Features Overview

 
 

QUICK SUMMARY

A big sporting goods retailer wanted to improve their online returns process, which was suffering from low customer satisfaction ratings and impacting online sales. At the start, the only way to return an online order was to call or chat customer service to get a return label manually emailed to the customer. We sought to establish a self-service online returns process in a way that would allow customers to start using a solution as soon as possible while also allowing the team to continue iterating and adding to the experience.

ROLE & DURATION

Senior Product Designer, 3 months

Responsible for full stack design - user research, prototyping, high-fidelity UI - as well as mentoring client designer to help establish a repeatable design process from discovery to implementation and iteration.

Worked with Client Product Designer, 4 Developers, and 2 Product Managers

STEP 1: EXPLORAtory RESEARCH

Since the existing process for online returns had some obvious departures from the standard experience for most of their competitors, the product risk for moving towards some of those conventions (like allowing users to generate return labels) seemed low, so we sped through the process of exploratory research.

Some of the more interesting things we did discover:

  • The NPS score for online returns was one of the lowest for the retailer overall

  • Customers could only request a return label by talking to a rep, and the average cost per call or chat interaction was $7

  • Items that were mailed in for returns often didn’t meet the return policy (over 60 days, customized merchandise, etc.)

  • Returns weren’t necessarily a sign of dissatisfaction. Many online customers bought multiple sizes of items to make sure they got at least one version that fits and returned the rest.

STEP 2: GENERATING SOLUTIONS

As a full team, we came up with a lot of creative solutions to the problems we heard, from the technical to the operational. However, we kept coming back to the idea that the simplest solution that addressed all of the business, customer, and operations problems was still an online returns portal.

Customer Problem: tedious process to return compared to other online retailers

Business Problem: expensive interactions, diminished lifetime value of the customer

Operations Problem: no way to track and improve on how long it took a customer to perform a return, what the reasons were for returning (to improve buying decisions, recommendations, etc.)

Another factor we had to consider were that an overwhelming majority of online orders were made without logging in, so we couldn’t rely on customers looking at past orders through the existing customer account portal. We also wanted to release something usable as soon as possible as a proof of concept at scale.