Research

One of the major snags was the offline system had 15 return types, some of which were outdated and most of which could not be used by a customer without assistance. To illustrate a solution to this problem, I created a Return Type Terminology Map.

The goal was to make returns online as friendly and painless for the customers as the offline process. We had to be mindful that the offline process allowed for the customer service agents to be creative in helping the customer in virtually unlimited ways.

Digging into the data revealed how this had impact on the most popular return choices by our customer service agents. I created a map to communicate return types mapped to customer impact. Note the correlation between highest numbers in return types and customer impact. The remaining 9 return types, shown in the Terminology Map, were used less than 1% the previous year.

• Negative impact indicates that there is significant monetary or time cost to the customer.
• Neutral impact is where there is no significance to either.
• Positive impact means minimal costs to customer.

Collaborative Design

I lead collaborative workshops with select stakeholders to vet ideas and think through our scenarios. We discovered misalignment with practice and documented business rules for most of the return types. Taking information from those workshops I decided to use task flow maps, like the ones below, to compare business rules to user tasks. There were a lot of these business rules, and as we walked through them in this manner, we could more easily see why the service agents may be justified in working around certain ones.

While everyone was focused on the customer's point of view, I took the opportunity to work proposed changes to the business rules into lo-fi prototypes.

An idea of a "Returns Central" surfaced, where the customer can start new returns or check status on returns previously submitted. Providing a returns status check was a change to assumed scope. We were able to successfully argue for this change by pointing back to our previously established business goal of making the online process as painless for the customer as the offline one. If they needed to call in to get status on an online return, then we've failed the customer and missed our goal for the online feature.

Starting a return takes the customer to the return type page where there are 5 different choices.

Selecting a return type will initiate a popover wizard that will step the customer through the process for that return. We liked the popover option best as it would allow the customer to easily return to return type page at any point during the return flow steps if they mistakenly selected the wrong return type.

Sample Return Track

Below is the page flow for Returning Samples.

For Samples step 1, the customer needs to locate the invoice with the samples. The system will only display invoices from the past 30 days for sample returns, as governed by the business rules. The “Can’t Find Invoice” button will inform the customer of the 30 day rule and offer them the option to call a service agent for assistance.

For Samples step 2, the customer needs to indicate which items on the invoice are to be returned and quantities. Business rules for how many items per sku can be returned as samples will limit customer’s selection.

Step 3 for Samples, ask the customer if they would like to drop-off the item to our warehouse or ship it to us. We asked this because for Sample returns we offer a prepaid shipping label. There were a significant number of customers who dropped off returns, so we didn't want to provide a prepaid shipping label in those cases. The company also like this option as a way to maintain the local warehouse/customer relationship.

Step 4 Shipping the Sample verifies customer contact information. The system often had out of date contact information for some customers. This step also shows the “Return Amount” that will be credited as well as related costs to the customer.

Step 5 Ship the Sample displays prepaid shipping label. The customer can print the label if using a desktop computer, for mobile devices they will have the option to email the label to themselves or someone who can print it for them. Typically, the person initiating the return is not the person who will be packing it for shipment.

Visual Design

The feature isn’t publically viewable yet, so I'm limited as to what I can show. I designed for 3 pixel break points 320, 768, & 1024. I incorporated the corporate color palette in the feature's visual style. Some of the site's features on the main navigation bar, "Marketing" and "Resources" are removed at the 320 and 768 sizes because those areas of the site were out of scope for the touch enabled devices using our site.

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