Contents
- (Guide) Using Tags to Streamline RMAs
- (Guide) Ultimate Guide to RMA Management
- Supplemental Materials
(Guide) Using Tags to Streamline RMAs and Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience
Managing an online store can quickly become complicated and frustrating without organization. Fortunately, tags can be easily created, removed, altered, and linked to items and collections enabling you to soyour products and more easily manage your store. When tags are set up correctly and managed well, both your customers and your support teams benefit. In this guide, we’ll discuss how to use tags to drive desired functionality in Returnly, reduce support tickets for your team, and provide your shoppers with a great customer experience.
Why Tags Matter for Returns
Different products may sometimes require different policies should a customer need to return. With Returnly, you can leverage tags to more granularly drive returns policy settings for individual products and orders. Some examples of what tags can be used for include:
- Marking products as non-returnable
- Directing returns to your preferred warehouse
- Overriding your return policy’s default eligibility window or return shipping rate
- Generating an individual return label for a single product in a multi-product order
- Displaying specific dimensions on return labels to ensure shipping costs are sufficient
(Guide) Ultimate Guide to RMA Management
It may be the surprise you never asked for, but an incorrect return is something that’s bound to happen from time to time. In this section we’ll walk through common instances that require manual intervention so you know exactly what to do when an imperfect return occurs.
Scenario 1: Customer returns the wrong item
It may seem obvious, but when a customer returns an incorrect product, the item listed in the RMA will differ from the return you received. In this case, you will need to remove the product the customer kept and create a new RMA or refund them externally for the product they returned.
- For multi-product RMAs, simply remove the product the customer decided to keep by using the Edit button and selecting Item missing.
- For single-product RMAs, you must cancel the RMA entirely. This is because there is only one product to mark as missing, so therefore the RMA must be closed out in full.
- In order to add the product the customer returned for both multi-product and single-product RMAs, you may create a new RMA since adding a product to an existing RMA is not programmatically supported at this time. Thereafter, you must manually transition the RMA to the Authorized > Delivered > Refunded status to close it out.
Alternatively, you can refund your customer for the value of their additional return externally such as through Shopify (though the return will not be recorded in your Return Manager or reporting).
Scenario 2: Customer returns an item that was partially refunded after purchase
Let’s assume your customer forgot to apply a discount code at checkout, so your team applies the discount post-purchase. When this happens, the discount is technically applied as a partial refund.
Now let’s say your customer wants to return the item. In this case, use the Deduction & Fees field to manually deduct the amount previously refunded to your customer to apply their discount post-purchase. This will ensure the correct amount is refunded and prevents unexpected outcomes such as over refunding or gift card creation in Shopify.
Scenario 3: Automated refund is not triggering
RMA alerting allows you to quickly identify returns that require manual intervention – enabling your team to more promptly resolve aging RMAs and close out returns in less time. One way RMAs in need of attention are suaced to you within your Return Manager is with the Pending Refund status. RMAs often enter this status due to a settlement error where a payment processor blocks Returnly from issuing a refund. In these cases, the RMA will transition to the Needs Aention tab and you and your team will need to issue a refund to your customer outside of Returnly.
After issuing a refund outside of Returnly, your team will need to mark the pending RMA as Refunded Externally. This does not prompt another refund aempt; it simply updates the RMA’s status so that you can close it out.
Scenario 4: Customer returns an item they used more than one form of payment to purchase
When two payment methods are used (gift card & credit card) Returnly now automatically refunds the maximum balance possible to the credit card. If there is still an amount left to be refunded, it goes to the gift card used by the shopper when purchasing the order.
Refunding to gift card After an RMA has been marked as delivered, you can choose the refund destination for the RMA by selecting Gift Card in the “Refund to” pulldown menu. Click Process Refund, and Returnly will then show the last 4 digits of the gift card that you refunded to so that you can find the gift card in your e-commerce platform.
One way to automate this process is by applying Returnly tags to more granularly drive returns policy settings for products and orders including those that should only allow for gift card refunds. Refer to the tags on the next page to apply a gift card refund policy to certain products or orders (and learn more about how to apply tags here!).
Refund to gift card tag
• Tag:rtly-gc
• Description: Allocates the refund balance to a gift card instead of refunding back to the original form of payment. Note: if at least one item of the RMA has a refund to gift card tag, then the tag will be applied to the entire RMA. If your store includes sales tax in the product price, this feature is not compatible.
Refund to gift card tag + free shipping tag
• Tag: rtly-gc:offer-free-shipping
• Description: Offers shoppers the option to either receive a refund back to the original form of payment or a gift card with free return shipping. Note: all items in the RMA need to have this tag applied in order for this oer to be extended to the shopper.
Scenario 5: Customer wants to return an item purchased through social media
There’s no question that social media can be a powerful sales tool. But when likes turn to purchases, it’s worth noting the implications social sales have on returns so you can configure your store settings appropriately.
Because purchases made through Facebook and Instagram cannot be refunded through Returnly, be sure to tag those orders as non-returnable. To still allow returns for these purchases, consider the
Purchase Protection coverage offered by Facebook and Instagram directly.
Instant Credit
Scenario: Customer does not send their return
Both our Returnly Credit and Instant Exchanges products are powered by Returnly Credit and enable you to retain more revenue and create a lasting impression on customer satisfaction by sending customers their new order before they’ve shipped their return. For these products, Returnly takes on the risk and pays for the replacement item so your customers can get exactly what they’re looking for instantly and stress-free.
But when returns don’t go as planned – such as when a customer doesn’t return their original order – it’s worth noting who takes on the responsibility for the cost of the items that Returnly initially covered. In some cases, the shopper will be invoiced for the items that they decided to keep and in other cases, Returnly will reach out to you to recoup outstanding funds.
For these instances, liability will be assumed based on the RMA cancellation reason. Refer to our chart below to understand the default liability settings applied within your Return Manager at the time of onboarding:
While the above are default settings automatically applied within your Return Manager, adjustments to cancellation reasons can be made by contacting our Implementation or Merchant Care teams.
Exchanges
Scenario: A customer returns an exchange or repurchase
When a customer returns an exchange or repurchase, we call that a Return of Exchange (RoE) or a Return of Repurchase (RoR). In this case, Returnly will refund the customer instead of issuing additional Instant Credit or allowing the customer to exchange again.
For RoEs and RoRs, refunds will be returned to the customer’s original form of payment unless more than 120 days has passed from when the customer purchased the item and the RoR/RoE was processed (or 175 days if payment was captured using PayPal). In this case, refund issuance will default to a gift card.
When you refund an RoR or RoE with uplift, the refund target will match the original payment method used by the customer even if they used multiple payment methods. However, refund routing will differ depending on where the uplift came from:
- For uplift captured on a repurchase, your customer will be refunded directly as usual. This is because the customer paid for the uplift in your Shopify checkout.
- For uplift captured on an exchange (in other words, your customer made a Shop Collections exchange), the refund will route to your customer’s original payment method through Returnly via Stripe. This is because uplift on Shop Collections exchanges are captured using Returnly’s checkout.
Supplemental Materials
- Read our Knowledge Center article on basic RMA management.
