The serial returner problem in apparel

Every apparel brand has them: customers whose return rate sits near total, month after month, order after order. They are loyal in the dashboard and expensive in the ledger.

Serial returners are not a edge case. In most apparel catalogs a small minority of customers drives a disproportionate share of return volume, and the same names keep appearing in the CX queue.

The hard part is that serial returners look like your best customers on every top-line metric: high order count, high spend, frequent engagement. The margin story only appears when you net out what comes back.

Scoring keep rate per customer changes the conversation. Instead of debating return policy in the abstract, you can see the fifty customers who cost the most last quarter and decide, with evidence, who gets a warning and who gets denied.