Some burning issues that need

attentionBy Sudipto Mitra, winter intern from IITB

What I worked mainly on?

• After understanding the process I mainly spent the days in customer care and other steps right at the bottom of the chain.

• I studied data on RTOs arriving back to us city wise, pincode wise and its trends over many weeks, months, etc.

• Studied and analysed user behaviour in various ways, one of them being to maximise the success of order being placed instead of the tag ‘order not placed’.

• Categorised users with high number of RTOs and low number of shipped and feel this is important data that need to be checked(more comments on it later)

What I worked mainly on?

• Verified that there was least number of bulk orders during GOSF

• Manually helped in packing parcels in boxes for Comic Con.

• Called over 300 RTO customers to know the exact reason of returning the package, comparing this with the one given by courier company and even offering to resend the parcel to the user.

• Identified pincodes where certain courier companies are not performing well.

Now I list few problems that have been solved during my stay or are yet needing attention.

‘Order not placed’ trauma!• Every day loads of customers (almost equal to the number of orders

shipped on a day) are listed in the ‘order not placed’ status in the panel.

• Many seem to have this status for the same product multiple times on same day. Many a times their payment may fail which leads to ‘failed’ status.(this can be made out using excel to decide priority of calling users)

• Current setup: Only Altamash sir caters to this issue, but more often than not, he is busy over more important issues on the logistics side or with constant referrals of order ids from others around him which side-lines this otherwise order-generating step.

• I strongly feel that at least one person dedicated only to this is required even though Altamash sir will keep making calls in his free time.

For Example

•On 16th December,

•Total users who visited site (not just visitors but those who attempted purchase) were 810.

•Out of these 594 users placed at least one order(these were later shipped or cancelled).

•But rest 216 are supposed to be called with priority of calling being decided by the number of order not placed by a person with no placed orders.

‘Cancel’ button(do see next slide)

• After calling so many RTO customers I encountered main reasons as ‘double order’, ’got better offer elsewhere’, ‘wanted to cancel the order’, ‘ordered by mistake’, ’was gift for someone but that person refused the look of it on the site itself’.

• All this will be catered by a ‘Cancel’ button on website..• If status is ‘shipped’ then cancel button will be greyed out.

This must be informed to user by anyone of the message OR be aptly displayed in website.

• Some other reasons are ‘wanted to try it out’, ‘out of station’, etc.

Abolish ‘dial to verify’

• What is the point of asking a person if he wants his order just after he has spent an hour on your website and has finally ordered something.

• Anyways after having the ‘cancel button’, this step will anyways become useless. Keep calling after 4 days though.

• Instead let us message people informing the way to cancel. Do not allow to cancel within say 3 hours of ordering. This will ensure that people who are in 2 minds just after placing the order, ultimately do not cancel the order just after placing it.

Discussion outcome

•Discussion led to the conclusion that Dial to Verify does not increase process, reduces load on calling and most importantly verified the validity of the mobile number.

•Idea of cancel button is on for sure.

User history(not order history) in order details

• Already included in newmanageorder as number of RTO by the person and number of Shipped.

Pincode wise assignment of logistic partners

• Pincode wise assignment was very crude initially as I understand but many steps have been taken to get to current scenario where Delhivery(75%), Gojavas, Bluedart are top 3 partners in that order.

• Others are ecom, linxx, speedpost.• Going by professionalism, performance, accountability, cost, etc

Gojavas is best. Bluedart is made to supply only places where only it has service(it is by far the worst performing courier)

• Gojavas should now be considered to take more pincodes and penetrate into Delhivery zone(except in Mumbai area).

For example- in 1st Dec-10th DecBluedartsent 73rto arrived 101rto per 100 sent 138.3562

Delhiverysent 2021rto arrived 406rto per 100 sent 20.08906

Gojavassent 1416rto arrived 154rto per 100 sent 10.87571

Discussion outcome

•Look forward to increase GoJavas by at least 5% taking away from Delhivery zone.

Resending RTO if design dead

• No proper way to do it.• In fact we had to call up them again to inform that we

won’t be able to resend it even though the product anyway is going to deadstock.

Discussion outcome

•Introduce ‘Resend’ button that allows resending under same order id. This, statistically speaking, will also reduce RTO percentage.

Proper remittance data record

• It seems remittance was never checked before we interns arrived.

• Thankfully hardcopy of remittance data submitted when tallied with expected COD money comes out to be matching.

• But it is strange that although so many important records are on panel, we have not yet been able to furnish any soft form of data about remittance which if done can allow easy check during occasional audits.

• Solution:demand soft data on remittance submitted; then link it excel; the format of the current hardcopy is exactly what is needed in soft.

Discussion outcome

•All logistic partners will be asked to submit in same format and then will be put up on panel

Resending terms for offer products

• What if a GOSF product comes back as RTO due to a common reason ‘out of station’ and is requested to be sent again?

• There is no way now that we can print the old price.• If we do not wish to return at old price then this must be

true for any discount and be aptly mentioned in the bill or somewhere else while buying as a term/condition.

• In fact t&c must find a place in our bill, or somewhere else in the package. Why not remove our address from package OR from bill and place t&c there.

Discussion outcome

•Resending button will solve the issue

Most important: customer account!!!

• Makes it easy to refund something using cashback(instead of say wasting another shipping charge on a tampered item whose replacement is asked for but we refuse)

• Discriminating consumers using small cashbacks for every order. We can even award some long non-active users at random by giving some cashback and sms about it.

• Perhaps even mere visitors to the site can be given these to make them buy.

• Most of our buyers are college students living in hostels. Rewarding bulk(say more than 3 products) orders will promote more than one student to buy together.

Discussion outcome

•Surely will be introduce soon

Charge for wrapping paper

• If you advertise well on site that we offer this too then a person who actually wants to gift it will be forced to accept the offer for even say 25 rupees versus say the 2 rupees it costs us.

• Currently it is free from our side and based on customer request only.

Discussion outcome

•Possible as many sites do it, but we expect problem in octroi, etc if bill price is hidden

Not shipping the product if newmanageorder panel shows many

RTO, few Shipped• Already advised to customer care people who call people

before sending it.• They must consult Altamash sir first. Many times these

things keep diverting Altamash sir’s attention and so we need one person for calling those who are in ‘order not placed’(my first point)

THANK YOU