ClickPost Returns Management Software

Smart questions lead to smarter decisions. Let’s start with the top 10. 

1. How Easily Can the Software Integrate with Our Existing Systems?

Your tech stack is the backbone of your operations. A returns management software that doesn’t easily plug into your existing systems causes a domino effect: inventory blind spots, stuck parcels, and delays in refunds. 

Therefore, before selecting the right platform, consider if it natively integrates with your storefronts, WMS, OMS, ERPs, payment gateways, CRM tool, and your carrier partners. This saves you from reworking your order, shipment, and inventory flows — and helps avoid silos and visibility gaps.

For example, when your customers initiate a return, the software instantly generates a pickup request or a return label. This streamlines the process for better customer experience and reduces the possibility of errors from manual oversight. 

Action tips: 

• Check the integrations page to see which platforms and tools are supported. 
• Ask about the set-up process, latency, downtime record, API/webhook offerings. 
• Avoid platforms without robust and fast custom integration support. 

2. Does It Support a Wide Range of Return Methods (In-store, Pickup, Mail-in)?

Cross-brand partnerships, no-box/no-label returns, in-store drop-offs, and mail-ins are blending into a delicious cocktail—one that many retailers serve to win customer loyalty and make returns effortless. 

Since 67% of customers consider one negative return experience reason enough to abandon a brand,  return flexibility becomes key to retaining them. Different returns management software handle return methods differently. Some focus on concierge style returns. Some nail in-store returns and instant refunds. Some are pro at scheduling pickups with carriers and consolidating returns. 

Action tips: No matter which return methods you offer, look out for the following non-negotiables-

• A self-serve portal where customers can easily choose their preferred return method.
• Display the nearest drop-off point or parcel locker, complete with geo-coordinates, to make returns more convenient.
• Automatic generation of shipping labels or QR codes for hassle-free mail-ins.
• Pre-built connections with multiple logistics partners and in-store systems like your POS software. 
• Smart order routing to your warehouse or fulfillment center with intelligent carrier allocation.

3. Does the Software Handle Flexible and Customizable Return Policies?

Your return policy is often your brand’s true first impression as 80% of shoppers check it before deciding to buy. A friendly return policy encourages customers to make a confident purchase.

Whether you choose to offer free returns, issue refunds instantly, provide a flexible return window or charge a restocking fee, return management software can automatically enforce these policies. They cut out manual approvals and the need for emails and support calls.

Though most solutions let you automate your return policy through basic configurations, what retailers really need is true customization.

Action Tips: Evaluate if your preferred solution can-

• Personalize your policy such as setting up return restrictions, promoting gift-cards for refunds. 
• Enable SKU exceptions with auto-approval/rejection.
• Adjust return duration (accommodating big sales/promotions) and prioritize rules.
• Offer nested return reasons, image validation, and customer’s note. 

4. Can It Provide Real-Time Tracking and Notifications for Returns?

Customers crave real-time tracking and notifications, not just for the orders placed, but for returns too. With 84% of shoppers expecting faster refunds, many feel uneasy until they can see where their parcel is and when their refund will arrive. Therefore, the best returns management solution always proactively notify customers.

Like your customers, you’d also want to know where the return shipment is and make strategic calls like when to trigger refunds. For example, issue a refund at the time of the first scan or when the package reaches your warehouse. 

Action Tips:  A checklist for have a solid notification and tracking system:

• Both tracking API and webhook to enable live tracking updates with timestamps.
• Multichannel notifications with pre-built templates for easy set-up.
• Automated messages triggered at key milestones.
• Proactive exception alerts with standardized statuses and a central dashboard.
• Pre-built integrations with communication gateways and CRMs.
• Whitelabeled and branded tracking portal. 

5. How Does the Software Improve Customer Experience Post-Purchase?

The post-purchase experience isn’t over once customers hit “Buy.” It’s just as critical when they hit “Return Your Order”.  Many brand owners underestimate how far they fall short of customer expectations—even in critical areas like returns and delivery updates. According to a Deloitte study, 78% of retailers believe they offer proactive delivery communication, yet only 59% of customers feel the same.

