Day 2

Maridee Maraz, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, InComm Product Control

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Lisa Cotter, Senior Director, Supply Chain, Best Buy

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Susan Waynelovich, Senior Manager, Warranty Management, Sony
Jackson Dealey, Director, New Business Development, Liquidity Services Inc.

Returns management has changed significantly over the past 15 years and continues to evolve as a growing focus for organizations. The size scope and growth of the secondary market has forced top consumer brands and retailers - who have historically owned in-house returns refurbishment/management - to re-evaluate the components of a best-in-class returns solution. Winning solutions take cost structure, resale channels and recovery potential into consideration, along with the program's larger impact on brand perception and "A" good sales. Mike Ehlers, a 30-year veteran of Sony Electronics will share his experiences over the past two years building returns manageent solutions that work and the company's partnership with Liquidity Services to open new resale channels while increasing recovery and simplifying the returns management process.

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Tony Sciarrotta, Former Directory of Asset Recovery, Philips Consumer Lifestyle
Dr. Annibal C. Sodero, Assistant Professor, Department of Supply Chain Management, University of Arkansas
Rubina Farooq, Director, Customer Operations, LG Electronics

Making sure that a customer has the right expectations and understands a product’s capabilities is crucial. Whether it’s an air conditioner that can only cool a certain size room or a tv that will only deliver top notch sound with a soundbar, there often seems to be an expectations gap. How do we close that? How important is the box in communicating the true capabilities of a product? Consumer education is a multichannel process, involving face-to-face interaction in a physical store, phone support and web resources – i.e., FAQs and product videos – that help consumers make more informed purchase decisions and drive down returns. Learn what strategies are being employed by industry leaders:

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Obtaining a comprehensive view of social media
feedback (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) to drive better
customer service: Identifying user experience hiccups

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Utilizing – and building awareness of - diagnostic
applications to resolve customer issues with purchases
categories vs. mature product categories

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Educating your employees on specific products to ensure
that they are able to address customer concerns prior to
the sale

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Informing the customer about support options so they
turn to those when experiencing difficulty, rather than returning an item out of frustration
o Online tutorials & chat
o Call center support with special attention to first-time
customer contact (priority handling)

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Home appliance strategies: Taking a proactive approach
to ensure a product will work in a customer’s home and
that it will be deliverable

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J Rollins, Chief Revenue Officer and Executive Vice President of Field Operations, Optoro

When problems are given focus, they are often reduced. But not so with customer returns. In fact, they are at an all time high and growing. Optoro is the leading provider of solutions that connect retailers and OEMs directly with consumers through an innovative use of technology and emerging best practices In this keynote presentation, J Rollins, Optoro's EVP of Field Operations, will share observations and insights on how some of the best known retailers in America are increasing the velocity in how returns, excess and obsolete inventory are sold and how recovery is optimized.

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Talking with your peers about how to confront shared business challenges is the most valuable part of this event. Consumer Returns 2014 has set aside seven hours across three days so OEMs, retailers and solutions providers can discuss current issues of importance. This is your opportunity to discuss ways to improve out-of-box experience, post-sales support and methods for maximizing recovery rate.

Roundtable Discussions:

1. Being Green Throughout A Product's Lifecycle: The Cradle To Grave Approach To Sustainability - Facilitated by Layth Hussain, Director, Operations, Americas, Belkin
2. Tracking Serial Returners: Retailer experiences & The Growing Consumer Backlash - Facilitated by Sue Martin, Vice President, Customer Service, Newegg Inc. and Kunal Thakkar, Senior Vice President, North American Operations, Newegg Inc.
3. How Do We Change Consumer Behavior Around Returns? - Facilitated by Frank Martino, Director, Service Division, Samsung Electronics Canada
4. Online Consumer Education - Facilitated by Rubina Farooq, Director, Customer Operations, LG Electronics
5. Leveraging Remote Access And Support Technologies As A Returns Avoidance Strategy - Facilitated by Lee Gibson, Director, Reverse Logistics, Huawei Device USA
6. Creating Organizational Structures That Enable Quality Follow Through: Applying A Fix To One Product And Making It Applicable To Multiple Product Lines - Facilitated by Ed Rayeski, Director, Handset & Device Support, ZTE USA, Inc.
7. Confronting Warranty/Service Fraud - Facilitated by Rachel North, Director, Post Sales, Toshiba America Electronic Components
8. Applying The Net Promoter Operating Model To Your Business: Building Loyalty To Your Brand - Facilitated by Tony Sciarrotta, Former Director of Asset Recovery, Philips Consumer Lifestyle
9. Customer Experience Management: Building A Strategy That Encompasses All Touch Points From Call Centers To Social CRM Channels - Facilitated by Tony Popson, Director, Customer Care and Quality, Nokia

