Stamps.com Monday
introduced two services to help online merchants efficiently and
cost-effectively manage large volumes of merchandise returns.
The iReturn Merchant Service is designed for e-commerce sellers with
annual sales of more
than $25 million. This customized electronic return management solution can
be seamlessly embedded into any major
merchant’s Web site, allowing the merchant access to the shipping services
of private and public carriers.
The iReturn services will be available for the 2000 holiday shopping
season.
The solutions were devised to combat consumer dissatisfaction with
returning online purchases, according Kim Parks, senior vice president and
general manager, Stamps.com e-commerce strategic business unit.
“Many merchants have yet to conquer the costly and frustrating customer
experience related to returning and exchanging merchandise,” said Parks.
“According to a Jupiter Communications survey in which 2,000
Internet shoppers ranked their top 12 sources of dissatisfaction with
e-commerce Web sites, the fifth-greatest concern was returning merchandise.
“Jupiter also found that 40 percent of those surveyed indicated they
would
buy more online if they could return items easily,” Parks added. “With the
expertise Stamps.com has built around e-commerce and shipping, it is natural
to leverage our technology throughout the supply chain and
provide Internet merchants with a dynamic solution to one of their growing
problems, reverse logistics.”
Both services are built on Stamps.com’s multi-carrier rating,
shipping, tracking and postage engines, which support a complete national
footprint of carrier services from United Parcel Service, U.S. Postal
Service, FedEx, Airborne Express, Yellow Freight and DHL.