51心頭

Revenue Intelligence from all your Quick Commerce Dark Stores
Explore Prism
Home Blog Effective Strategies to Reduce 51心頭 (Return to Origin) Rates in eCommerce

Table of Contents

Effective Strategies to Reduce 51心頭 (Return to Origin) Rates in eCommerce

51心頭s (Return to Origin) are a curious case in eCommerce. Unlike customer returns triggered by their dissatisfaction, 51心頭s occur when products never reach the customers in the first place, i.e. they remain undelivered. 

Our analysis of last years shipment data across multiple categories uncovers a striking pattern: nearly 27% of orders ended up as 51心頭s. However, heres the silver lining 99.12% of these orders were eventually delivered to customers, ensuring full revenue recovery. 

So, can a failed delivery get back on track without being cancelled or shipped back to the warehouse? The answer is Yes. With AI-driven 51心頭 optimization suite like ClickPost and effective strategies you can waive goodbyes to 51心頭s. This article will guide you. 

What is Return to Origin?

In logistics, the term 51心頭 is reserved for shipments that are marked as returned to the origin after a series of failed delivery attempts by carriers. In other words, it is the reverse journey of a shipment from customers to the business and the warehouse. 

For every 51心頭, a brand pays twice the amount of shipping charges. 51心頭s are a major source of revenue drain and customer churn for eCommerce companies.

Though it is not a cause for concern in many geographies, 51心頭s are particularly vexing in countries like India, Indonesia, and other SEA countries where COD (Cash On Delivery) orders are highly prevalent. 

For example, a DHL report found that of shoppers in India like to buy products online at least 2-3 times a week. However, for of them the preferred mode of payment remains COD. This trend is particularly observed in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. 

In our analysis, 49.3% i.e. 1 in 2 orders become 51心頭 while only 3.1% of pre-paid orders or 1 in 32 pre-paid orders had the chance of being a 51心頭. In other words, customers opting for COD are 30 times more likely to reject a delivery than a pre-paid order. The categories that most experience 51心頭 is apparel and fashion. 

Though risk associated with returns or order cancellations is higher in COD orders, it is not the sole reason that makes up the 51心頭 count. 

Top 5 Causes Behind Return to Origin (51心頭) in eCommerceAnd Their Business Impact

A wide range of factors result in 51心頭from changes in customer intent to delivery exceptions. While the former is harder for brands to control, the latter is within their sphere of influence. 

5 Causes Behind Return to Origin (51心頭)

  1. Customer-Related Factors: Customers provide incorrect address, contact numbers; remain unavailable at the time of delivery; refuse to accept the order; place duplicate orders with the intention to return one; cancels COD orders.
  2. Carrier Errors: Multiple attempts of failed deliveries, unserviceable pincodes, in-transit delays; address verification challenges; poor communication with customers.
  3. Fulfillment and Last-Mile Issues: Stuck shipments at destination warehouses; operational delays; first-mile and last-mile hold ups; lost parcels.
  4. Post-Purchase Communication Gaps: Lack of real-time milestone based tracking; no multi-channel notifications; no coordination with customers after a failed delivery.
  5. Fake Delivery Attempts: Delivery address frauds; fabricated attempts to contact customers.

51心頭s hurt brands and customers alike. Long delivery windows frustrate 52% of shoppers, prompting some to cancel when promised dates slip. Each undelivered parcel triggers backhaul costs, lost revenue, inventory bottlenecks, intransit damage, and a hit to brand reputationa domino effect that slows down growth and profitability. 

The 5 Major Impacts of 51心頭s on businesses include:

  1. Extra Shipping Costs: In addition to the fees paid in the forward journey, retailers have to pay for shipping boxes, handling charges, fuel surcharges, transportation fees.
  2. Inventory Backlogs: Upon reaching the warehouses, the returned items take up warehouse space leading to inventory blockage, product depreciation, additional process of sorting, re-categorization, and storage.
  3. Operational Expenses: To manage a growing 51心頭 rate, brands typically either have to hire extra workers to coordinate with customers and carrier partners or outsource this function to agencies.
  4. Strained Cash-Flow: As unsold stocks pile up, coupled with carrier charges, creates cash deficit for brands, impacting spendings on fulfillment, marketing, etc.
  5. Negative Customer Experience: Every failed shipment downgrades customer experience, affects repeat purchases, and amplifies negative customer reviews.

