How To Prevent Potential Loss From BOPIS

It’s no secret the past year has accelerated the need for businesses to seamlessly integrate the online shopping experience with in-person fulfillment. But has the need for speed accidentally led to an increase in loss? According to Forter, BOPIS fraud increased 55% YoY in the first half of 2020 alone. Here are some key indicators your loss could be caused by BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) or BORIS (buy online, return in store).

Integrating BOPIS and BORIS may increase the volume of goods being transferred throughout the store, which is great. That’s what you want. But more merchandise handled by the store also presents more opportunity for shrinkage as you train employees to handle this new normal. That means you need to make sure you have well communicated procedures in place to track the entire lifecycle of the product to prevent unintentional loss.

So what procedures can help keep loss from BOPIS and BORIS under control?

Preventing Loss With People

Personnel Need To Get It Right

Training and understanding from employees need to be in lock-step with the customers’ goals. A long line of customers means more time getting things done. Keeping the flow moving smoothly into and out of the location is paramount. Training needs to be spot on.

Simplify and Optimize the Pickup Process

Businesses like Whole Foods and Walmart have shown a great way to help keep things moving while simultaneously avoiding having someone on their payroll spend time hunting for an order once it’s complete. They provide lockers for the customer to use. Once an order is complete, the customer is notified and given their locker information. That customer can then go and pick their order up in store quickly and efficiently while in-store team members are left to focus on other matters.

Secure Payments are a Must

Brands must have a robust and thoroughly secure payment system online to prevent fraudulent purchases. These systems can bring with them a fairly hefty initial payment to put in place. But these systems are a must to protect both the customer and your business.

Returns Processing from Online Purchases

it’s not always as simple as “bring your receipt.” The old systems and return processes may have gaps in them that do not accommodate the current digital landscape. Again, like the pick-up process the goal here is to streamline the process so that it runs quickly and smoothly. Less time spent looking up an order means more time spent doing more important things. REI, for example, can look an order up by name, phone number, and order number. Two of these three are known by the customer and the third is easily findable with every online purchase through email and on their website (after user login).

Avoid Abandonment with Speed

A Forrester report from 2015 indicated that around 30-40% of BOPIS users had abandoned the order. Reasons for this were finding a better price elsewhere, deciding they didn’t want it, or deciding they wanted it sent to their home instead. Again, speed is the answer. The faster you can get the customer on their way to your business to pick up their order, the less likely they are to abandon the order.

Preventing Loss in Systems

Real-Time Data

In order to accurately track your merchandise, you need to use real-time information to predict and prevent fraudulent behavior. But even the most robust data is only as useful as the insights drawn from it. Using your real time data from your merchandise tracking to fully understand the big picture of ordering, pick-up, and returns to be able to identify any potential areas of concern that could be leading to any type of loss is absolutely critical to success and loss prevention.

Artificial Intelligence

Gartner predicts that by 2022, half of all legacy spend analysis software will be retired, replaced by AI-powered, cloud-based solutions. This will help retailers address global ecosystems and the circular economy, as well as control loss related to BOPIS and BORIS.

Run Exception Reports

A very successful technique is to develop new queries to look for fraud within through the use of exception reports. By doing this, you may be able to identify consumers who routinely scam the system or find that some of your own pickers may be pocketing merchandise knowing it will be viewed as a mistake.

Frequent Audits

Audit everything. Every system, packaging, pick-up times, pick-up rates, customer time-in-store, employee time-to-completion, if you can put a number behind it then do it.

Add A Comprehensive Fraud Prevention Solution

A comprehensive fraud prevention solution can deliver a wide reaching and robust plan to protect your brand from loss. From BOPIS to deliveries, see what IntelliShop can do to help secure your business.