Understanding and addressing missing item customer claims
The United Kingdom E-commerce Logistics Market size is estimated at USD 28.04 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 36.94 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 6.94% during the forecast period (2024-2029). Source
Which is great news for the sector, but with growth, comes challenges… A common challenge being customer claims that items have been missed from their order.
Despite having meticulous operational procedures in place, you’ll find your customer service inbox, socials and phone lines filled with claims.
There may be many reasons for these claims, factors such as:
Human error: Customer may have overlooked an item/ not actually ordered the item, leading them to think something is missing.
Packaging issues: Small items may have got mixed in with packaging, which could have been thrown away in mistake
Miscommunication: Customers may sometimes believe there is more to an item than meets the eye- (think, could that belt have been mistaken as included with the jeans.)
Multiple deliveries: It’s not uncommon for larger items/ drop shipping items to come separately, or if items are being dispatched from multiple locations, so customers may be quick to challenge.
Then the big two…
Fraudulent claims: There’s rising prevalence to suggest more and more customers are falsely claiming items are missing, whether that’s to get new items, or to get a refund, either way it’s dishonest and quite frankly challenging for your team to investigate.
Items are genuinely missing: Of course, the customer could be completely correct, their smart watch wasn’t included in their order! This could be down to genuine error within your packing operations, (both automated and human interaction) or it could be down to operational issue, such as internal shrinkage, again challenging and lengthy to investigate.
However, the good news is that Data Installation & Supplies have a solution to address your missing item claims, with the software enabling investigation time to view the order packing process sub 1 second!
This solution is Business Video Intelligence…
In a nutshell BVI is a solution that combines video footage (from your VMS) and transaction data from your business-related IT systems, and creates a new level of information, which inevitably optimises your business processes, and helps you to challenge fraudulent claims quickly.
Business Video Intelligence, often referred to as BVI is a support process for your business which provides the connection of your strategic business data into video, enabling you to narrow down all aspects of your operations.
The technology behind BVI enables you to search for specific elements within your production line, giving you a complete visual representation of your requests, before viewing the relevant footage from the individual, related camera responsible for capturing the footage.
As the user you can view the complete operation being undertaken and you can identify the order/ individual items being scanned and being put into the bag.
Similarly, since all aspects are time-stamped you can navigate directly to a precise element to ensure the item was scanned and correctly packaged.
How does this help your organisation?
It helps you in three ways:
- It enables you to challenge the customer with visual evidence to support that the item was correctly packaged (and that the condition was good), you can then match this with the image of the parcel at delivery from the courier (if the parcel is damaged and item could have fallen out you can transfer the liability to the courier) or challenge the customer with factual, visual evidence.
- It identifies any internal issues that need resolving, such as internal shrinkage.
- It ensures you are giving the best service to your customer- within a second you can have the relevant footage, this lets you identify if you are indeed in error, in which case you can apologise and quickly remediate.
BVI, is already proving vital for several of our ecommerce and online retail customers with figures such as:
BVI has saved £1.5million in just 12 months since installation… Equating to an annual ROI of 1000%.
Enabled the customer to reduce 64% of missing item claims, with 36% showing internal process improvements were needed (equating to 100% of claims being identified.)
If this solution is something that you would be interested in understanding further, then please contact DIS on 01274 869 099 or info@disnorth.com and our team of experienced engineers will be happy to discuss your specific organisation.
We will also work with you on a FREE proof of concept prior to any commitment!