Personalization forms the core of any post-purchase strategy built to improve customer experience. Building return policies specific to customer segmentation plays a big role in rewarding your loyal customers or bringing more into the fold, and deter unwanted behaviour like bracketing and other frauds. Astonishingly, 87% of customers over-order apparels and return those they don’t want, a nightmare for apparel brands. 

The spread of LLM based models and GenAI has made AI-enabled personalization accessible and easy to implement. 

Action Tips: Find out if the returns management platform offers-

• AI-enabled customer segmentation to tailor return policies.
• LLM-generated hyper-personalized and contextualized emails at scale. 
• AI detector for preventing frauds or safeguards for return policy misuse.
• Proactive ETAs, language localization, and a branded return experience.

6. Can it Encourage Exchanges Over Refunds?

Exchanges aren’t just customer-friendly—they’re revenue-friendly. 60% of online customers prefer an exchange or store credit over a direct refund. This opens up the opportunity to nudge them toward alternatives that keep revenue in-house.

Your returns software should allow customers to browse an open catalog or a custom one for exchanges beyond simple size or color swaps. But here's the catch: not all platforms sync accurately with your live inventory or SKU logic, leading to mismatch issues and stockouts.

Exchanges can be bundled with upsells. A smart RMA flow can turn a return into an upgrade, not a loss. Likewise, while automating refunds sounds appealing, high-value items often require manual checks to prevent errors and fraud.

Action Tips: Look for the feasibility to-

• Set up multiple refund formats including store-credit, gift cards, discount codes.
• Trigger refunds at your preferred milestone.
• Enable site-wide exchanges along with automated price variance reconciliation.
• Combine manual refund checks with smart retries on transaction failure.

7. How Scalable Is the Returns Management System?

A returns management software is only as powerful as its ability to scale. While automation gets you started, it’s scalability that supports your growth. It should be able to keep up with your rising volume and operational complexity even 5 or 10 years down the line. 

Action Tips: There are four main components to scalability and your returns management software should have them all to future proof your expansion-

• Handle surges like peak season sales or promotions without performance slowdown or outages. 
• Fulfill customization needs, expand features quarterly, have faster product deployment. 
• Support expansion to newer geographies and set up new currencies, payments, carriers with ease. 
• Enable multiple users, secure log-ins; have robust data security measures, decentralized team access, and custom setups. 

8. Does It Offer Advanced Reporting and Analytics?

As 68% of retailers plan to upgrade their return capabilities, most seek ways to lower their return rate. Imagine having access to customers’ return patterns, return reasons, total returns and exchange volume, returns-to-exchange ratios. Better yet, having unprecedented visibility, automated reports, customizable dashboards, and notifications for important metrics. 

You can mine the data to easily identify bottlenecks and revenue leaks, plan for seasonal demands, detect recurring customer behaviors, create safeguards, check for inventory issues, redesign your exchange campaigns, and upgrade customer experience. 

Action Tips:

• Look for platforms that give you a comprehensive breakdown of the causes and trends observed in your return data. 
• Analyze based on SKU, customer segments, category, or tags on an interactive dashboard. 
• Check the availability of predictive models that forecast return volumes or detect fraud patterns. 

9. What Kind of Customer Support Does the Software Provider Offer?

If you are worried about not having active and timely customer support, you’re right to do so. Support right from the moment you plan to onboard with a platform pays well, especially in your product adoption, usage knowledge, and training. Aligning with your business objectives and building a successful plan requires successful cooperation for customer support teams. 

A recent Bain survey found that only 65% of customers felt their post-sales needs were moderately or adequately addressed. You wouldn’t want to be in that position. Therefore, choose a returns management software that offers support across key areas: product deployment, technical implementation, integration needs, support ticket resolution, and product onboarding. 

Action Tips:

• Look for live support via emails, calls, or chat.
• Ensure you get help articles and self-learning materials. 
• Confirm that responsive support isn’t paywalled behind advanced subscriptions. 

