|
Workflow component |
Description |
Example |
|
Trigger |
A trigger is an event that starts a workflow and can be any attribute in your Cart, Customer, UTM, SKU or Product. |
A new customer comes to your checkout. |
|
Condition |
A condition determines whether an action is taken based on the conditions that you set. |
A condition is set to check whether the total cart value for the request is Rs 1500 or above. |
|
Action |
An action is an intervention applied on checkout when the condition is met. |
If the total value of the cart is equal to Rs 1500 or more, then a COD fee of Rs 150 can be applied. |
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Your 2026 D2C Calendar mapped day by day - Powered by real data from India’s biggest D2C shopping network
Smart COD Suite
Understanding RTO And Strategies To Reduce It In eCommerce With RTO Actions by GoKwik
12 Mar 2026
08 Min Read
Suhag spearheads D2C growth strategies at GoKwik, focusing on e-commerce optimisation, conversion funnels, and sales enablement. Based in Bengaluru and an MICA alumnus, he excels in crafting GTM playbooks and marketing campaigns tailored for D2C brands.
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Return to Origin (RTO) is a huge challenge for eCommerce brands. It affects businesses in many different ways, including impacting profitability. RTO is when a customer places cash on delivery-led order but cancels the order or rejects the product at the time of delivery. The reasons for this could be many. In short, RTOs are COD orders that could not be successfully delivered to the customer and had to be sent back to the eCommerce brand.
Such RTOs can have a huge negative impact on eCommerce businesses. For instance, loss of income, reduced profitability, loss due to logistics, etc. Continuous RTOs could snowball into huge losses and operational inefficiencies for eCommerce businesses. To combat these adverse effects of RTO, GoKwik has designed RTO Actions — the first self-service tool to customize COD rules for eCommerce stores.
Let’s explore RTO Actions in detail.
What Is RTO Actions By GoKwik?
RTO Actions is a one-of-its-kind, first-in-the-industry, self-service solution designed to combat the negative implications of eCommerce return to origin (RTO) initiated by customers. RTO can lead to lost income, loss due to logistics costs, and customer acquisition fees, among other expenses. This could eat into the profits and revenue of businesses. Therefore, eCommerce brands should take measures to mitigate these costs. The solution: RTO Actions by GoKwik.
RTO Actions is a tool that can be used to configure different actions or triggers to reduce RTO. The tool enables brands to address cash-on-delivery (COD) challenges through specific interventions, such as allowing or blocking COD, adding fees, and more.
Benefits Of RTO Actions
Managing RTOs is a complex task for eCommerce stores. From the initial aspects such as enabling COD or blocking COD during order placement to enabling returns initiation options to reimbursements, to logistics to packaging, to examining returned products, among other tasks.
Having intuitive tools to help you with some of these tasks can improve your operational efficiency, reduce losses (83% of survey respondents agree that returns are a concern for profitability), and enhance customer experience, leading to many more tangible and intangible benefits. Here’s how RTO Actions can help your brand.
Operational Efficiency
Managing returns may seem easy but it isn’t as there are a lot of factors associated with it. That said, operational efficiency is critical when managing returns. This is one area where RTO actions come in with effective features. The tool allows for self-service configurations that help streamline the process.
Customers can manage or initiate basic requests such as initiating returns, tracking returns, etc. on their own. This reduces the turnaround time (TAT) for the eCommerce tech support teams. At the same time, it also minimizes delays as everything is automated and done by the tool. Customers’ queries and requests are handled swiftly by the tool.
This enhances the overall operational efficiency of RTO management, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and trust in the brand.
Stickiness On The Merchant Dashboard
Every business is different and so are its requirements. Hence, flexibility and customization are key factors when it comes to how businesses handle returns. This is where RTO actions win points.
RTO actions allows eCommerce merchants to experiment with various strategies around returns. For example, make promotional adjustments, customer segmentation, personalization, etc. This allows merchants to optimize their operations based on their unique needs. Additionally, merchants can also use this capability to explore innovative ways to reduce RTO losses, make informed decisions, and drive better outcomes for their business. Merchants can perform a lot of actions from their dashboards.
How Does RTO Actions Work?
Let’s understand the basics of how RTO Actions works and how it can help your eCommerce website succeed.
