If the volume of return orders keeps growing, it creates many problems for sellers. Mostly, if a customer goes for a cash-on-delivery method, the buyer has to bear the cost of returning undelivered products. Often, this leads to disappointed customers and, consequently, lost business opportunities for sellers. Relentless RTOs, regardless of margins, will forever slow down your overall growth.
That’s why it becomes essential to implement strategies that bring down your RTO percentage. Among the most effective tools available is the NDR panel for managing RTOs.
In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into NDRs, RTOs, and their utilization via an NDR panel as a key strategy for minimizing RTO. With the right approach, sellers can achieve higher delivery success rates, reduce unnecessary overheads, and increase customer satisfaction.
What Does NDR Stand For?
NDR stands for Non-Delivery Report. A courier company issues an NDR if a parcel cannot be delivered or if, for some reason, a purchase order cannot be handed over to the customer.
The seller, in these scenarios, has two options:
- Request a re-attempt – They can ask their courier partner to attempt another delivery for the parcel.
- Mark the shipment as RTO – Return to Origin, where the order is sent back to the seller’s warehouse.
When a shipment is moved to RTO, the returned goods are eventually dispatched back to the seller’s warehouse, where they may undergo inspection by the quality team or be discarded outright. This procedure, in the majority of cases, remains without any defined timelines and unnecessarily causes delays, thereby blocking working capital. Holding stock, which was meant for the customer, not only eats up warehouse space and subsequently locks funds, increasing operational costs.
From a business point of view, this is poor. Sales are lost, customers are unhappy, and resources are wasted because both parties involved must bear the costs of the freight for the forward journey and for the return.
This is why a good NDR management process matters. Prompt action on the part of sellers regarding NDR updates can lead to re-attempt requests being sent on time, with customers being notified on time.
How Does RTO Affect Online Businesses?
RTO (return-to-origin) orders end up back in the seller’s inventory. If not properly processed quickly, it will keep getting worse in the product’s quality in the warehouse. On top of that, RTO-lock inventory denies cash flow to the sellers and forces sellers to bear additional expenditure that can go beyond mere transportation (forward and reverse shipping). And it consumes warehouse space, slows down operations, and reduces customer satisfaction.
Some major losses faced by sellers due to RTO shipments are:
- Double freight incurred (i.e., forward and reverse shipping).
- Repackaging and handling charges.
- Damage to goods during transit or storage.
- Costs for handling and managing returned stock, inventory held with no liquidity.
- Waste disposal/ scrapping cost if deemed unsellable.
- Customer churning and loss of repeat customers.
How NDR Management Helps Reduce RTO?
A failed delivery attempt always requires corrective action to ensure the actual delivery. This is where NDR management comes into play. It enables sellers to act quickly on failed deliveries through automated tracking of non-delivery cases and quick resolution. An automated NDR system regularly brings to notice undelivered orders, pinpoints the cause of failure, and allows the cloud-based software to fast-track decisions on whether to re-attempt delivery, change customer details, or take the order off for return.
This way, sellers reduce RTOs, channel cash flows efficiently, and support customer satisfaction through a more dependable delivery process.
How Do Shipping Aggregators Support Online Sellers?
Shipping aggregators serve as a bridge between online sellers and multiple courier partners, offering real-time updates of every shipment. By integrating with courier partners, these tracking software programs provide constant delivery status updates so that sellers can respond to orders that have not been delivered immediately, avoiding the delay or manual tracking. This system also allows them to escape unnecessary proactive communications with the customer.
The process typically works like this:
- The delivery partner attempts to deliver to the address provided by the recipient but fails.
- If the shipment remains undelivered, the delivery person records the reason for non-delivery.
- Through the aggregators, this is immediately reflected on the NDR dashboard of the seller.
- The seller can then schedule a re-attempt or mark the shipment as RTO.
- If a re-attempt is scheduled, the partner courier tries to deliver the shipment the next day or soon thereafter.
How Bigship’s NDR Panel Helps Sellers Save Time, Money & Customers?
Bigship’s NDR management panel helps sellers immediately and intelligently handle failed deliveries.
- See All Failed Deliveries in One Place- Know the exact reason for non-delivery (wrong address, customer not available, or refusal) instantly on your dashboard.
- Fix Issues in Just a Few Clicks- Easily reschedule deliveries, update details, or approve returns without chasing courier partners.
- Cut Down RTO Losses- Quick resolutions mean fewer returns to origin (RTO), saving both time and money.
- Keep Customers Happy- Faster redelivery and proactive communication lead to satisfied customers who shop again.
- Save Hours of Work- One simple dashboard reduces manual follow-ups and makes operations smoother.
Conclusion
RTOs are one of the hidden costs that online sellers suffer, with drained revenue, cash flow disruption, and damage to trust factors for customers. Yet, with the right technology tools set in place, that is, NDR management systems and shipping aggregators, sellers can be on the proactive side of undelivered orders. Acting on NDRs in real-time, rescheduling re-attempts in a timely, and keeping customers informed significantly bring down RTOs.
Bigship’s NDR panel provides sellers instant views on delivery statuses, rescheduling of re-attempts, and customer follow-ups automated from a single dashboard. Thus, apart from lowering RTO costs, it also contributes to timely deliveries, satisfied customers, and further growth of the business.
Sign up with Bigship today and reduce your RTOs instantly.