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Howard Rosenberg, CEO, B-Stock Solutions, Inc.

Understanding pricing and demand trends in the secondary market can turn liquidation into a strategic weapon for your company’s primary business. In this session we will take an in-depth look at category recovery and demand data and talk about why it matters.

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Kunal Thakkar, Senior Vice President, North American Operations, Newegg Inc.
Amedio Palmieri, Executive Director, Western Manufacturing Operations, Lenovo
Chuck Johnston, Director of Repairs and Returns, The Home Depot
Dale Bailey, Service Partner Operations Manager, T-Mobile

If you’re selling into emerging markets, how are you approaching reverse logistics in those markets? You have the option of having carriers consolidate and ship product back, the option of holding the product there for testing and selling recertified items in that country. Given the supply chain costs associated with bringing product back, the economics of returns surely change. This panel discussion answers key questions around global reverse logistics. Who do you utilize as partners? And at what point will you want your own physical presence there?

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Chuck Johnston, Director of Repair and Returns, The Home Depot
Dr. Annibal C. Sodero, Assistant Professor, Department of Supply Chain Management, University of Arkansas
Jeremy L. McClain, Senior Director, Reverse Flows and Supply Chain Inventory, Best Buy
Kristin Secreto, Vice President & General Manager, InComm Product Control

Omnichannel is an evolution of multichannel retailing. It is focused on a seamless customer experience across all channels - dotcom, brick and mortar, mobile, call center, etc.- in all transactions and interactions with a retail brand. Customers want a seamless shopping and return
experience. Nothing annoys them more than buying an item online and being restricted or challenged in returning an item to a physical store. In this sense, mastery of omnichannel will be key to retaining customers. There are a multitude of challenges these integrated experiences
bring to retailers and suppliers alike in the areas of inventory assortment and management, order fulfillment, policy management, promotions strategy management, and more. This panel discusses:

• Driving seamless integration of the online and store network: Ensuring that your customers see you as one system rather than multiple channels with separate inventory, delivery and returns practices.
• Inventory management challenges: When an algorithm decides that a buy online, deliver from store order makes sense to clear excess inventory, how do you handle that product coming back to you?
• Best practices for consumer returns management and return to vendor (RTV) management

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Robert Pignataro, Executive Vice President, Sales, FreeFlow

As a Supply Chain professional, you know the benefit to a standardized global process for remarketing excess inventory. But how do you convince internal decision makers across your geographic regions in Supply Chain, Sales, Finance, Operations and Senior Leadership to implement a common solution?

In addition to the benefit of sharing best practices, Pricing and Channel Integrity are critical to protecting both your brand and your current distribution channels in all stages of the product lifecycle. FreeFlow, a leader in global marketplace Technologies and Services for the world’s leading Consumer Electronics and Wireless brands, will share ideas and tactics that will help you address the concerns - and benefits - to each area of your organization, and provide you with the necessary tools to lead a global asset recovery strategy.

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Cary Decuir, Lead Investigator, Global Services Fraud, Dell

This presentation provides a look at how to balance the two, providing compelling arguments that demonstrate how fraud against your company adversely affects your legitimate customers. How do you prepare cases for law enforcement and criminal prosecution involvement? Now that we know what they did, what can we do about it? The number one reason for cases being declined is not a lack of criminal activity, it is the lack of presentation and delivery of information needed by law enforcement and prosecution.

