The Post-Purchase Experience Has Been Broken for Years. We're Fixing It.

The old model of shipping protection was simple. Charge customers a fee at checkout. If a package gets lost or damaged, reimburse them. If nothing happens? They got nothing. 

We thought that was a less than ideal experience. Turns out, so did a lot of brands.

But the problem runs deeper. The entire post-purchase experience has been stuck in an outdated model where every customer gets treated exactly the same. Your most loyal buyer who has purchased from you twelve times and never returned a thing? Same experience.

Brands defaulted to this one-size-fits-all approach because they didn't have the tools to do anything else. That changes today.

Your Best Customers Are Subsidizing Your Worst Ones

The generous policies that keep your good customers happy are being exploited by bad actors. And you're absorbing the cost.

Every time someone abuses your return policy, you pay for it. Every time a repeat offender files another claim, you pay for it. Every time your customer experience (CX) team bends over backward for someone who will never buy from you again, you pay for it. Meanwhile, your best customers, the ones who actually drive profit, get the same treatment as everyone else. No recognition. No reward. Just the standard experience.

CX teams feel this tension every day. Be generous and watch margins erode. Tighten policies and risk alienating the customers who actually matter. There's been no middle ground because the tools to create one didn't exist.

Until now.

Introducing Onward Intelligence

Onward Intelligence is the connective tissue across our entire platform. Think of it as an agent layer that scores customers in real time across every post-purchase touchpoint, analyzing behavior, history, and value to determine what experience each customer should receive.

The concept is balance. Generous when it builds loyalty. Vigilant when policies will be abused.

Great customers get the red carpet. Faster refunds because they've earned trust. Seamless claim approvals for legitimate issues. Less time spent investigating means faster support experiences. Double cash back credits. Automatic credit for shipping delays before they even ask.

Problem customers get a different experience. One that protects your margins instead of draining them. Appropriate friction that discourages abuse without creating a scene.

Beyond just reacting to behavior, Onward Intelligence maps customer profitability to personalized rewards. It identifies high-value customers by linking spend, CX interactions, and return behavior. It tailors incentives and perks based on profitability. It reinforces profitable habits with dynamic rewards that grow customer lifetime value.

This isn't about being unfair. It's about being smart. Treating customers as individuals based on their actual behavior rather than applying blanket policies that reward the wrong people.

The Prime Playbook, Available to Everyone

Think about how Prime members get treated.

Buy regularly, never return anything, and you're golden. Free replacements. Instant refunds. Benefits you didn't even ask for. But try to return your fifteenth item this month and suddenly the experience changes. Restocking fees appear. Refunds take longer. The red carpet disappears.

It's not personal. It's math. Systems built to reward great customers and protect margins from bad ones. This has been happening for years because companies with massive data teams and custom infrastructure can make it work.

For everyone else, this capability seemed out of reach. You either treated every customer the same and hoped for the best, or you built something custom that cost more than it saved.

That's what Onward changes. We bring Prime-level intelligence to every DTC brand. No army of data scientists required. No custom infrastructure to build and maintain. Just intelligence built into every post-purchase interaction, working automatically across your entire customer base.

Your best customers get experiences that build loyalty. Your worst customers get experiences that protect your business. Everyone gets treated appropriately based on who they actually are.

A Complete Platform, Not Another Point Solution

Onward Intelligence powers five connected products that cover the entire post-purchase journey.

Checkout+ is our order upgrade offering. Customers opt in and get an on-time delivery guarantee, cash back credits, a 90-day satisfaction guarantee, and optional free returns. They receive real value whether or not anything goes wrong with their order. The value in benefits and credits exceeds the fee itself.

Claims management gives your CX team one unified interface for handling claims across your entire business. With our Claims-for-all capability, your team can manage non-upgraded orders while Onward handles resolutions and benefits for upgraded ones. Intelligence and fraud tools are built-in, so your team has access to the very same technology we use to approve claims from upgraded orders.

Order Tracking keeps customers informed with a branded experience that reduces "where's my order" tickets and offers the “Onward Hub” a centralized surface for tracking, editing, returns, and claims.

Returns management provides a state-of-the-art returns and exchanges app without requiring you to offer free returns just to access the software, and ensuring focus on retaining revenue with Shop Now.

Order Editing lets customers modify orders after purchase, cutting cancellations and support volume.

All five products are connected by Onward Intelligence. All five are personalized based on customer score, come with zero SaaS fees, and typically a 6-7 figure profit impact aligned to your success.

The result is consolidation and reduced operational complexity. One platform instead of five point solutions. One intelligence layer making every interaction smarter.

CX Teams Finally Get Their Seat at the Table

CX teams fight for budget. They fight for headcount. They fight just to prove they matter. And the tools they've been given make it nearly impossible to quantify their impact in anything other than satisfaction scores that executives half-ignore.

We think that's backwards. CX should be a profit center, not a cost center. The people running it should be treated like the profit drivers they actually are.

Onward makes this real. With customer scoring and intelligent automation, CX teams can finally demonstrate their impact in dollars. They can show leadership exactly how much profit they're generating and protecting by treating customers appropriately. One unified interface means no more toggling between systems or creating manual workarounds. 

This is what getting a seat at the table looks like. Tools that prove your value in the language executives understand.

The Era of One-Size-Fits-All Is Over

Post-purchase should reward your best customers and protect your margins from abuse. It should empower your CX team to prove their value in dollars. It should deliver real value to customers whether or not anything goes wrong with their order.

That's what we built.

Onward is now a complete post-purchase platform powered by intelligence that treats every customer as an individual. Five products. One unified experience. Zero SaaS fees. And the ability to finally deliver Prime-level experiences without the massive infrastructure.

This is what post-purchase should have been all along.

Come see the new Onward at useonward.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Onward Intelligence?

Onward Intelligence is the real-time agentic scoring system that analyzes customer behavior across every post-purchase touchpoint and personalizes their experience accordingly.

How is Checkout+ different from traditional shipping protection?

Checkout+ delivers value whether or not anything goes wrong with an order through cashback credits, satisfaction guarantees, shipping upgrades, sponsored donations, and optional free returns, not just coverage for lost or damaged packages.

What does real-time customer scoring actually mean?

Onward analyzes 40+ customer behaviors such as LTV,spend history, and return patterns to identify high-value customers and tailor their experience accordingly, from faster refunds for trusted buyers to dynamic rewards that grow lifetime value.

Do I need to offer free returns to use Onward's returns software?

No. Unlike competitors, Onward provides full returns management without requiring you to offer free returns as a condition of access.

How does Onward help CX teams prove their value?

Onward's unified interface and customer scoring let CX teams quantify their profit impact in dollars by showing how intelligent customer treatment protects margins and reduces abuse.

What does it cost to use Onward?

Onward has zero SaaS fees. We keep a portion of the net premiums after claims and credits. Our usage-based model aligns with your success rather than charging monthly software fees regardless of results.