10. What Are the Costs and Pricing Models?

Most return management solutions offer pricing models in two ways: tiered systems or custom pricing. The one you choose would depend on your return volume and the features you opt for. 

For example, if you are a Shopify start-up with 100 return orders, choosing a basic subscription plan or free plan like ClickPost’s Shopify Returns App would mostly suffice. But, if you are a fast-scaling business with a steady increase in returns, you may want to consider a fully automated system to derive ROI. 

The tiered model allows you to browse different subscription bundles to choose the right one. But, with custom or granular pricing you can opt for features and pay as you use them. 

Action Tips:

• Enquire about any charges if returns exceed your plan limit.
• Browse customer reviews to find if there are any hidden fees. 
• Clarify if any features are add-ons, as this might incur more charges. 

With returns management software, businesses can streamline their reverse logistics process. A returns software helps generate returns labels, performs quality checks, and eliminates errors. Here are a few of the returns management best practices for online stores -

1. Offer a Clear Returns Policy

A clear returns policy with returns rules can offer a great customer experience. It gives a solid understanding of how the company operates its returns operations and allows customers to become confident with the brand. For customers, trust is a major deciding factor. A clear returns policy can increase the number of repeat customers.  

Also, according to certain regional compliances, it is compulsory to have a returns policy to ship products and carry out business operations. A brand that prioritizes a clear return policy can increase customer retention and improve brand loyalty.

2. Review Cost of Product Returns

Brands are required to assess each returned item to fetch costs. This helps them evaluate the total expenses in the reverse logistics process and make adjustments with speed and route optimization. The procedure can take time and manual intervention, costing businesses time and money. Reviewing the returned items through an automated returns software can get things done faster and smoother. 

The software calculates the best prices & affordability for businesses to make informed decisions and manage their expenses accordingly. It also allows you to keep your customers informed. If possible, offer return shipping, even for in store returns. Providing online store credit can also keep costs coming back to you.

3. Analyze data from Returns

The best opportunity to learn about products and the customer standpoint is by addressing their pain points and their overall returns data. It can give you clarity about what you did right and what was wrong. To do that, you can also go through customer feedback and understand their responses. By going in-depth with returns, you are learning about the serial returners and customer behavior for those who have a habit of returning products.

Business owners can send promotional emails to these buyers and expect more purchases from their businesses, which works for brick and mortar stores as well. It can help normalise supply chains and is one of the best practices for implementing a returns management platform. This can also be a means of preventing returns fraud, ensuring better inventory control, and speeding up refund processing.

4. Offer a Self-service Returns Portal

A self-service portal is an integral offering of returns management software and another one of returns management best practices. It lets customers place return requests for quick pickups and refund/replacement initiation. The portal gives customers more confidence and allows them to select a window based on their availability for the pickup. By giving more control to customers, brands gain their trust and increase the number of repeat customers.

Unlike the traditional returns process, the self-serve returns portal reduces refund times and decreases “Where is my refund?” calls and queries. Also, customers may choose their preferred return methods, view previous interactions with the teams, and receive updates.

5. Provide Returns Tracking

Businesses offer visibility and transparency by providing tracking information to customers expecting their orders to be delivered. The same occurs when a return is initiated, and customers want to know the status of their return or refund process. To keep the process visible, brands use a software solution and send automatic notifications at different stages starting from returns initiation to the successful refund process.

Customers are much more satisfied when they can access returns-related information at their fingertips. Plus, it helps enterprises streamline their returns management supply chain. 

6. Identify Ways to Prevent Returns

This is probably the best practice when adopting returns management software. As they say, prevention is better than cure, brands take it very seriously and try their best to prevent product returns in the first place. After studying and gathering enough about their customers, brands figure out ways to improve customers' experiences with their returns data. They set clear delivery expectations, provide easy exchange options, and offer purchase communication to reduce returns.

A brand that can operate its business effectively and efficiently with lesser returns gains a more competitive edge and enhances customer retention rates. That's where returns data plays a vital role in maintaining customer satisfaction when dealing with online purchases. Online retailers and ecommerce businesses often need to consider this in their reverse logistics returns management process.