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Ed Rayeski, Director, Handset & Device Support, ZTE USA, Inc.
Amy T. Augustine, Manager, Reverse Logistics, U.S. Cellular
Michael Deaton, Director, Americas Repair Operations, Microsoft
John Meagher, Director, Service Operations, Samsung Telecommunications America

Quality is a make or break function. Poor quality not only impacts return rates but also erodes trust in your brand, given that consumers talk to one another about their experiences and shape the attitudes of their peers toward your brand. Wireless OEMs and carriers face a particularly challenging quality environment. Increasingly global development makes it difficult to communicate throughout the supply chain and needed changes must be applied across a host of different programs, while being incorporated into next generation design. An added challenge is that OEMs are often receiving product feedback from carrier call centers and are one step removed from the customer. What's truly wrong with a product can often be distorted. This panel session will consider some of the principal challenges. Attendees will learn how to:

• Get closer to the customer: How can OEMs directly access their customers and identify what issues exist in the field? How can you proactively reach users (i.e. social channels - Facebook and Twitter) and provide solutions to help them?
• Overcome organizational structures that are not always set up to enable good quality follow through and responsiveness: OEMs may fix an issue with one product but the carrier's expectation is that all products to follow will contain the same fix and that's where OEMs often fall down - when they don't have a good mechanism with R&D to kill the issue across multiple programs
• Ensure the quality level of suppliers and sub-suppliers: How do you ensure the quality levels of suppliers and sub-suppliers so some simple component/assembly is not your undoing?
  

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Dr. Mark Ferguson, Professor and Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Foundation Fellow, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina

Money-Back-Guarantee (MBG) product returns policies are common in the consumer goods retail industry. But what is such a policy worth to the consumer? The University of South Carolina’s research suggests that the value of an MBG policy for online consumer electronics is 5.8 percent, although forward shipping charges tend to rapidly erode the value of such policies. Positive and negative seller reputations also impact the value of money back guarantees.

This session will address:

• Trade offs: The increased valuation of a product with a money back guarantee versus the cost of processing returns
• How customers value a return policy differently at an online store versus a traditional store
• Maximizing your per-unit profit by varying forward shipping charges

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Talking with your peers about how to confront shared business challenges is the most valuable part of this event. Consumer Returns 2014 has set aside seven hours across three days so OEMs, retailers and solutions providers can discuss current issues of importance. This is your opportunity to discuss ways to improve out-of-box experience, post-sales support and methods for maximizing recovery rate.

1. How Do You Determine Appropriate Pricing For The Secondary Market? - Facilitated by Combiz Shams, Senior Warehouse Manager, Refurbishment, Belkin & Layth Hussain, Director, Operations, Americas, Belkin
2. Tackling The Dearth Of Information Systems For Reverse Logistics - Facilitated by Ric Spicer, Manager, Operations-E-Commerce, Reverse Logistics, Sears Holding Corporation
3. Establishing Full Cost Visibility Around The Reverse Supply Chain - Facilitated by Timothy Quinn, Manager of Logistics, Budget and Analysis, BJ's Wholesale Club
4. Wireless Returns: Addressing Third Party Software Conflicts - Facilitated by Lee Gibson, Director, Reverse Logistics, Huawei Device USA
5. More SKUs, More Problems? - Facilitated by Michael Ketzenberg, Associate Professor of Information and Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University
6. Returns Issues Around White Goods - Facilitated by Michael Fahey, Vice President, Operations, Haier America
7. Returns Issues Around Small Appliances - Facilitated by Kathy Murphy, Senior Sales Operations Manager, Jarden Consumer Solutions
8. The Value Of A Global Remarketing Process: Aligning Your Organization - Facilitiated by Robert Pignataro, Executive Vice President, Sales, FreeFlow
9. Online Consumer Education - Facilitated by Rubina Farooq, Director, Customer Operations, LG Electronics

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