Christoph Seidel is Operations Manager at STUR – a Berlin startup that was founded in 2019 and has since developed into a true love brand for fans of quality cookware.
The two STUR founders, Simon Köstler and Filip Mierzwa, met during their studies and quickly discovered that their biggest commonality was their passion for cooking.
During their campus years, they not only prepared many dinners but also tested dozens of pans on their blog Pfannenhelden.de. Simon and Filip's biggest learnings: Home cooks' apprehension about cast iron pans is high, and coated pans simply don't last long enough. They quickly came up with their idea for STUR, a cast iron pan that would be made in Germany, sustainable, and durable.
In 2020, the first pan was sold after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
The founders' goal: Making cast iron suitable for everyday use and developing into a nationally established brand for minimalist cookware.
The conclusion four years later: Mission accomplished! However, the stumbling blocks of the growth phase were inevitable. The manual returns process became a problem with growing sales numbers.
Today, Christoph Seidel takes care of solutions at STUR. In his role as Operations Manager, he has been responsible for supply chain and customer support since July 2023. A smooth returns process was particularly important to him to improve the customer experience and make internal processes more efficient – big challenges for the small team.
"There's a lot coming this year: We want to continue growing and bringing good products to market," says Christoph. "That's not possible without an automated returns process. Today we're very well positioned, but that wasn't always the case."
Together with Christoph, we look back to find out how STUR made the leap from manual to fully automated process with 8returns.
Christoph Seidel, Operations Manager at STUR
Manual Returns: A Task for the Whole Team
Christoph knows from his colleagues how labor-intensive the returns process was at first: "Before 8returns, it was a process of Google Sheets, emails, and phone calls with customers and our shipping provider. Overall, the handling was very error-prone and time-consuming.
Back then, our process was that customers sent an email when they didn't like the product. We answered the ticket, manually created a return label and a cancellation invoice. The team recorded all information about a return in a Google Sheet – including tracking. Where is the product? What's the reason for the return? When will it arrive? Questions we couldn't answer at a glance."
It quickly became clear: A process was needed that would require fewer team resources and grow along with scaling online sales.
Quick and Easy Integration
Christoph recalls the transition period: "Basically, the implementation was super easy. As a startup, we were in an acute learning phase at the time, so the integration at STUR took a bit longer than necessary. From today's perspective, it was very easy to set up the software."
Return in Just a Few Clicks
Since integrating 8returns, the returns process at STUR runs automated and above all digitally. With one click via the website, customers go directly to the returns portal. There they complete the return in three steps:
- Enter the order number and email address,
- Select the product they want to return,
- Specify the return reason, for example "Problems with handling" or "Damaged product."
"The most accurate description of the problem possible and a photo upload are requested directly on the platform. That's super practical, especially when it comes to damage," Christoph tells us.
"The great thing is: In 8returns, we can directly track what the return reason is. For the cast iron pans, for example, we assign a casting code that customers can enter directly via the portal. We can then contact our producers and ask what exactly happened with the batch. These personalizations of the returns platform make daily business easy for us."
The highest quality cookware from Berlin
Important Touchpoints to Avoid Returns
STUR uses individual rules to better understand their customers' problems and thus improve customer support. "8returns allows different actions to be executed based on different variables. In some cases, a return label is created directly, or our support team gets in touch again. For handling problems, we at STUR ask, for example, 'Can we help you understand the product better or give you tips on how to use it better?'
This rule helps us seize the opportunity again to convince customers of the product and, in the best case, prevent the return."
The Most Important KPIs at a Glance
"In the past, we could only track rudimentarily, it didn't go much further than the return rate and the costs for a return," Christoph recalls.
"Today it's much more comprehensive. The return reasons are predefined, but you can also customize them individually per product and thus run precise analyses. We now have a much better understanding of what the reasons are.
8returns provides the most important insights about our returns, so we can directly derive actions and keep an eye on our most important KPIs. If a product has a high return rate, for example, we can look exactly at what's going on.
So KPIs that we couldn't track before are now on our radar."
"We Save an Incredible Amount of Work Every Day"
However, the biggest change is the time savings for the small team.
"Manually, we spent 15 to 30 minutes on a return. With 8returns, it now takes less than a minute. Leaving the process to the software and its automations saves us an incredible amount of work every day."
The customer experience has also changed: "All important shipping information goes out automatically. Customers can register their return without any waiting times. This allows us to simply pick up customers better because the process runs flexibly and automated. They can use the platform at any time, even if they want to return something in the middle of the night. This is how we managed to significantly improve the experience for our customers!
We wanted to take the fastest route when it comes to returns. We achieved that. Today, the software handles the work together with customers – fast, automated, and simple. With a few clicks, the return is done."
All images courtesy of STUR GmbH.
