Flipkart, India’s one of the biggest online stores has announced that mandatory visits to the sellers’ location to audit their warehouses and merchandise will be done to keep a check on the quality standards and bring down the percentage of return.
Though the company did not disclose their present return percentage, it’s quite clear that they have been facing a notable loss of revenue due to high return rate for the sellers as well as the marketplace. The fashion category comprises the major part of the returns and cancellations while the mobile and appliances have the least of it. A monthly report from the e-commerce company to its third-party sellers mentioned that they may anytime give a surprise visit to their warehouses and see if the warehouse and product quality standards are being maintained.
Some of the steps that the sellers need to keep in mind are :
- They should ensure that the product characteristics and pricing details must be similar to that on the product page.
- They should not compromise in the primary and secondary packaging material of the product. This would avoid damage during the shipment process.
The e-commerce giant, Flipkart, also stated that if the sellers are unsuccessful in passing the audit, they may be deprived of the Fassured badge, which is a quality and speed badge given to select products. If 70% or more product samples do not conform to the guidelines, the sellers will fail to pass the audit. To structure its guidelines, the company is using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
Anil Goteti, Vice president and head of the marketplace of Flipkart, expressed,
“Our team will visit various seller locations to help identify possible gaps in the quality of the products they sell on Flipkart. We are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to form these guidelines. It uses data from both sellers and customers and gives us an insight into areas that can be improved to reduce returns even further.”
In case the seller fails the audit, all the products of the brand will be removed from the marketplace for a week’s span. Further, a second audit will be conducted within 15 days. If the brand fails this time, all of their products will be delisted.
The Etailing company aims to reduce its returns by 10-15% in the next 12 months. The company now seems to be getting serious about its product quality as well as its customers’ satisfaction.