Every return used to start as an email thread: order number, reason, size wanted, label booked by hand in the carrier portal, then a manual note on the Shopify order. With Nexly connected to Shopify and Shipmondo, customers look up their order themselves, pick a size exchange against live Shopify variants, and a GLS label lands in their inbox in minutes. Price differences on upgraded sizes are collected automatically through a Shopify checkout, and the exchange is written back onto the original order — so the whole story lives in one place.
The starting point: every return was a conversation
Rueda Veloz sells cycling apparel where fit decides everything. A jersey that is one size too tight is not a bad product — it is the wrong size — but the old flow treated both the same way. A customer emailed support, support asked for the order number and the reason, then asked which size they actually wanted, then checked the warehouse, then opened the carrier portal and booked a label by hand, then pasted a note onto the Shopify order so the next person would understand what was going on.
Four to six messages per return was normal, and each one carried a delay. Meanwhile the customer sat with a jersey they could not wear and no clear answer about when the right one would arrive. A meaningful share of those conversations ended in a refund simply because waiting felt easier than asking for an exchange.
What Nexly changed operationally
The team connected Shopify and Shipmondo to Nexly and moved the entire first step to the customer. The portal looks up the order with an order number and an email address, shows the exact line items that are still returnable, and lets the customer choose between returning an item and exchanging it. When they pick an exchange, Nexly queries live Shopify variants, so the sizes shown are the sizes that actually exist in stock right now.
Once the request is submitted, the GLS label is booked automatically through Shipmondo using the per-country rules Rueda Veloz configured, and the PDF is stored in Nexly and emailed to the customer. Support does not touch anything unless something is unusual.
The part the team values most is the write-back. Nexly creates the return on the Shopify order, tags it, and appends the reference, carrier and tracking number to the order note. Anyone opening the order in Shopify Admin sees the full story without switching tools.
Exchanges instead of refunds
Because the exchange path is as easy as the refund path — and visibly the faster of the two — more customers take it. If the replacement variant costs more, Nexly creates a Shopify draft order for the difference and sends the payment link automatically, so an upgrade never has to be handled as a manual invoice.
The share of returns resolved as exchanges rose from roughly 41% to 52% in the illustrative figures above. For an apparel brand, that difference is retained revenue that used to leave the business as a refund.
What it means for the team
Support moved from reactive triage to proactive work: checking the handful of edge cases, following up on parcels that have not been scanned, and improving the size guides that cause the returns in the first place. The three-stat band above is illustrative, but the pattern is consistent across stores that move a manual email flow into a self-service portal.
The setup itself took an afternoon: connect Shopify, connect the 3PL, set the per-country carrier rules, upload the logo and publish the portal URL on the store's returns page.
“We used to answer every return by email and book each label by hand. Now the customer handles it themselves and the label lands in their inbox in minutes. It has honestly changed how the whole team works — support is finally proactive instead of reactive.”
Illustrative figures based on typical Shopify + 3PL setups. Real results vary by store, season and category.
