RTO costs more than just the return — it's the shipping out, the shipping back, the inventory delay, and the lost sale. Most of it comes from COD orders. Shopflo gives you five levers to reduce it, starting with knowing who your high-risk customers are.

Start with How to Build a High-Risk Customer Segment in Shopflo to identify the right customers first. Then apply whichever of the five ways fits your brand.

The most direct lever. Once you've identified customers with a pattern of RTOs or cancellations, set an automation to hide COD entirely for them at checkout. They only see prepaid options. No COD order, no RTO.

This works for both customer-level risk (repeat returners) and pincode-level risk (high-RTO delivery areas). You can use any customer segment here — whether built from returner history, network affinity score, or a pincode list.

→ How to Block COD for Specific PIN Codes using Automations

Running a free shipping offer or a sale coupon? Restrict it to prepaid. When a customer applies the code, COD is automatically blocked — they have to switch to prepaid to redeem it.

This is particularly effective for high-AOV discounts where RTO risk is highest. The customer gets the offer, you get a prepaid order.

You can also scope this to a specific customer segment — so the COD block only triggers when a high-risk customer applies the code, while others are unaffected.

→ How to Block COD When Customers Apply Specific Discounts

Instead of blocking COD entirely, charge for it — and make the charge scale with order value. A ₹30 COD fee on a ₹500 order feels fair. The same fee on a ₹5,000 order makes prepaid the obvious choice.

Slab-based split COD takes this further: the customer pays a portion upfront, the rest on delivery. Higher commitment = lower RTO.

You can scope split COD to a specific customer segment — apply it only to high-risk customers rather than all orders.

→ How to Set Up Slab-Based Split COD Payments

Some customers default to COD out of habit — not because they won't pay prepaid. A small discount or freebie shown at the payment step is often enough to flip them. No blocking needed.

You can target this nudge to a specific segment — so only the right customers see the prepaid offer, rather than showing it to everyone.

→ How to Set Up COD to Prepaid Conversion Discount

If your store runs a loyalty or rewards programme, stop giving points on COD orders. Prepaid becomes the only way to earn — which is a quiet but effective nudge for customers who care about rewards.

This doesn't block COD, but it changes the incentive. Customers who want to earn shift to prepaid on their own.

You can scope this to a specific customer segment — so only customers in that group lose rewards on COD, while others remain unaffected.

→ Disable rewards on a Payment method

The segment is the unlock for most of these. Start there: How to Build a High-Risk Customer Segment in Shopflo.

Questions? Write to us at support@shopflo.com or start a chat from the dashboard.