returns portal
The self-serve page where customers start a return, print a label, and pick refund, credit, or exchange without emailing support.
See it
What it is
A returns portal is the self-serve page where a customer looks up an order, picks the items and a reason, and gets back a prepaid label plus instructions, with no email thread and no support ticket. Behind it sits the older acronym RMA (return merchandise authorization): the approval record that says this specific parcel is expected back. Loop Returns and Narvar built businesses on this one screen.
Reach for it as soon as returns stop being rare, because manual returns scale linearly with support headcount and portals do not. The lever worth designing for is the resolution choice: offer exchange or store credit before cash refund, often with a small bonus on credit, and a meaningful share of refunds stay revenue.
Gotcha: the label is the easy part. Decide what happens between scan and refund (do you refund on carrier scan, on warehouse receipt, or after inspection?), how the returned unit gets back into sellable inventory, and what your policy does about final-sale items, worn goods, and the customer who returns eight of ten orders. Reason codes are free product research if you make them specific ('too small in the shoulders' beats 'did not fit') and feed them back to the PDP and size chart.
Ask AI for it
Build a self-serve returns portal. Entry step: look up an order by order number plus email, no account required. Show eligible items only (inside the return window, not final sale), let the customer select items, quantities, and a reason from a specific reason list with an optional photo upload. Offer three resolutions in this order: exchange for another variant, store credit with a bonus percentage, then refund to original payment. Generate an RMA number, then get the prepaid label from an existing carrier adapter or a named carrier sandbox API rather than fabricating one: persist the returned label ID, PDF URL, tracking number, and an error state for failed label buys, and use an explicit MockCarrier implementation in development so it is obvious the PDF is not real. Email the label and give a status page that tracks the parcel from created to in transit to received to resolved. Restock approved items back to inventory only after an inspection step passes.