Secret Sales

Lean on partners with agility and expertise

Growing retailers need efficient and agile partners that know what they are doing. Without agile partners, they stagnate. Without expertise, they miss things, alienate existing customers, and ultimately innovate in the wrong direction.

Whilst there have been technological challenges along the way, mainly at the start of the partnership, Secret Sales and ZigZag maintained a robust and collaborative partnership that allowed the marketplace to grow and excel.

Secret Sales VP of Logistics began, “I think it's fair to say we have thrown a lot of challenges your [ZigZag’s] way. We are a fast-moving and ambitious business and when we make changes, like acquiring a new brand or entering a new market, we want to make them yesterday…

“When the out-of-the-box offering hasn’t fit our needs, there's never a robotic, dismissive answer of ‘no’. The ZigZag team have always explored the ways around a challenge or new development and where we are today, I feel we've got a solid platform that's reliable and works. I think the technology underpinning the platform is in a really good place.”

Moving to a sleek portal

From the customer’s perspective, Secret Sales is a single point retail experience, but as it is a marketplace seller, its returns go back to multiple sellers. So, Secret Sales is the first to be blamed for confusion when a shopper realises their single order is comprised of five parcels, which, if they are returning everything, means five separate returns going to five separate places.

That means it’s vital that the portal doesn’t add to the confusion. Returns are already an unwanted and sometimes stressful experience for customers, so Secret Sales needed a returns solution and portal that did its job seamlessly.

The VP of Logistics stated, “We’ve had generally positive feedback around our returns process and the returns portal. We don’t have customers dropping out of the process, timing issues, or downtime. For the portal itself, we don’t have customers mentioning it all, and when tech slides into the background seamlessly like that it’s a positive thing. No news is good news.”

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Cost-saving, international carrier rates

ZigZag has over 1,500 carrier services from over 170 countries. All information is collected digitally to ensure returning parcels can move swiftly through customs.

“We use ZigZag for most of our international carriage including Germany, Spain, and Sweden. And we’ve just recently gone live for the first time with a cross-border EU to EU solution and we’ve had no issues yet!”

ZigZag also allows retailers to keep the carrier accounts it wishes. As a carrier agnostics platform, we want to provide our retailers and their customers with choice and control on how to get their returns back. But whilst Secret Sales uses some of its own relationships for its UK logistics, it is considering a move…

“We have all our own accounts in the UK. But it’s probably time we reviewed the ZigZag offering again as it’s more than likely that ZigZag can offer rates or solutions that are more competitive than our own. In the future, we would probably benefit from having all our accounts sat within ZigZag, it would likely be an easier solution.”

Award-winning Account Management 

We take our account management seriously. Retailers have enough on their plate already. Worrying about getting a response out of your returns partner should be the least of your concerns.

We have a dedicated Client Success team that will get your business in touch with the right people in our business to get tech fixes updated, new carriers added, innovations launched, and more as quickly as possible.

“I think despite all the demand, and sometimes nonsense, we’ve thrown at Louise and the ZigZag team over the time I’ve been with the business, it’s always been a pleasure to speak with you, never a chore. We’ve always remained civil with each other but also honest and challenging. I don’t want a ‘yes’ person, or someone aloof that doesn’t really care. I like that ZigZag is passionate about delivering a fantastic returns experience for all its retailers. I’ve also never had reason to doubt that Louise isn’t championing our voice and desires internally to the rest of ZigZag. Our priorities are heard in the wider ZigZag roadmap discussion.

“Our catch ups with ZigZag are never just a sales pitch, trying to get us on to new features or unnecessary carriers. They are a discussion. It is something I value very much. If I got something I want to discuss, I’m listened to first.”

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Cutting costs with varied payment gateways 

Growing internationally is fun on paper, but it can be one of the most challenging moves a retailer, or any business, can undertake.

The benefit of working with a partner like ZigZag is we’ve often already made that move and are ready to do business in that new market or country. That means having the right language, right carriers, and even the right payment gateways…something you may not even have thought about.

With ZigZag not only can we get you ready to sell and return internationally, but we can help you reduce costs whilst doing so.

“When you work with a partner like ZigZag you also get a few nuanced savings. With ZigZag we’ve been working on some of the payment methods to make sure our international customers get better options to pay for their returns. We used to have a fair bit of contact from customers asking how to pay for returns. The work we have done updating our payment methods has cut down the traffic and enquiries to our Customer Service Team, which is a welcomed cost saving.

“In general, through ZigZag we’ve been able to grow without necessarily having to take on more administrative support which is a big cost saving in its own right.”

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