centers," says a Newgistics spokeswoman. “We realized that in its current configuration, that process just takes too long, for both the consumer and the mail parcel center operator. We wanted to take it from a six-minute transaction to two minutes or less.”
In addition to streamlining software and processes to cut transaction times, Newgistics will tighten up on the truck schedule for neighborhood pickup. “In the test, the trucks picked up packages from the mail parcels center on a scheduled route, but not every center had packages waiting on every day,” says the spokeswoman. “We want to integrate technology that tells the transportation side to go only to the mail parcel centers where packages are waiting.”
She adds that while Newgistics expects to roll out the Value Express option nationwide when the issues are resolved, no date has been set and it's unlikely the rollout will be in time for the next holiday season. In the meantime, ReturnValet continues to offer its Smart Label program, a pre-addressed prepaid label enclosed in the original merchandise shipment, which customers can attach to a box and drop in the U.S. mail to return items to participating merchants. Spiegel, Eddie Bauer, Lillian Vernon and J. Crew are among the retailers currently using ReturnValet.
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