Overstock.com Now Stocks Innovative Returns Management

Popular online retailer selects Newgistics SmartLabel and ReturnCart to boost customer loyalty through convenient returns

Popular online retailer selects Newgistics SmartLabel and ReturnCart to boost customer loyalty through convenient returns

Austin, TX — January 16, 2006 — Overstock.com today said it has selected Newgistics SmartLabel and Newgistics ReturnCart to manage the company's returns process. In addition to giving customers a hassle-free returns experience, Newgistics' solutions provide multi-carrier functionality, dynamic tracking and pre-sorting of returned goods, which helps increase visibility and improve inventory management.

Launched in 1999, Overstock.com is an online outlet mall that enables consumers to shop for bargains on brand-name merchandise from the comfort of their homes. Understanding that a positive returns experience increases customer satisfaction and loyalty, Overstock.com selected Newgistics SmartLabel and ReturnCart to make the returns process as easy and convenient as the point-and-click shopping experience.

Newgistics SmartLabel solution eliminates such things as filling out shipping labels, pre-paying postage and standing in long lines at the post office to mail a return. With SmartLabel, Overstock.com shoppers simply affix a pre-addressed, pre-paid, bar-coded SmartLabel to their package, and drop it off anywhere in the U.S. Postal Service system, including their home or office. Newgistics intercepts the package, scans the SmartLabel bar-code, and provides Overstock.com with up-to-date package status and tracking information.

Newgistics ReturnCart, an online application for customers and customer service representatives (CSRs), enables Overstock.com to proactively manage the entire returns process online. If multiple carriers are used to ship and return products, ReturnCart streamlines the process by applying pre-defined return shipping rules to choose the correct return shipment option to each return label. Through ReturnCart, customers are able to automatically generate and print a return label for the pre-selected carrier.

Overstock.com CSRs can also use ReturnCart to generate an e-mail or send a printed postcard with a SmartLabel when customers contact the call center for returns assistance.
When an Overstock.com customer returns a high-cost item like jewelry or high-end electronic equipment, the items are handled differently to provide a secure returns process.

With Newgistics SmartLabel and ReturnCart solutions, Overstock.com is able to dynamically identify which packages should receive special handling to ensure the high-value goods are pre-sorted prior to arrival and are automatically directed to the appropriate secure location within the warehouse. Using specific data printed on the return label, Newgistics handles the physical aspects of the pre-sorting at its regional SmartReturn Centers before shipping Overstock.com's packages.

"Overstock.com is committed to providing its millions of customers with the most convenient and pleasant shopping experience possibl. Newgistics helps us extend this promise to our customers all the way through the returns process," said Tad Martin, senior vice president of Overstock.com.

According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive in December 2005 and commissioned by Newgistics, an easy and convenient returns process heavily impacts customer loyalty. Ninety-two percent of consumers surveyed reported being likely to shop with an online or catalog retailer again if the return process is convenient. In the same survey 82 percent of consumers stated they would not be likely to shop again with a catalog or online retailer that has an inconvenient return process.

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