How to Hire a Returns & Reverse Logistics Manager
Returns used to be a customer service line item. In 2026 they are a nine-figure line on the P&L, and most retailers still do not have anyone whose job is to own that number.
Returns used to be a customer service line item. In 2026 they are a nine-figure line on the P&L, and most retailers still do not have anyone whose job is to own that number.
Retailers estimated that 15.8 percent of their 2025 sales would be returned, totaling roughly 849.9 billion dollars in merchandise, according to the 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report from NRF and Happy Returns. That is a modest improvement from 2024, when the rate hit 16.9 percent and the total reached 890 billion dollars, but the improvement is not evenly distributed. Online returns are still running around 19.3 percent, well above the blended average, and 9 percent of all returns are now classified as fraudulent. Even a five percent reduction in return rates has been shown to move net margin by roughly 200 basis points, which means returns have quietly become one of the largest levers a retailer has, and one of the least owned.
The chains that are getting ahead of this are not just improving their return portal or tightening a policy page. They are hiring someone whose full-time job is the reverse flow, the same shift that already happened with Site Operations and Omnichannel Fulfillment roles as those functions outgrew being a shared responsibility and became a dedicated hire.
Buy online, return in store has gone from a nice-to-have to standard practice among omnichannel retailers. Research from Coresight and OrderDynamics found that while only about 42 percent of US retailers offer the option overall, adoption reaches 70.5 percent among retailers already running true omnichannel operations, and BORIS has accounted for roughly half of all online purchase returns in recent years. That blending of online and in-store inventory creates a level of complexity that a customer service team, measured on satisfaction scores, and a store operations team, measured on processing speed, were never built to manage together.
The result is a familiar pattern: two teams doing their jobs well by their own metrics, while nobody is tracking what returns are actually doing to margin. That gap is exactly what a dedicated Returns and Reverse Logistics Manager is hired to close.
At retailers doing this well, the role sits above any single department rather than inside one. It owns return policy design and fraud thresholds, working with loss prevention on the roughly 9 percent of returns that are not legitimate. It manages the reverse logistics network itself, from carrier relationships to in-store routing for BORIS orders, so a return does not sit in limbo between channels. It oversees resale, refurbishment, and liquidation channels for inventory that cannot go back on the shelf at full price. And it reports on returns as a margin line, not a satisfaction score, giving leadership a number they can actually act on.
| Returns Management, Then | Returns Management, Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Split between customer service and store operations | Owned by a dedicated Returns & Reverse Logistics Manager |
| Primary metric | Refund turnaround time, satisfaction score | Margin impact of returns as a P&L line |
| Channel handling | Online and in-store returns processed separately | Unified routing across BORIS, mail-back, and curbside |
| Non-resellable inventory | Written off or handled ad hoc | Routed through defined resale and liquidation channels |
The strongest hires in this role are not pulled from a single lane. They have worked across operations, finance, and loss prevention, which is what allows them to sit between Site Operations, Fulfillment, and Finance without needing a translator. Fraud detection is also increasingly technology-driven, with 85 percent of retailers now deploying AI tools to catch fraudulent returns, so candidates who can speak to that tooling, not just policy, tend to move faster from hire to impact.
If returns are being managed by whichever team happens to touch them first, the fastest fix is not a new policy. It is giving one person the job of owning the number end to end.
If your returns rate has been treated as a customer service metric rather than a margin metric, that is usually the clearest sign the role is missing rather than the process. Start by mapping who currently owns each piece, policy, reverse logistics, fraud, and liquidation, and how much of it is genuinely nobody's full-time job. If the answer is more than one of those pieces, it is worth building the search now rather than after another return season shows up as a line item nobody can explain.
We place Returns and Reverse Logistics leaders alongside the Site Operations and Omnichannel Fulfillment hires who are increasingly working next to them. If returns have outgrown the team currently handling them, that is a search worth starting before peak season, not during it.
Retailers projected that 15.8 percent of 2025 sales, roughly 849.9 billion dollars in merchandise, would come back as returns, according to NRF and Happy Returns. That was a slight improvement from 16.9 percent and 890 billion dollars in 2024, but online returns are still running close to 19.3 percent, well above the blended rate, which is why returns remain one of the largest uncontrolled cost centers in retail heading into 2026.
Returns now touch inventory, fulfillment, fraud prevention, finance, and customer experience at the same time, especially with buy online return in store programs blending channels together. When no single person owns the full flow, retailers end up with a customer service team measuring satisfaction, an operations team measuring processing speed, and nobody measuring the actual margin impact, which is the number that matters most to leadership.
The role owns return policy design and fraud thresholds, manages the reverse logistics network including carriers and in-store routing for buy online return in store orders, oversees resale and liquidation channels for non-resellable inventory, and reports on returns as a margin metric rather than a service metric. It works closely with Site Operations, Fulfillment, and Finance rather than sitting inside a single department.
Look for candidates who can speak to the margin impact of returns decisions, not just service level agreements, and who have hands-on experience with order management or reverse logistics technology. Cross-functional experience matters more than a narrow customer service or warehouse background, since the strongest candidates have already worked across operations, finance, and loss prevention rather than just one of the three.