- RTO Actions enables eCommerce merchants to manage returns and optimize operations by configuring actions on more than 18 data segments. The tool is designed to support a wide range of use cases.
- Merchants have a deeper control and hence can tailor their return management strategies to meet their business goals, enhancing customer experience.
- For example, RTO Actions allows merchants to block specific pin codes or customers who frequently initiate returns. These actions help minimize the risk of fraudulent activities and improve efficiency of their logistics network.
- Businesses can apply different cash-on-delivery (COD) fees for new versus repeat customers.
- Merchants can incentivize customer loyalty and reduce the financial risk associated with COD orders.
- Merchants can also implement partial COD on orders within a specified cart value. This allows them to manage cash flow and reduce losses on high-value orders.
- RTO Actions provides flexibility that helps merchants experiment with new strategies and enhance decision-making.
- The tool provides control to merchants, enhances operational efficiency and enables more personalized experiences.
Here’s a table that explains how RTO Actions works:
Now that we know the basics of how RTO Actions works, let’s look at some of the capabilities supported by the tool and how you could use it for your eCommerce site.
Capabilities Supported By RTO Actions
In this section, we take a detailed look into the capabilities supported by RTO Actions.
Triggers
Triggers are events that start workflows. Here are some of the triggers you can set up in your eCommerce store:
1. Customer attributes: You can set up the tool to trigger actions based on specific customer attributes, such as customers’ phone numbers, pincodes, and past behavior and returns patterns. For example, if customers have generated returns in the past, delivery details, and whether a customer is new or repeat.
2. Cart data: You can trigger actions based on what’s in the customer’s cart, for example, specific SKUs, and UTM parameters that brought the customer to your site.
3. SKU and product-based: Initiate actions based on specific SKUs or products in customers’ carts, enabling targeted interventions based on product characteristics.
Workflow Conditions
Workflow conditions determine whether actions are taken based on conditions that you set on your eCommerce site. Each workflow in RTO Actions can support up to five conditions at a time. These conditions can also be combined to create complex or customized workflows. This factor depends on your specific business needs. With this flexibility, businesses can tailor the tool’s responses to a wide variety of customer behaviours and scenarios.
Diverse Trigger Options
RTO actions provides a comprehensive suite of 18 triggers across aspects such as cart status, customer attributes, UTM parameters, SKU specifics, etc. This enables the tool to handle many different scenarios that may occur in your eCommerce store.
Supported interventions
You can manage COD orders based on multiple interventions. Here are some of them:
- Allow COD as a payment option based on conditions you specify
- Block COD under specific circumstances that you set up, for example, for high-risk customers or locations
- Set up a fee for certain COD orders to avoid potential fraudulent orders
- Implement a captcha before processing a COD order for specific customers or locations so as to reduce bot-initiated orders
- Set up a prompt regarding COD option that requires additional actions from customers to confirm their choice of payment
Workflow operations
- Enable or disable and delete workflows for quick adjustments and real-time management
- You can prioritize workflows so that the more critical ones are addressed first, thus streamlining operations better
Why Use RTO Actions For Your eCommerce Business?
With RTO rates increasing and eCommerce brands bearing the brunt of actions taken by customers and fraudulent activities, it’s a must for brands to focus on RTO management.
RTO Actions by GoKwik is the first product designed for the eCommerce industry with its specific features and capabilities. A comprehensive digital solution supporting brands that are proactively addressing RTO issues.
1. What Is RTO Actions?
RTO Actions is a tool for eCommerce stores to manage COD returns. It is the first such tool in the industry that is designed to work on self-service, benefiting merchants to reduce RTOs and losses and enhance customer experience.
2. How Does RTO Actions Benefit eCommerce Merchants?
RTO Actions is a tool that helps merchants improve operational efficiency related to returns and COD orders. The tool also allows merchants to manage the tasks by themselves, customize actions based on their specific needs, and enhance the overall customer experience.
3. How Does RTO Actions Work?
RTO Actions is a self-service tool that has capabilities to allow COD orders, block COD orders, set up fees on specific COD orders, implement a captcha, etc.
AUTHOR
Suhag Vamja
Head of Product Marketing @ GoKwik