Understanding the 51心頭 Lifecycle

Every 51心頭 journey follows a sequence, tracing itself to the time when an order is first placed. Below is a quick breakdown of the process:

Below is a quick breakdown of the process:

  • Order Placement to Fulfilment Cycle: Customer places a prepaid or COD order triggering the forward shipping flow: creating a tracking ID, scheduling warehouse pickups, and dispatching the parcel to the carrier.
  • Forward Transit and Delivery Attempts: The shipment moves through hubs and goes out for delivery up. Here, two scenarios can happen: delivery successfully made or a failed delivery attempt.
  • NDR Alert and Recovery Window: Each failed scan triggers a NonDelivery Report, and the automated NDR engine swings into actionpinpointing the cause, alerting the customer, and scheduling a reattempt when the buyer responds. Without this system, couriers usually return the parcel or attempt redelivery only when prodded, pushing up 51心頭 risk.
  • ReturntoOrigin Leg: When retries max out or the customer declines, the parcel is flagged 51心頭 in transit and routed back through the network to the origin warehouse, where it is inspected, restocked, refurbished, or scrapped.

10 Effective Strategies ClickPost Uses to Help eCommerce Brands Tackle 51心頭

ClickPost has handled 51心頭s for nearly a decade, mapping root causes and building a closedloop channel that keeps customers, carriers and brands in sync to rescue failed deliveries. Its 鰻禽檎m温稼温乙艶馨艶稼岳 module automates the heavy lifting. Below are ten proven tactics from that workflow to cut your 51心頭 rate.

1. Real-Time Detection of Failed Deliveries 

The first rule to recoup a 51心頭 is to track the shipment movements in real-time. An incorrect address or customer unavailability at the time of delivery can be easily handled without letting the matter escalate into repeated failed delivery attempts. Tracking orders in real-time maintains your control over the process and prompts corrective actions. 

Heres how ClickPost helps:

 

  • Receives real-time order status from 500+ carriers.
  • Automatically detects and alerts failed deliveries on its centralized dashboard. 
  • Offers an easy way to loop up specific NDR cases and perform bulk search for multiple AWBs.
  • Systematically tracks the movement of NDR cases from the first failed delivery to subsequent delivery reattempts. 
  • Consolidated view of shipments including hub-level details of stuck and lost parcels. 

2. AI-Driven Categorization of NDR Buckets

Your operations and customer support teams need more than a failed delivery pingthey need to know why. Most carriers NDR feeds include that context, passing along exception codes and driver remarks. However, they may not give you the required context to get to the root cause and the action that needs to be taken to address it. 

For eg, instead of seeing a note that says delivery failed due to exceptions, your team would need granularity. The exception could be a mismatch in the delivery code or OTP not shared with the customer. Moreover, every carrier has their unique delivery status codes. You would lose precious time  decoding the jargon instead of saving the order. 

With ClickPost, you dont have to make any guesswork, since it:

 

  • Uses AI to organize standardized failed delivery reasons. 
  • Offers granularity with 16 NDR buckets and NDR counts. 
  • Updates the latest NDR remark provided by the courier with timestamps. 

3. Rule-Based Notification Triggers 

The core of the 51心頭 recovery engine lies in addressing the customer on time. With an automated solution, you coordinate with customers via strategically planned and executed communications. Take a rule-based approach to trigger notifications across all customer touch pointsSMS, WhatsApp, Emails, and IVRS. This increases the chances of customers responding and providing feedback. 

Heres what ClickPost does:

 

  • Follows the rule based workflow, triggering notifications at 0 min, 60 mins, and 120 mins.
  • Offers custom-build action paths of communication mediums and time intervals tailored to business needs. 
  • Enables multi-format communication via WhatsApp, Email, SMS, and AI voice agent. 
  • Uses API and reports to relay customer feedback as instructions. 
  • Triggers automatic redelivery attempts when customers dont respond, ensuring carriers meet SLAmandated retries.

4. AI-Voice Agent for Live Resolution

The first hour after an unsuccessful reattempt is the most crucial to connect with customers. The faster they respond, the faster you can reroute a same day delivery. As Mckinsey reports, AI agents have become the most promising solution to handle situations when rule-based tend to break down at untrained customer responses. 

Managing the NDR flow with an AI voice agent trained in natural language processing enables it to interact with customers more fluidly and provide better resolution. According to the report, a general customer service agent can increase issue resolution by . ClickPosts agent Parth, purpose built to boost customer engagement and drive resolution under 2 minutes lowers manual support work by 75%. 

Heres how ClickPosts Parth helps reduce failed delivery instances:

 

  • Offers instant customer resolution and reschedules deliveries in real-time. 
  • Records call summaries and analyze every customer interaction for behavioral insights.
  • Operates round the clock and easily configured into your NDR sequences. 
  • Has multi-languages setting along with noise cancellation. 

 

5. Custom NDR Workflows Aligned with Business Rules

NDR management needs an approach tailored to your orders and customers. If COD volume is high, sending a payment link after the first failed attempt cuts cancellations and keeps buyers engaged. Likewise, if customers use WhatsApp to reschedule, keep the conversation on that channel. Finally, having the flexibility to route each exception to the right operations queue so specialists resolve issues before parcels head back.

