The new era of commerce is circular – Interview with Wilhelm Hamilton, CEO at Reclaimit

Can you give us a concrete example of a Reclaimit client and what you help them with, in which way and for which processes? Who is working with the system, and what do they use it for?

A good example is our customer Cervera, where our solution is used online as well as both by Customer Service and the individual stores to accept BORIS (Buy Online Return in Store) and end-to-end claims. This way, they have reduced the caseload by 85%!

Aftermarket, returns, complaints, services, repairs, and refurbishment are hot topics these days. But still, most companies have no responsible individual for the optimization of this or a system to take care of the processes. How do you see this evolve in the next few years and what do you recommend retail companies to do for being more sophisticated in this area?

It’s wild that even large retailers don’t have clear ownership for post-purchase in their management team. The responsibility tends to sit in between e-commerce and operations. Usually, it means that returns are seen as a linear cost that you must live with and that the personalized user experience (that retailers invest so much in!) stops after the product is shipped. However, consumers want to feel that their customer journey ends when they are delighted, and they expect the same level of personification regardless of if they are pre- or post-purchase.

There is more to post-purchase than B2C returns. What do you see in B2B commerce regarding post-purchase and how does it evolve? Which segments are doing something interesting?

I think that we are still waiting for the big breakthrough of B2B but a B2B element that all retailers face is claims and how to process this back to the supplier / manufacturer. Today claims are usually solved for the customers, but the process stops there because of poor processes and no support systems. This means that retailers tie up a lot of cash in goods that could be claimed back from the suppliers. We have helped retailers streamline and automate these processes by tying in 600 suppliers in the Nordics that accepts digital claim processing. This way retailers such as Power or Salling Group can automatically claim back faulty goods and make sure they don’t tie up unnecessary capital.

There are more and more regulations around refurbishment, returns and service. Can you give us some examples? What should retail companies be prepared for regarding regulatory changes in the next few years?

Whilst a lot of the regulation introduced by the EU right now such as right to repair is aimed at producers it also has consequences for retailers who need to have processes in place to manage repairs in an efficient way. Also, retailers will be mandated to prioritize repairs over replacements when more economic efficient meaning that they will need to have systems to handle this in place.

The most anticipated reelation that is expected to come in is the EU’s digital product passport that will live with the product throughout its entire life cycle enabling traceability, repairs, and reuse. We welcome this and think will be incredibly important for circularity,we have already launched a product passport with the Norwegian Consumer Electronics Trade Foundation enabling full circularity and traceability for white goods and screens in Norway. That allows consumers to buy and sell used goods with full transparency and assured of the quality.

Reclaimit isn’t only serving retail companies, but also online marketplaces. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, how it works and how you help e-commerce marketplaces?

Yes, I’m personally very excited about marketplaces where I believe we have, together with clients such as Fyndiq and Cdon, built a unique post-purchase solution where we allow consumers a fully digital journey with automatic shipping options while at the same time giving the sellers insight into every return and the operator complete control of the customer experience. While we did relived the customer service department at Fyndiq of almost all their manual tasks the most interesting KPI after we went live was that consumers who made a return were 30% more likely to make a second purchase, giving them a significantly higher LTV. And in today’s climate, I think that customer LTV is key to profitability.

Reclaimit and Grebban have a deep history together and many clients together, and Grebban’s CEO & founder Anton is on the board of Reclaimit. What should Grebban’s clients know about our partnership to take full advantage of it?

I think that because of our partnership, Grebban is very aware of the importance of a fantastic post-purchase customer experience, and Grebban´s clients should take advantage of their knowledge already at the strategy phase of the project.

While Reclaimit is the market leader SaaS platform and service for return and warranty management in the Nordic market, there are alternatives, both globally and locally. How do you compare Reclaimit to competitors? And especially around the global leader Loop, what are the key differentiators? Is it even the same type of use cases?

Well, while some of the processes are the same, such as exchanges and digital returns, I think that two things set us apart; firstly, we are the only platform offering both the width of services combined with an in-depth knowledge of the individual post-purchase processes it returns, claims, repairs, or anything else. The other key element is our ability to tie our services with the rest of the merchant’s composable stack, enabling almost 100% automation.

Now on to the most important question of the post, the ultimate guide to aftermarket wording! Aftermarket is such a huge topic and there are a lot of people that are confused. What is what, how does it work and why does it matter? Can you give us the ultimate guide to repair, regress, returns, complaints, repairs, refurbishment… and other important aspects or variants?

Make it understandable! I feel that return pages are drafted by the company lawyer rather than anyone who cares about customer experience. Think about what the customer is there to do. They are not there to “register a claim.” They are there because their product is broken. I like how Fyndiq used their different post-purchase flows. They thought about it outside in rather than inside out.

If any of our readers think that they might need to learn more or see how this area can be improved in their company, who should they contact? Can you do audits to outline the needs and opportunities?

Please feel free to reach out to me or my colleagues, and we are more than happy to do a free ROI assessment of your current post-purchase processes and suggest both easy wins and more pervasive changes.

What (non-fiction) book or article do you recommend Grebban's followers to read?

Two good books are April Dunfords Obviously Awesome and Life 3.0 by Max Tegemark.