Federal Express

Today's conversations around customer experience typically center on the ideas and strategies for improving marketing and merchandising, seamlessly moving the customer through various channels, and providing exceptional service in-store and online. Very rarely do we hear customer experience conversations happening around the topic of e-commerce returns. However, with the holiday season and inevitable post-holiday returns pending, it's time to take a closer look at how retailers can optimize the returns process.

With millions of Merry Christmases and Happy Hanukkahs on the line, it's important that omnichannel newcomers like Wal-Mart and Sears adjust for the effects of increased online shopping. One solution is for retailers to offer more products, while simultaneously ensuring faster delivery by transferring the shipping responsibilities to the manufacturer or supplier via drop shipping.

If you're one to predict if the holidays will be successful by how many seasonal employees companies hire, than this year we're going to be seeing a lot of happy retailers. Several companies have announced that they’re ramping up their seasonal hiring for the holidays.

This is the first time FedEx has announced its Ground increase prior to UPS. In the past, UPS would set the Ground increase and FedEx would quickly match it. The industry now turns its attention to UPS in anticipation of its 2015 general rate increase announcement in the coming weeks. Does UPS match the FedEx rate increases, or will it change pricing to compete with new, sharply discounted USPS Priority Mail pricing?

Our experts walk you through opportunities to not only cut shipping costs, but also improve shipping service to your customers.

Through careful evaluation, shippers that add the U.S. Postal Service to complement private carriers like FedEx and UPS can significantly drive down costs and improve service.

It's never too early to start preparing your warehouse for a surge in orders throughout the holiday season. You'll be ready to tackle any bottlenecks in the months leading up to and during the holiday season by following this easy checklist:

With memories of the well-publicized 2013 Christmas delivery failures still fresh on the minds of consumers and retailers alike, leading brands have already begun preparing a shipping strategy for the 2014 holiday rush. While it's not too late for proper planning for holiday shipping, it's certainly not too early. Here are four tips to improve the delivery of orders to your customers this upcoming holiday season:

By now it's likely you've heard that both FedEx and UPS are revising pricing policies for ground packages, moving from weight-based to pricing based on package size starting in 2015. Currently, both parcel carriers apply dimensional weight pricing only to ground packages measuring three cubic feet (5,184 cubic inches) or greater. The elimination of the three cubic foot exception is effective Dec. 29, 2014 for UPS, and Jan. 1, 2015 for FedEx.

There was an energy — not to mention growing audience — to the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) last week that reflected the fast pace of change in the industry. The hot topics for catalogers included the following: