Returns and Repairs Services for the Electronics and High Tech Industry

Leading companies in the electronics and high tech industry are working on strategies to reduce the large amounts they spend on activities associated with returned goods and to streamline their return-and-repair processes, thus helping them to become high-performance businesses.

A recent study by Accenture, “Big Trouble with No Trouble Found: How Consumer Electronics Companies Confront the High Cost of Customer Returns,” found that in the United States alone, the consumer electronics industry spends around $13.8 billion annually on assessing, repairing, reboxing, restocking and reselling returned merchandise. Most companies are not fully accounting for the breakdown of these costs:

• Returns processing: 9 percent.
• Rebox and repackage: 9 percent.
• “No trouble found” processing: 20 percent.
• Warranty and repair: 29 percent.
• Scrap and liquidation: 33 percent.

Rethinking their approaches to customer returns, electronics & high tech firms can expect four potential benefits:

• Reduction in overall volume of returns.
• Reduction in expenses linked to returns for manufacturers.
• Reduction in costly customer interactions and associated administrative burden for retailers and others in the value chain.
• Reduction of the impact on brand and customer loyalty related to returns and unmet expectations.

More information

Accenture research indicates that return and repair processes must be decoupled to achieve greater profitability and support high performance. Explore the findings of Accenture’s study into the role of “no trouble found” in the consumer electronics industry.

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Accenture leverages its deep skills in the supply chain, its understanding of the industry and its tried-and-trusted methodologies and frameworks to help electronics and high tech companies transform their return-and-repair processes to gain competitive advantage and ultimately achieve high performance.

Accenture’s comprehensive approach helps companies reduce costs, identify new revenue streams in the aftermarket and improve product quality. Our goal is to remove warranty management from its isolation and strategically integrate into the company as a whole. Accenture’s integrated approach can help increase customer satisfaction by enabling timely warranty repairs made possible by a simplified replacement parts-ordering process and improved availability of parts. We offer a full range of services to improve the return and repair network including parts planning and forecasting, operations-management solutions, reverse logistics network design and operation—and other flexible, customizable solutions.

An enhanced return-and-repair process means more than reduced costs and streamlined processes. Accenture helps confirm that the process feeds back into the value chain, improving the quality of the final product by helping suppliers and manufacturers understand customer concerns with their products.