Online Returns for UnderArmour.com
Launched Q3 2017
Objective
Introduce a brand new online returns experience to meet customer expectations and industry standards by providing an intuitive self-service experience for customers looking to initiate returns of UA.com purchases.
Business Goals
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Replace the existing manual returns process to reduce the number of manual returns to the UA.com returns team.
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Reduce customers’ time to money on refunds to help drive NPS score.
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Reduce user error on both customer and employee actions within the returns journey.
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Alleviate the number of customer service contacts requesting return labels or instructions.
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Lay the groundwork for automated “refund on scan” process.
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Enforce new Under Armour return policy.
My Role
I led user experience strategy and design by wearing the hat of both lead researcher and designer. Some of my key tasks include:
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Define information architecture of the online returns flow for desktop and mobile web experiences.
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Pitch returns policy changes and recommendations for operational workflows to leadership in e-commerce, retail, customer service, and operations.
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Provide detailed flows and interaction design for the end-to-end returns flow for both web and in-store purchases.
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Collaborate with copywriters and creative designers to provide transparency and clarity to customers at each step of the experience.
Discovery
To understand the current pain points for customers and customer service agents, I conducted a deep dive into incident reports and trends pertaining to returns requests, complaints, and trends across all forms of contact to the customer service team.
31,511
Live chats initiated per month
74,244
Phone calls initiated per month
Within the top five contact categories, three topics relate to returns:
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What is the Return policy?
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How do I make a return?
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Where is my return/refund?
RNT Incident Reports, Sept - Dec 2016
Competitive Analysis
To identify common industry practices on return policies, procedures, timeframes, and related communications, I set up a method to crowdsource documentation of purchases and returns experiences across a number of retailers in the e-commerce landscape.
Key points of interest included any in-the-box returns material, turnaround time on refunds, communication cadence during the returns process, and notable points of delight or friction.
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Analysis included 10 sites: Sephora, Gap, American Eagle, J.Crew, Nordstrom, Nike, Vans, Bonobos, Joe Fresh, and Smith Optics.
Customer Journey Map
To help facilitate conversations with leadership regarding the need to amend the returns and exchange process and policy, I compiled a journey map of the legacy customer experience to help illustrate and quantify current turnaround times.
Key Insights
On average, returns take 7 to 11 days to process.
Returns sent with missing or incorrect information require manual processing and result in extended processing times (up to 4 weeks).
200+ returns per day require manually processing as a result of user error.
User Flows
To create a seamless experience regardless of the entry point in which a customer initiates a refund, I needed to address three possible paths of entry to the return from order history experience:
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via Order History
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via Order Tracking
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via Returns FAQ
Prototypes and Validation
To validate user comprehension and success rates with completing tasks in the proposed returns experience, I ran a series of in-person, moderated user studies.
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Participants were asked to complete a return from initiation through packing and shipping.
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12 participants
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6 desktop, 6 mobile
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Varying levels of online shopping expertise
Final Designs
Initiating a return
To provide a consistent experience across both account and guest user returns, I placed the main entry point within the Order Details page as it is a shared landing spot for all the identified entry points.
Selecting return items
To reduce the cognitive load required of customers, I worked with my engineering teams to ensure we could provide a list of return eligible items from the customer’s purchase history. This eliminated the need for users to manually copy the style number for each return item, or to have to manually check for the return eligibility window.
Indicating return reasons
Since it was a business requirement to capture return reasons, I proposed a simple item-level interface for users to select from a list of pre-approved return reasons. This helped to ensure that customer service and operations employees could quickly and accurately process the return and ensure accurate logging of returns data, but also helped move the responsibility off the shoulders of the customer seeking to make a return.
At this step, I again worked closely with my engineering partners to find a workaround within the dated system so that we could provide an estimated refund amount to increase transparency and customer peace of mind at this earlier point in the returns flow.
Accessing return labels
To meet the industry standards of the current time, we introduced clear but concise instructions for how to pack and ship a return properly to reduce the need for customers to contact customer service. This information was available with the printable return label which could be accessed from both the registered account and guest experiences at any time.