Here are the top 6 return key performance indicators (KPIs) you must monitor periodically: 

KPI #1: Return Rate (%)

The return rate indicates the percentage of products returned compared to the total products ordered within a specific period. Let’s say an e-commerce store sells 1000 items in a month, 50 of which are returned. In that case, the company’s return rate is 5%. 

Formula: Return rate = Number of Returned Items Total Items  Sold ✕ 100 

Why It Matters: 

• A high return rate indicates product quality issues, poor packaging, misleading product descriptions, a lower customer retention rate, and erosion in customer satisfaction. All these can negatively impact the repeat purchase rate. 

• A spike in return rates may also signal return fraud and abuse, like wardrobing. 

• Monitoring return rates across categories and SKUs helps pinpoint areas of improvement and revamp the return strategy.

• Higher return rates shrink total revenue and negatively impact customer lifetime value. 

How to Improve:

• Add high-quality images to help shoppers better understand the products. On the other hand, it’ll also attract more website traffic. 

• Provide detailed product descriptions to reduce returns. Ensure the product descriptions are clear, accurate, and comprehensive. 

• Enhance product descriptions with 3D images, 360-degree views, and AR previews to visualize the products better. 

• Incorporate shoppable videos and customer reviews for real-world references of the products. Example: Sephora and Birchbox. 

• Configure shipping policies and focus on identifying trends in return patterns to address common return reasons. 

KPI #2: Refund Rate (%)

The refund rate is the percentage of the returned orders that resulted in refunds. For example, if you had 200 total returns, out of which 150 were refunded, your refund rate would be 75%. 

Formula: Refund Rate = Number of Refunded Returns  Total Returns ✕ 100 

Why It Matters:

• Higher refund rates mean deep product quality concerns, a decline in total revenue, and lower profitability. 

• Increases in the refund rate strain cash flow, complicate the payment process, and cause liquidity issues.

• Refund-heavy returns can also erode customer lifetime value and lead to a decline in customer retention.  

How to Improve:

• Offer a one-click exchange option to avoid refunds. 

• Provide gift cards or store credits instead of cash. Encourage product exchanges with discounts to retain revenue. 

• Opt for a partial return option (like Amazon does) for returned items that show a sign of damage from the customer’s end. 

KPI #3: Return Processing Time (TAT)

Return Processing Time (TAT) is the average timeframe taken to process an entire return lifecycle—from the moment a customer initiates a return to the refund or exchange. Different ecommerce businesses have different return processing times. For example, Kapiva (a holistic Ayurvedic brand) takes around 2–5 business days to process refunds after the return request is processed. Likewise, BeYours (a men’s clothing brand) takes 3–7 days to process refunds and exchanges. 

Formula: Average Return Processing Time = (Return Completed Date - Return Initiated Date)Total Returns

Why It Matters:

• A long processing time indicates poor business performance, increases the number of WISMR (Where-Is-My-Refund) calls, and negatively impacts the supply chain and customer experience in your e-commerce store.

• Delayed processing leads to negative customer reviews, a decline in customer retention rate, and slow inventory management. 

How to Improve:

• Offer a self-serve returns portal to shoppers for streamlined request initiation. 

• Implement AI-powered systems for product quality and image inspection and return approval. 

• Partner with a carrier partner specialized in reverse logistics. 

KPI #4: Cost Per Return ($)

Cost Per Return (CPR) or Return Spend shows the total cost associated with processing a return. The key cost factors considered for the total cost are shipping fees, handling costs, restocking costs, refund processing fees, etc. 

Formula: Cost Per Return = Total Returns CostsTotal Returns Processed

Why It Matters:

• Higher operational costs eat into profits and increase the operational budget. 

• High CPR hinders business growth, operational efficiency, and scalability when it’s not balanced against average order value and pricing strategies. 

How to Improve:

• Incur delivery charges in specific cases. Take the example of H&M. While all its in-store returns are free, it charges a flat fee of $3.99 if a customer returns an online purchase via mail. 

• Use multi-warehouse return routing to unlock significant cost savings. 

