The Biggest Update in Retino’s History: Exchanges, Automation, and More

Post-purchase care involves a whole range of steps and decisions. Retino can already automate many of the standard ones. In practice, however, you will often encounter situations that are more complex or specific to your online store.

A customer does not want their money back, but a different size. You want to approve one type of return automatically, while another needs to follow your own internal rules. When handling a case, you may also need to know whether you are dealing with a new customer, a VIP customer, or someone with a high return rate.

These are exactly the kinds of situations we have focused on in recent months. The result is a set of new features that significantly expand what you can manage and automate in Retino.

Product Exchanges in Retino: A Return No Longer Has to End in a Refund

The size does not fit. The customer likes the product, but simply needs a different variant. Or while making a return, they realize they would rather have a completely different product.

If an online store cannot handle exchanges easily, the process often gets split into two parts: first the return and refund, then potentially a new order. For the customer, that means extra steps. For the online store, it creates uncertainty as to whether the new purchase will happen at all. This often means losing an opportunity to retain revenue that would otherwise end in a refund.

That is why we have now launched exchanges in Retino. You can offer customers both a product return and a new purchase within a single process, directly through Retino’s customer portal.

What Happens Behind the Scenes During an Exchange

Directly in the customer portal, the customer selects which product they want to return and can immediately choose what they would like instead. They can select:

• a different variant of the same product,
• a different product from the catalog,
• or additional products to add to the exchange.

An exchange therefore does not have to mean simply “the same T-shirt in a different size.” It can result in a new order containing a different product or even a higher total order value.

Retino handles the entire process behind the scenes: it reserves the new products, arranges return shipping, prepares the new order, handles any additional payment or refund due, and prepares the necessary documents.

This means the online store does not have to piece an exchange together from several separate steps, and the customer does not have to wait for the return to be completed before starting the entire purchase process again.

Exchanges Help Retain Both Revenue and Customers

Product exchanges give online stores an opportunity to retain the order, the revenue, and the customer.

At the same time, exchanges are still far from standard practice in Czech e-commerce. In our Great Online Store Test 2026, we found that only 15% of the Czech online stores we tested made an effort to convert a return into an exchange. This share increased by 9 percentage points year over year, but there is still plenty of room to make exchanges easier.

An exchange is therefore not just a way to retain revenue. It also allows you to offer customers a simpler experience in an area that has yet to become standard practice in Czech e-commerce.

→ Learn more about exchanges

Retino Flow: Automation for Your Online Store’s Individual Processes

Automating returns and claims is nothing new in Retino. It can already take care of a wide range of standard steps. But no two online stores operate exactly the same way.

Some have different rules depending on the country or product category. Others want to treat loyalty program members differently. Some cases require human review, while others can be handled entirely automatically when clearly defined conditions are met.

This is where preconfigured automation naturally reaches its limits. It cannot anticipate every process, exception, and internal rule used by every online store.

Retino Flow pushes beyond this limitation.

Automation Adapts to Your Process

Retino Flow is an automation layer built directly into Retino. It allows you to create a process based on the specific rules of your online store and then automate the entire workflow.

An Entire Case Can Be Handled Without Human Intervention

Flow can check the conditions of a case, decide what should happen next, issue a refund, respond to the customer, change the status, and close the case. For routine scenarios, the entire process can therefore run without human intervention. For example, you can configure Flow so that if a return does not exceed a specified amount and meets your conditions, it automatically approves the return, issues the refund, sends a message to the customer, and closes the case.

Describe Your Automation in Plain Language

One major advantage is that you do not need to build a technical workflow or write any code. You can describe a simpler process in an ordinary sentence, and AI will create the Flow for you.

For example, you can describe which conditions the system should check, when it may approve a case, and which steps should follow. For more complex scenarios, we will be happy to help you design and configure the process.

Flow works directly with data and actions in Retino, but it can also involve external tools in the process. This allows it to automate scenarios that would normally require custom integrations and development work.

The result is another part of routine operations that your team no longer has to repeat case by case.

→ Explore Retino Flow

Customer Profiles and Segmentation

Two identical returns do not necessarily mean two identical customers. One may be shopping with you for the first time, another may have placed dozens of orders, while a third regularly returns a large proportion of what they buy. This context is extremely important for both customer care and subsequent automation.

That is why the new customer profiles bring information about each individual customer together directly in Retino.

Orders, Returns, and Customer Value in One Place

In one place, you can see the customer’s orders, returns, and other history. You can also work with order value, return rate, segments, custom tags, and internal notes.

When another case arrives, your team no longer sees only an isolated return or claim. They know who they are dealing with and what kind of history the customer has with the online store.

Segments Change Based on Customer Behavior

Customer profiles also include segmentation. A segment works according to predefined rules. If a customer meets the conditions, Retino automatically assigns them to the segment. If their behavior changes later, their segment can change as well.

This allows you, for example, to identify VIP customers or customers with a high return rate.

Tags and Notes Add Context the System Cannot Know on Its Own

In addition to segments, you can also use custom tags. A segment changes automatically based on customer behavior, while a tag remains in place until you change it yourself. Tags are added manually.

You can also add internal notes.

This is therefore more than just another customer list. A customer profile gives your team the context they need at the moment they are actually dealing with a customer.

→ Learn more about customer profiles and segmentation

Connect Retino to ChatGPT, Claude, and Other AI Assistants

“How many returns did we receive last week?”“What are the most common reasons for them?”“Which customers have the highest return rates?”

The data needed to answer questions like these is already in Retino. But getting to the answer often means opening the right dashboard, setting filters, or processing the data further.

You can now connect Retino to ChatGPT, Claude, or another compatible AI agent and work with your data using natural language. The AI retrieves the information it needs directly from Retino and gives you the answer without manual exports or searching through data.

This is useful not only when you are looking for one specific number. You can ask follow-up questions, compare information, or quickly get an overview of what is currently happening across your post-purchase operations.

The connection works through an MCP Server.

→ Learn more about the MCP Server

Roles and Permissions in Retino: Everyone Gets Access Only to What They Need

As teams grow and AI agents become part of the workflow, controlling who has access to what becomes increasingly important.

Customer care teams handle cases and communicate with customers. A manager needs to manage processes and integrations. Someone else may work with refunds or billing.

There is no reason for everyone to have access to everything.

That is why Retino now gives you more precise control over what individual team members can see and which actions they can perform.

There are three core roles:

• Owner is responsible for account administration, subscriptions, and billing.
• Manager can manage settings, integrations, users, and permissions.
• Agent handles individual cases without access to company settings.

On higher-tier plans, you can go even further and create custom roles with granular permissions.

For example, you can create a role for your accountant and specify that they can work with refunds and the necessary financial information without giving them permission to change integrations or other account settings.

Permissions Are Not Just Important for People

With the arrival of AI agents, controlling access becomes even more important.

The principle, however, remains the same: every user or agent should have access to what they genuinely need to do their job, rather than automatically having access to everything.

This allows an online store to bring a larger team and new tools into Retino without losing control over sensitive data and actions.

→ Learn more about roles and permissions

Less routine work, more time for what matters

Post-purchase care should not mean more and more manual work with every additional order. The more routine steps Retino can take over, and the better it can adapt to the processes of a specific online store, the more time your team has for situations where a human is genuinely needed.

This is exactly the direction these new Retino features are taking. More tasks can run on their own, customers get a simpler experience, and your team still has the information and control they need when it matters.

Our goal is to keep developing Retino so that post-purchase care does not become another operational burden that grows alongside your online store, but a process that can increasingly run on its own.