Douyin is "in a hurry", and supports "fast refund" after delivery

Following the launch of "refund only" in September 2023, Douyin e-commerce has recently issued a new return rule: when a consumer submits an after-sales application for "return and refund" and meets certain conditions, the platform will support a quick refund to the consumer, and this rule applies to all small store merchants on the platform.

As early as the first half of 2023, Douyin e-commerce launched the "unshipped fast refund" rule, and now the new regulations support "fast refund of delivered goods", which once again further lowers the threshold conditions for fast refund, and greatly shortens the refund cycle.

In this regard, some merchants believe that the new regulations will increase their operational work, "although the dispute rate between consumers and merchants has been reduced, the cumbersome degree of our after-sales operations has also increased." ”

Some merchants also pointed out that this is an inevitable experience for the development of the platform, "Douyin e-commerce is to follow up the rhythm of Tmall Jingdong and make up for the after-sales rules step by step." "It's nothing unusual, cats and dogs (Tmall and JD.com) have long been like this, and it's much better than just refunding." ”

|7 days no reason for goods on the whole platform to support fast refunds

According to Douyin e-commerce's "Merchant Quick Refund Service Specification after Delivery", when the after-sales application submitted by the consumer meets the following conditions at the same time, the after-sales system will automatically trigger the fast refund service after delivery, and the platform will advance funds for the merchant and refund the order payment to the consumer:

1. The after-sales type applied by the consumer is "return and refund";

2. The product supports "7 days no reason to return";

3. After the merchant reviews and approves the consumer's after-sales application, the consumer uploads the real and effective return logistics number on the after-sales application page and verifies it through the platform;

4. The consumer's shopping account has passed the consumer risk control level verification of the platform;

5. The system determines that the consumer has opened a gold card membership of Douyin Mall and the actual payment amount of the after-sales order is not higher than 1,500 yuan (inclusive) at the time of refund, or the consumer has not opened a gold card membership of Douyin Mall and the actual payment amount of the after-sales order is not higher than 1,000 yuan (inclusive) at the time of refund;

6. Orders that exceed the "Merchant's After-sales Service Validity Period", orders that apply for partial refunds for a single order, and orders for special products such as virtual and customized products do not support this service.

For express refund orders, after receiving the return, the merchant determines that the goods do not meet the return standards according to the return standards, and can retain the evidence to submit instructions and refuse the refund.

For orders that are judged to be the responsibility of the consumer by the platform's customer service, the platform's customer service will initiate a recovery of the order price from the consumer in accordance with the process, and the merchant needs to return the return to the user.

Regarding the shipping cost caused by the return to the user, if the merchant and the user reach an agreement, the user shall bear the shipping cost of the return of the goods, and if the two parties do not reach an agreement, the merchant shall bear the relevant return shipping fee.

For orders that are judged by the platform's customer service to be the responsibility of the merchant, the platform shall deduct the payment corresponding to the merchant's order in accordance with the rules, and the platform has the right to deduct the deposit of the corresponding amount of the merchant when the payment is insufficient.

In the view of Douyin merchants, Douyin e-commerce has opened the fast refund function after delivery, and the advantages are:

On the one hand, it can reduce the rate of complaints and disputes related to refunds before delivery, and improve the service attitude score in the experience score of Douyin stores, and on the other hand, the products are marked with fast refunds, improving the service experience of consumers and increasing the conversion efficiency of potential consumers.

The disadvantage is that after supporting fast refunds, the operation details of merchants are more cumbersome, and the processing process after problems with returned goods needs to be intervened by the platform, and special personnel need to be arranged, which may be more labor-intensive, time-consuming.

|New regulations for returns and refunds are frequent, what kind of chess does Douyin e-commerce play?

In the past six months, Douyin e-commerce has made many adjustments to the after-sales service policy for returns and refunds, such as:

In September 2023, Douyin e-commerce announced that it would support "refunds only". When the praise rate of the product is less than 70%, or the merchant is suspected of endangering the rights and interests of consumers and has serious violations, the platform has the right to support consumers to refund only and return the goods including shipping fees.

In October 2023, Douyin e-commerce issued a new rule of "refund only if not delivered", when the actual payment amount of the order is less than 500 yuan (1,000 yuan for official flag stores), and the consumer initiates a refund only before delivery, the platform supports a quick refund.

So, why does Douyin e-commerce have to adjust the after-sales rules in full swing? Pai Dai synthesized the views of many merchants and consumers, and summarized the following reasons:

First, from the perspective of consumers, the concern of online shopping lies in the high uncertainty, such as the size, size, and style are not suitable, and it is troublesome to return and exchange goods. Douyin e-commerce allows consumers to place orders without worry through a series of after-sales service protection measures such as fast refunds, lightning returns, and freight insurance.

