The Returns Experience: Why Reverse Logistics Is the Other Half of Delivery Experience in North America

Returns Are the Delivery Experience in Reverse

Enterprises have spent a decade improving the forward delivery experience: real-time tracking, proactive notifications, branded tracking pages, accurate ETAs. Then the customer decides to return something, and all of that disappears. The polished post-purchase experience runs only one direction.

The National Retail Federation reports US retail returns totaled about $890 billion in 2024 — roughly 16.9% of sales, with 2025 near $850 billion.

In North America this matters more than almost anywhere, because return rates are high, especially in apparel and e-commerce, and returning is a routine part of how people shop rather than a rare exception. For a large share of customers, the return is not an edge case in the relationship with a retailer; it is a core part of it. And because a return usually happens when a customer is already mildly dissatisfied (the item did not fit, was not right, arrived damaged), it is a fragile moment. 

A smooth return can save the relationship and even the sale; a frustrating one converts a minor disappointment into a lost customer. The returns experience, in other words, is the delivery experience running in reverse, and it is often where loyalty is actually decided. This piece is about why the reverse leg lags the forward one, what a good returns experience requires in North America, and how the same operational intelligence that runs forward delivery can run the return.

NRF estimates about 19.3% of online sales are returned — well above the overall retail rate.

Why the Returns Experience Lags the Delivery Experience

The reverse leg lags for a structural reason: it is treated as a cost to be minimized rather than an experience to be designed. Forward logistics is where the revenue and the brand attention sit, so it gets the investment. Reverse logistics is filed under cost recovery, so it gets the leftovers.

ICSC’s 2024 survey found apparel bought online is returned at 22%, versus 6.2% in-store.

The customer feels this directly as silence. On the way out, they were tracked and notified at every step. On the way back, they hand the item to a carrier or drop it at a store and then hear nothing, no confirmation it is in transit, no visibility into where it is, no estimate of when the refund will land, until, days later, a refund quietly appears or an email arrives. 

That gap between initiating a return and any acknowledgment is the single most common returns-experience failure, and it is a communication failure, not a physical one. The item is moving; the customer just cannot see it. Meanwhile the operation often runs the reverse movement on manual or disconnected processes, so the return is slower and less predictable than the outbound delivery was, which lengthens the silence and delays the resolution the customer is waiting for. The forward experience taught the customer to expect transparency; the reverse experience withdraws it at the exact moment they are most anxious.

Also Read: The Returns Architecture: AI-Powered Reverse Logistics ROI

What a Good Returns Experience Requires in North America

Closing the gap does not require reinventing returns. It requires treating the reverse leg as a first-class part of the delivery experience, with three things in place.

Orchestrate the Reverse Movement Across the Channel the Customer Chose

North American shoppers do not all want the same return channel. The Locus Q2 2026 US Consumer Survey found that 54% of US consumers prefer in-store drop-off over home pickup or lockers, so the goal is not to push one method but to orchestrate whichever channel the customer chooses, drop-off, pickup, or locker, as a well-run reverse movement rather than an afterthought. The return has to be planned, routed, and consolidated as deliberately as an outbound order.

Over half of e-commerce returns come from clothing and footwear, driven by fit and sizing.

Keep the Customer Informed on the Return’s Progress

The forward leg proved that proactive communication reduces anxiety and support contacts. The reverse leg needs the same: confirmation that the return is in transit, visibility into its progress, and a reliable expectation of when it resolves. Extending tracking and notifications to the return closes the silence that defines most bad returns experiences, and it cuts the “where is my refund” contacts that are the reverse-leg equivalent of WISMO.

Resolve Quickly, With Visibility Into the Whole Reverse Journey

Speed of resolution is what the customer ultimately cares about, and speed depends on the reverse movement being visible and instrumented end to end, so the item is not sitting unseen in a truck or a back room. An operation that can see the return through every stage can move it through them faster, and can tell the customer where it is while it does.

Also Read: $850B US Returns: AI Routing for Reverse Logistics 2026

How Locus Optimizes the Returns Experience

Locus optimizes the reverse leg the same way it optimizes the forward one, because to Locus a return is another movement to plan, route, execute, and communicate. Reverse pickups and transport are dispatched and routed with the same agentic engine that plans outbound delivery, so return movements are orchestrated deliberately rather than handled manually, across whatever channel the customer chose. 

The reverse journey is tracked and the customer is kept informed with the same proactive communication that runs on the forward leg, which closes the post-return silence. And because the reverse movement runs on the same platform as the forward one, the operation has visibility into the whole return journey and can resolve it faster. Locus runs this as the world’s first agentic TMS across 360+ enterprise customers.

The honest boundary matters here. Locus optimizes the reverse logistics and the reverse experience, the movement, the routing, the tracking, and the communication. It does not process refunds, authorize returns, or grade and restock returned inventory; those sit in the order, payment, and returns-management systems Locus integrates with. What Locus makes sure of is that the physical return and the customer’s experience of it match the quality of the delivery that preceded it, rather than falling off a cliff the moment the item turns around.

What This Means for a North American Retailer

If your forward delivery experience is strong and your customers still complain about returns, the problem is almost certainly the reverse leg’s silence and slowness, not your return policy. The diagnostic is simple: from the moment a customer initiates a return, how much do they see, and how fast is it resolved? If the answer is that they see nothing until a refund appears, the returns experience is undoing some of the loyalty the delivery experience earned.

Also Read: Building Intelligence Architecture for US Big & Bulky Deliveries

Returns are not a cost center to be hidden; in North America they are a routine, high-stakes part of the customer relationship. Treating the reverse leg as the other half of the delivery experience, orchestrated, communicated, and resolved with the same intelligence as the forward leg, is how a retailer keeps the customer through the moment they are most likely to leave.

Learn more, visit locus.sh.