• Go for automated return workflows for your e-commerce store to cut down on manual labor costs related to return handling. On the other hand, it also improves the repeat purchase rate by enhancing the overall customer experience. 

KPI #5: Exchange Rate (%)

The exchange rate shows how many returns have been converted to exchanges instead of refunds. Say an online business sees 1000 returns a month, and 500 of them are exchanges. So, its exchange rate will be 50%. 

Formula: Exchange Rate = Exchanged OrdersTotal Returns ✕ 100 

Why It Matters: 

• Lower exchange rates indicate fading loyalty and contribute to lost customers over time. 

• A higher exchange rate helps retain revenue, accelerates conversion rates, and even increases average order value through product upgrades, bundles, and the likelihood of repeat purchases. 

• A higher exchange rate also indicates solid return and marketing strategies. 

How to Improve:

• Offer a self-serve portal for easy exchanges and promote the “exchange-first” option. 

• Incentivize customers to choose exchanges over returns. This not only retains revenue but also creates positive impressions among them that attract new customers and encourage repeat business. 

• Immediately suggest personalized alternative products for exchanges. 

• Perform real-time inventory tracking to ensure exchange items are available and fulfill customer demands. 

KPI #6: Non-Returnable Claims (%)

Non-returnable claims refer to the number of return requests that have been denied. It can happen for a variety of reasons, like return policy violations and fraudulent return attempts. 

Formula: Non-Returnable Claims = Denied Requests  Total Return Requests ✕ 100 

Why It Matters:

• This KPI helps identify the number of fraudulent returns, attract more customers, and track the behavior of repeat customers, ensuring that they adhere to the return policies. 

• It reduces operational costs by lowering unnecessary processing and return shipping. 

• This metric improves operational efficiency by encouraging customers to maintain policy and guidelines. 

How to Improve:

• Create a well-defined return policy, mentioning eligibility, time windows, and other conditions. 

• Block serial returners and wardrobers. 

• Implement an AI-powered fraud detection system to pinpoint fraudulent returns. 

The features of return management software are the core ingredients that define its capabilities. Each feature is vital in streamlining the returns process and increasing business efficiency. They stand out for their specialty in helping businesses achieve business excellence. Here are the key features of returns management software.

There are various features that you can integrate into your returns process by choosing a returns management software for your business. These features can further be customized to suit your return policy.

1. Placing Return Requests Online

To automate your returns process, you must first provide your customers with an easy-to-use portal to place their requests based on your return policy. You can also give them the option to exchange their product or get a refund for their order.

2. Interactive AI chatbots

Damaged goods cannot be adequately assessed in online requests. They could very well turn out to be liabilities to the seller, who will have to accept the return order after confirmation.

While returns management softwares cannot estimate the extent of damage, introducing interactive AI chatbots on your returns portal can help to pinpoint the nature of return requests and evaluate the damage. Furthermore, AI help desks provide faster responses to the customers and improve their buying experience by resolving queries and accepting return requests. 

3. Automated Returns Inventory 

Automated reverse logistics computerized the filing of return requests based on pre-set filters, improving the workflow and efficiency of the entire process. Finding a particular return request also becomes more accessible if a customer has a query regarding their product return.

4. Event-triggered Emails

One way to retain unhappy customers is by providing them with timely updates about their returns at each step. Automation of your ecommerce returns helps in sending emails triggered by specific events such as confirmation of the request, date of pickup, dispatch of the pickup partner, and refund initiation. These mails not only maintain transparency of your process but also keep your customers actively involved with your brand.

5. Using Returns Management Software 

A Returns Management software, such as ClickPost Returns, integrates all the above features onto a single dashboard and can be merged with your returns management portal for a seamless experience.

Choosing the right returns software in 2025 can redefine how retailers handle reverse logistics, protect revenue, and deliver a smoother customer experience. The growing demand for efficient returns processes and the rising costs associated with returned items have made investing in specialized technology a necessity. Below is a curated list of the ten most powerful and reliable returns management systems available this year, helping brands of all sizes reduce costs, retain revenue, and elevate operational efficiency.