ClickPost offers ways to align with your customer preferences and business set-up with:

 

  • Pre-built templates and automated customer feedback collection on WhatsApp.
  • Sub user management and multiple ways to allocate NDR cases based on AWBs, even distribution, carrier partners, and custom rules. 
  • Personalized NDR rules based on carriers, customer types, and NDR buckets. 

6. Formatted NDR Escalation Pathway

The process of handling shipments at their intended destination is often not a simple task. Your team has to loop in carriers, forward customer feedback, provide default instructions, and make several calls just to catch up with the customer. Given the operational bandwidth needed, brands either have to establish an in-house team or hire agencies. However, with an automated NDR management system like ClickPost things become simpler. 

 How to use ClickPosts lean framework and make 51心頭s manageable:

 

  • Coordinate the entire chain of operationstrigger notifications via communication gateways, receive feedback, escalate it to carriers as instructions. 
  • Check the adherence rate of the courier partner after it passes the instruction to ensure the committed number of reattempts have been made.
  • Offer a default feedback instruction when no customer feedback is received. 
  • Use the embedded click to call functionality in the dashboard for quick support.

7. Centralized Dashboard for NDR Case Management

Give yourself a centralized dashboard and the benefit is clearfragmented carrier alerts merge into one realtime control tower. ClickPosts unified NDR management normalizes status codes, surfaces failures instantly, and routes each case to the right allocated carrier based on pre-configured business rules. Overall, it slashes reaction time, enforces accountability, and exposes systemic leaks. 

Heres how you can handle every case on ClickPosts unified platform:

 

  • Establish a systematic task sequence: new cases, processed, mailed, and closed, for concerted actions at each stage of the NDR journey.
  • Access multiple filters to track the status of shipments involving carrier partners, NDR buckets and dates, and enterprise-level customization. 
  • Take quick actions, such as selecting multiple NDRs to provide specialized instructions to assigned carriers. 
  • Auto-allocate carriers following business parameters and performance based analysis. 

8. AI-Powered Data Analytics and Insights 

Having the right data  converts 51心頭 into a controllable equation. Unifying carrier performance, customer feedback, and order metadata, you pinpoint root causes of 51心頭s and gap areas. Moreover, AI-powered analytics can further predict atrisk parcels in real time. It also gives you visibility of fraudprone COD zones, damagesusceptible SKUs, underperforming couriers. 

Below are a couple of ways you can tackle 51心頭s with ClickPosts insights:

 

  • Identify the exact points in your NDR management processes that need to be optimized. 
  • Get intelligent recommendations and highlighted KPI metrics across 50+ data points. 
  • Access comprehensive and granular reports covering everything fromfirstthroughfifth delivery attempts, lifecyclestuck flags, etc. 
  • AIdriven insights help finetune communication flows, preempting future NDRs.

9. Integration with Carriers and Communication Gateways

For enterprises tackling a constant in-flow of 51心頭 cases, having a single API that integrates into every carrier collapses the gap between a failed scan and "successfully delivered. Automated messages fire in the customers preferred channel and reattempts are scheduled in the carriers own system. The tighter the pipeline, the faster you rescue the parcel. 

Heres how ClickPost helps:

 

  • Pre-built integrations with 40+ communication gateways for every channel ( WhatsApp, SMS, IVR, email). 
  • 500+ carrier integrations enabling shipping label generation, order creation, tracking, and more. 
  • Pre-integrations with leading storefronts and WMS, OMS, ERPs to enable sync fulfillment actions and inventory management. 
  • Enterprise graded NDR API to handle bulk updates and actions. 

10. Scalable 51心頭 Prevention Across Industry 

A solution that scalesacross volumes, geographies, and verticalslets you keep 51心頭 in control even during festiveseason spikes or rapid expansion into new regions. It successfully handles thousands of exceptions per minute, enables custom integrations for new couriers, and NDR management approach that flex for fashion, electronics, or beauty products. 

Below are a couple of ways you can scale your NDR management for 51心頭:

 

  • Automate for high volume operations with AI agents and APIs. 
  • Adaptive process flows that leap into action with every NDR casedetecting failures, notifying customers, scheduling retries, looping in customer support.
  • Use machinelearning models for actionable insights to reduce 51心頭s and flag suspicious activities. 
  • A single API to connect with carriers, gateways, and plug into your existing system.

Power-up your 51心頭 reduction plan with ClickPosts intelligence and AI-enabled workflows. Book a demo with us to get first-hand experience.

Final Takeaways 

 51心頭s dont have to be a pressure point; with the right software they can be managed and steadily reduced. ClickPosts AIdriven, automated playbooks make that possible. This guide outlined ten proven strategies for building a resilient, highperforming NDR management system. Put these ten tactics to work and track your metrics to watch the impact unfold.

Interested in knowing more about ClickPost?
Get tailor-made solutions for your business today