A first-time customer with no order history placing a large COD order is a fundamentally different risk profile from a customer who has placed and received 10 prepaid orders over the past year. Treating both customers identically — either blocking COD for everyone or allowing it for everyone — is leaving money on the table or accepting unnecessary risk.
Customer trust scoring in Smart COD Control lets you differentiate.
What Is Customer Trust Scoring?
Trust scoring assigns a risk level to each customer based on their order history with your store. Customers with a track record of successfully received orders are “trusted” and get more permissive COD access. New customers or those with a history of returns or cancellations are flagged as higher risk and face additional restrictions.
Configuring Trust Rules
In WooCommerce → Smart COD → Trust Rules, you define what “trusted” means for your store. Examples:
- Minimum completed orders — customer must have at least N completed orders
- Minimum prepaid orders — at least N of those orders must have been prepaid (not COD)
- Account age — account must be at least N days old
- No recent RTO — no returned COD orders in the last N months
You can require all conditions or any combination.
What Happens to Untrusted Customers?
You control this. Options include:
- Block COD entirely for new/untrusted customers
- Require OTP verification for untrusted customers but skip it for trusted ones
- Apply the COD handling fee to untrusted customers only
- Limit the COD order value cap for untrusted customers
This approach minimises friction for your best customers while maintaining protection where it’s needed.
Guest Checkout and Trust Scoring
Guest checkouts don’t have an account history. You can configure how guest COD orders are treated — some stores block COD for guests entirely and require account creation, others allow it with mandatory OTP verification.
Building Trust Over Time
Trust scoring creates a virtuous cycle: new customers who want COD complete OTP verification and receive their first order. After N successful orders, they’re trusted and get smoother COD access. This rewards genuine customers progressively without permanent blanket restrictions.
Documentation for trust scoring configuration is available at the ThePluginForge support page.