Second, from the perspective of the live broadcast e-commerce industry, compared with shelf e-commerce, live broadcast e-commerce has a high return rate, and the speed of return and refund directly affects the user service experience. It is reported that the return rate of many clothing merchants exceeds 50%, and the return rate of individual merchants such as jewelry and cultural toys is even as high as 80%-90%, and there are phenomena such as mismatched goods and shoddy goods, and Douyin e-commerce needs more perfect after-sales service.

Third, from the perspective of the platform of Douyin e-commerce, Douyin e-commerce is moving towards a mature and standardized stage of development, and the system related to after-sales service and other aspects must be completed to complete the construction of e-commerce infrastructure.

Pai Dai learned that in 2012, Alibaba launched the "fast refund" service guarantee, for users with excellent and good integrity records in the platform, to provide "instant refund, 0 seconds to the account" special rights, and later Taobao, Tmall popularized to unshipped, shipped and other scenarios.

Up to now, many e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Douyin e-commerce have opened "fast refund" related services. At present, there are frequent promotion activities, and e-commerce platforms should lower the threshold for consumers to shop as much as possible, so that consumers can place orders more frequently and in larger amounts.

In response to a series of after-sales service rules updated by Douyin e-commerce, some merchants expressed their understanding that they recognized that it was imperative to improve the consumer service experience, "There are so many rules on the platform, and behind it is actually the higher and higher requirements for the quality of after-sales service for merchants, and we must pay attention to this and follow the platform in order to get more traffic."

However, there are also merchants who do not recognize, "all e-commerce platforms are more and more similar to Pinduoduo, from fast refunds to refunds only, the platform will only stand more and more unconditionally on the side of consumers, how to protect the interests of merchants?

The view of some merchants is relatively neutral, "It is understandable that the platform wants to be user-centric, after all, only users can have traffic, and merchants and platforms can make money." However, Douyin e-commerce should balance the interests of users, merchants and platforms, so that the ecology can achieve win-win development."

|Only refunds, fast refunds, what are e-commerce platforms fighting for?

Since 2023, major e-commerce platforms have been adjusting their pre-sales and after-sales service policies, such as JD.com, Taobao Tmall's refund-only new policy, Taobao's pilot home delivery, JD.com's lowering of the postage-free threshold, Douyin's e-commerce's fast refund, etc.

Padai observes that the market background behind these adjustments is:

On the one hand, since the epidemic prevention and control, the economy of all walks of life has yet to recover, and the current consumer market has shown a trend of weak consumption power and preference for cost-effective goods. According to the feedback from merchants, in 2023, 618, Double 11 and other major promotion nodes, the performance expectations will not meet the target, and it is necessary to further stimulate consumption through various support policies before and after sales, so as to achieve the effect of performance improvement.

Data shows that in recent years, the growth rate of traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao Tmall and JD.com has declined on Double 11. According to Xingtu data, in terms of the total transaction volume of Double 11, the sales volume of comprehensive e-commerce in 2022 will be 934 billion yuan, an increase of 2.9% year-on-year, and the total transaction volume of Double 11 in 2023 will reach 1,138.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%.

On the other hand, the ceiling of the e-commerce industry has appeared, and the growth of the user volume of major e-commerce platforms has slowed down.

For example, in March 2023, the number of daily active users of the Taobao app reached 380 million, and the total number of monthly active users reached 877 million in the middle of the year, which is close to the ceiling of the number of Internet users in China (in June 2023, the number of mainland Internet users reached 1.079 billion).

In the case of sluggish growth and peak user growth, Taobao continues to chase the growth of the number of users, and the simple GMV growth has gradually lost its meaning, and it needs to retain existing users through high-quality shopping experience.

Specific measures include the provision of refund-only services, which lead the industry competition from expanding scale to competing stock, from fighting low prices to fighting price, quality, and service in an all-round way. As a rising star, Douyin e-commerce is also likely to follow competitors and provide related services in terms of e-commerce infrastructure construction.

At present, after-sales service such as refund-only and fast refund has gradually become the standard configuration of e-commerce platforms, and the market trend behind this is that consumers have more and more demand for after-sales service, and their requirements are getting higher and higher.

This is both an opportunity and a challenge for merchants. The challenge and risk lies in the fact that the operational difficulty and cumbersomeness of merchant operations will further increase, and merchants whose product power and service quality are not up to standard will be further eliminated.

However, if when consumers encounter problems, merchants can quickly solve them and give satisfactory solutions, so that they can feel more intimate care in the shopping process, and get more traffic allocation and ranking weight in the platform rules, which may become a plus point for enterprise competition.