Overview
Prior to this project, Amazon allowed only returns for refund to payment method—this could sometimes take weeks of processing time, making for a suboptimal customer experience. What if we added more options for customers, such as refund to gift card, or better yet, instant refunds or an exchange for another item?
This project was requested by the Amazon Customer Service team, which provided a bounty of customer returns data that clearly pointed out the pain points in the current experience. I worked with Customer Service technical program managers on this project to improve the customer online return experience, make it an easier self-service that walks customers through the return process.
Summary
My role: Senior UX designer
Skills: UX Design, journey mapping, wireframing, rapid prototyping, graphic design (financial displays of return tallies)
Launch dates: Returns: 2009-2010, Exchanges/Instant refunds: 2011
Design scope:
a multitude of use cases, dependent on customer return option selections
returns of multiple items
permutations of up to 5 steps in the return process
improved Thank You page
Outcome
My designs streamlined and improved the product returns experience by making it more transparent and giving customers more options for resolving a problem order or return. In the end, Amazon shipped the Instant Refund option, but opted not to invest in the complex tracking and fulfillment changes it would take to do exchanges tied to specific return orders. However, my design explorations around a variable selection widget in a shopping cart or return step resulted in an Amazon patent.
In addition to launching the instant refund to credit card on record or to Amazon Gift Card, these changes to the Order Return Center laid the groundwork for other future payment offerings such as the Amazon Credit Card and Amazon balance programs.
Approach
I mapped out all possible permutations in order to show the product team the scale of the challenge, and to help prioritize which use cases we wanted to tackle first.
Phase 1: Returns Center
Development and technical program management planned a phased approach to rolling out the new returns and exchange offerings. The first phase of the redesigned Returns Center included new layout, credit card validation window, and estimated refund display.
Wireframe step 1 of returns process
Wireframe step 2 of returns process
Adding exchanges and instant refunds
Phase 2 Order Returns Center now included item exchange and instant refund options. This added variation picking complexity to the returns pipeline—we wanted to try to do this for customers so they would not be forced to make a new order each time they wanted to exchange something.
Some early thinking on how to integrate exchanges with instant refunds into the returns workflow
Wireframing
In this early wireframe I explored presenting all the steps on one page. Ultimately, development recommended to keep the existing page to page step process in place as this would more smoothly pull data and calculations for each item behind the scenes, while the customer clicked through each decision point.
I introduced a widget with option to exchange from a selection of in-stock variants. This feature would save the user from having to make an entirely new order to replace the item they’re returning. Although the team was encouraged to think expansively during the design ideating, when we determined what it would take to build this kind of widget, it was deemed to be too expensive technically.
New exchange widget in returns workflow
Return agreement with exchange selection
Particularly challenging for the addition of exchange to the returns process was minimizing the friction created by the exchange/instant refund agreement. Collateral agreement was needed to “commit” customers to returning their items, but it felt awkward to insist on making them promise to do this.
Another noteworthy feature included a more detailed estimated refund calculation ledger. In the interest of trust and transparency to the customer, we displayed the calculations logic for each return, no matter how complex the transaction.
Detailed ledger of return and exchange calculation