How do you automate the return experience for an e-commerce company?

At present, the only way to return an item is to manually contact the customer service, it requires more and more headcount investment to handle the customer returns, increasing the overhead cost. How do we lower the overhead cost?

Approach that I plan to take

1. Ask follow up questions to understand the problem with the current process and establish the business goal

2. Map out the user journey and identify the customer pain points with the current process 

3. Brainstorm the potential solutions 

4. Discuss success metrics

Follow up questions and business goal 

Candidate: I assume the business goal is to lower the overhead cost associated with processing the customer returns for the company as well as make it easy for the customers to file a return in terms of being able to file a return at any time and file a return quickly and file a return without human intervention

Interviewer: fair enough 

Candidate: Traditionally, e-commerce companies allows three modes of return phone, self-service workflow or chat bot, chat with the agent. Is there any reason why your company does offer the flexibility to the customer with these three options and provide only over the phone return support?

Interviewer: we are open to explore and create these flexible options for the customers

Candidate: Can a candidate call the customer support 24x7 or only during the week days and working hours?

Interviewer: Weekdays and working hours

Candidate: What is the wait time before connecting to the customer support associate?

Interviewer: 15-30 mins

User journey:

1. Purchase the item 

2. Item is not as described, defective.

3. Customer goes to website to search for the return policy

4. Customer calls the customer support to initiate the return

5. Customer receives a return label to return the product via e-mail from the customer support

6. Customer packs the product into the carton and afix the return label on the shipment and send the item back

7. Customer received the refund after the product is received by the company 

Customer pain points

1. Customer cannot return initiate the return at any time because customer support is not available at all times to support the return 

2. Customer had to wait in queue to intiate the return 

3. It takes longer time in general to file a return over a call than online

4. This only method of filing a return over the phone does not offer the flexibility for the customers to file the return online, which is more user friendly and easier.  (in general customers prefer to file a return online than over a phone, based on my observation of my friends and family.)

E-commerce pain points

1. High overhead cost to support the manual over the phone return process. 

Brainstorm the potential solutions to automate the return process

1. Create a self-service workflow on the order page where customer can initiate a return and get a return label and paste on the shipment and drop it off at the local post office

Effort: Moderate, need to develop a UI for managing the return process

Impact: High, it is a industry standard that customers are used to; must for better user experience

2. Create a chatbot that allows the customer to initiate and complete the return online without any human intervention 

Effort: High, need to build AI to understand the natural language

Impact: Moderate, customers generally prefer self-service worflow over chatbox

Prioritization:

Based on the ROI, I would prioritize the self-service workflow

This self-serve option will improve the customer return experience, at the same time, it will lower the overhead cost to support the customer returns.

Success metrics

I assume these measures are not going to increase the return rate whereas it is simply going to make the return process more user friendly.

A) User adoption of the self-service workflow or chatbox, as compared to the over the phone return. I expect to see higher adoption for self-serve tools in comparison to over the phone return, because it is easier.

B) Time it takes to file a return online vs. over a phone 

C) User satisfaction with the self-service workflow-based or charbot-based return process, as compared to the existing over the phone return process.

These comparison metrics would inform how effective the new automated process is, in comparison to the existing manual return process.