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Streamliner

A digital transformation project to standardize the credit, return, and exchange operations globally for one of the world’s leading technology giants.

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Challenges

 

Currently Clients Credit, Return and Exchange(CRE) channels lack standard operating process across the globe. This is because of the following reasons:

•  Region specific processes, laws and policies

•  Complex approval and processing

•  Broken communication between carrier/s and Clients system

•  Lack of streamlined process and fluidity across channels

Client Ask

An intuitive, simplified, and standardized experience designed to delight users worldwide, making it easy to initiate returns and exchanges and receive credits seamlessly.

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"Why there are so many steps to finish a single workflow and multiple manual inputs?"

Jayson Rogers

Primary User- Care Agent

Jayson is a customer care agent for 3+ years, who deals with all the CRE requests and in constant communication with the customers. He really loves his job and is always open to learn new things. He likes to finish his work on time so that he gets to explore and learn new domains. In his spare time, he likes to play with his dog and read books.

  • Have to navigate to multiple platforms to complete a single workflow and needs Hhuman intervention.

  • Status updates or changes are not available upfront. have to track or follow up Hwith multiple teams or different tools.

  • Have to manually update each customer/each request

  • Dependency on other teams to get the daily tasks done(approvals, communication Hand tasks).

  • For any issue or concern regarding the request, only the care agent is the primary HPOC for any information - creates a bottleneck

Friction Points

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"So much hassle!!!! I wish there was a single place where I could track all information about my return."

Marle Epstein

Secondary User- Customer

Marle owns a small business and must take care of her business and her team. Daily she has to monitor her team's work, track the business & marketing needs and interact with the customers. She is prompt and detail oriented. She is a perfectionist and likes to plan everything ahead of time. 

  • Every time I must reach out to the customer care agent for any follow-up or Hdetails about the return request. 

  • Why should I remember the information like invoice number, order number, Hcustomer id...blah.. blah.. It is hard to recollect and do not have this information Hhandy all the time (Recognition is better than recall).

  • Long wait times and the absence of timely communication/updates creates Hanxiety and leads to trust issues. 

Friction Points

User Journey Mapping

From the discovery sessions we were able to map down the process flows for credit, return and exchange processes in different countries. Understanding of the as-is system was important for the designing of the to-be system.

Insight Generation

Carrier Integration

• Except for UK, rest of the countries do not have automated carrier integration.

• Manual request is created on carrier portal or list is shared via email

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Return Timeline

• UK - 2 to 3 weeks

• Germany - 5-7 days

• Canada - 2 weeks

• Japan - 8 to 10 days

• Brazil - 2 to 4 weeks 

 

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Return Initiation

•For UK, Germany, Brazil( - the refunds are initiated as soon as the carrier picks up the return. 

•Canada & Japan initiate refund only upon arrival at Dell return location

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Customer Communication

The care agents manually send communication updates and follow up with the customer.                            

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Opportunity Mapping

Based on these insights, we identified three main opportunity spaces that will inform the future solution. 

01

Empowerment & Autonomy

Customers must be able to think & decide faster, initiate the request quickly and accurately using self-service option. For the care agents the approval points should be reduced, and this is possible by granting the authority and ability to integrate the verification of policy, business rules and credit details. â€‹

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02

Intelligent Augmentation

Providing systems that augment human capabilities instead of limiting them would free cognitive capital to reach better decisions, ultimately providing clients with greater value. This would shorten the timeline, avoid the manual intervention and remove dependency from different teams to take the timely actions on a request.​

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03

Enhanced Customer 

Communication

Getting the real time updates and ability to track the statuses builds trust & reliability for the customers.

Communication strategy should include apt and clear messaging to anticipate customer needs, expectations and necessary steps for help and support.

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Co-creation Workshop

The Design team  conducted multiple co-creation workshops to collaborate with the product managers, developers and sales executives to guide the the design process. Participants with different roles aligned and offered diverse insights. This helped the design team get a more holistic view of what the product/service should include.

Future Direction

A new global framework was designed, which would migrate existing process types into new greenfield, standardised process types of Credit, Return and Exchange.

Service Blueprints

Service blueprint of the new system helped developers visualize the relationships between different applications that are directly tied to touchpoints according to new user flow.

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Rapid Prototyping

Rapid prototyping was used as a quick and cost-effective way to build and test a working version of our product. These prototypes were shared with users/developers to gather feedback and understand the feasibility of the design. Prototyping helped us design better products faster.

Mockups

Usability testing of the mockups helped us catch problems or pain points  before the development stage and make changes to enhance the user experience.

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Outcome

Streamliner will improve the entire performance of the systems involved in the CRE process and lead to- 

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• Reduction in customer calls – less no. of tickets Rand empower the customer with self service

• Reduction in processing time for credit process by Rautomation

• Manual intervention is reduced – reduces number Rof people involved in creation and approval of a Rrequest  saves the care agent’s and customers Rtime and effort.

• Increase in customer satisfaction

Case creation > Credit request processing > Payment processing

= 135.5 hours

Case creation > Automated approval/rejection

= 2-3 minutes

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Case creation > Automated approval/rejection > Payment processing

= 26.52 hours

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No of steps to create a request = 16

No of steps to create a request = 5

Streamliner POC

Current System

Business Impact

Streamlining Workflow

• Simplify customer to carrier product hand-off 

• Increase process improvement and return on investment Rthrough scale 

• Improve recovery margin for returned products 

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Time Management

• Reduce timeline of CRE processes , which helps care agents to Rfocus on high priority work items.

• Reduce uncertainty of credit timelines

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Improving Customer Experience

• Simplifying return experience for customer delight

• Hassle free return/exchange experience

• Improving interaction between customer and care team

• Empower customers through self-service to Rreduce reliance Ron manual processes and enable them to Rtrack real time Rstatuses. This helps in gaining customer’s trust Rand goodwill.

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