Overview
A Global Post-Sales Framework
Streamliner is Dell’s global framework for managing three types of post-sales requests: Credit, Return, and Exchange.
• Credit — resolving a customer’s billing issue and issuing a credit.
• Return — handling the return of a product and processing the resulting refund.
• Exchange — handling a faulty product and coordinating its replacement.
These requests involve multiple teams, systems, and business rules that can vary across regions. Streamliner brings these processes together into one scalable framework, creating a more consistent way to handle post-sales requests across Dell’s global operations.
Process
From Seventeen Local Processes to One Adaptive Framework
A problem at this scale needed a method we could repeat in every region and still compare across them. We ran the same five stages everywhere, and brought architects, product, engineering and sales in at the moments where their decisions mattered most.
Project Timeline
Discovery
Understanding Post-Sales Across 17 Countries
We interviewed 60+ care agents, operations teams, and business stakeholders across 17 countries and 7 regions. We studied how Credit, Return, and Exchange requests were handled, where processes differed, and which differences were driven by local policies, teams, or systems.
How We Studied the Process
To compare workflows consistently across regions, we used the same research structure in every country while allowing room for local context.
From Interviews to Comparable Evidence
Every session followed the same structure, making findings comparable across countries while still capturing regional differences.
Current State
Mapping the Existing Experience
Before designing a unified post-sales framework, we needed to understand how Credit, Return, and Exchange requests actually worked across Dell’s different markets.
We mapped the current state from three perspectives — the user experience, operational process, and service infrastructure — to uncover regional variations, dependencies, and opportunities for improvement.
Journey Maps - Understanding the experience across countries
We mapped the end-to-end Credit, Return, and Exchange journeys across countries to understand how customers and care teams experienced each request, including key touchpoints, handoffs, pain points, and local variations.
As-is customer journey: five phases from first contact to credit received, with what customers did, thought and felt, and who owned each step.
Service Blueprints - Connecting the experience to the systems behind it
We connected the frontstage experience with the backstage processes, systems, data, and business rules supporting each regional workflow. This revealed where underlying dependencies shaped the experience and limited consistency.
As-is service blueprint for return methods (USA): customer actions, front-stage and back-stage work, and the support systems behind them.
Process Maps - Understanding how the work flows across regions
We mapped the operational flow within each region, tracing how requests moved across teams, systems, and handoffs. This helped us identify shared workflows, regional differences, and operational dependencies.
As-is process map: how an online return actually moved between Dell.com, care agents, logistics and finance systems, with every manual hand-off exposed.
Stakeholder Workshops
Turning Opportunities Into Design Directions
We brought regional care teams, business stakeholders, architects, and product teams together to explore the opportunity areas. Using How Might We questions, we challenged existing workflows, explored alternative approaches, and aligned on what a scalable global framework should enable.
As-is process map: how an online return actually moved between Dell.com, care agents, logistics and finance systems, with every manual hand-off exposed.
Design Decisions
The Decisions That Shaped Streamliner
Designing Streamliner meant making a series of choices about scale, automation, the agent experience, and rollout. We weighed different approaches, made deliberate trade-offs, and used research and technical constraints to guide the decisions.
Framework
Five Modules, One CRE Lifecycle
Streamliner standardises Credit, Return, and Exchange worldwide by splitting the workflow into five core modules. Each module owns one stage of the return lifecycle and connects to Dell's enterprise systems, so regions share the same structure and only the business rules change.
Designing for Scale
A Shared Core With Local Rules
With the five-module framework established, the next challenge was making it work across different markets without creating a new process for every country. We separated the experience into two layers: a consistent Global Core and a configurable Regional Rule Layer. The Global Core remain the same everywhere, while Regional Rule Layer can adapt to local requirements.
Global Core
Create & Edit → Verify & Review → Return Method → Process & Track → Disposition & Recovery
Regional Rule Layer
Policy & eligibility · Carrier booking · Customer updates · Refund trigger · Expected timeline
Two example profiles based on regional variations identified in research. Explore each profile to see how the same core adapts to local rules and requirements.
Product Logic
Creating Business Rules for Automation
Verify & Review is the decision layer of Streamliner. I translated the business requirements into a sequence of rules that checks each request before deciding whether it can be approved automatically, rejected, or sent to an agent for review.
Five sequential checks
Eligibility — Is the request within policy?
Policy period — Does it meet the required timeframe?
Order details — Does the request match the relevant order data?
CRE history — Has a similar request already been processed?
Price match / partial refund — Does the requested adjustment meet the rules?
Future State
From Framework to System
With the five-module framework and regional rule layer defined, we translated Streamliner into a connected future-state service. The new model standardises how Credit, Return, and Exchange requests move through the experience while allowing regional rules and system dependencies to adapt locally.
What changed
One shared lifecycle for Credit, Return, and Exchange
Rules and regional variations separated from the core workflow
Automation and status updates built into the flow where applicable
Process Maps - Showing how the new workflow moves
We translated the five-module framework into an operational flow, connecting teams, decisions, and systems from request creation through resolution.
Future-state process map showing how Credit, Return, and Exchange requests move across the Streamliner lifecycle and supporting systems. This became the final reference diagram for engineering.
Service Blueprints - Connecting the new experience to the systems behind it
We mapped the backstage processes, applications, integrations, and support activities required to deliver the redesigned experience.
Future-state service blueprint connecting customer and agent interactions to the systems, teams, and processes behind them.
Impact
Pilot Results From ANZ Region
We tested the Streamliner framework through a proof of concept in the ANZ region (Australia and New Zealand), using 11 credit requests to compare the new workflow with the existing process. The pilot showed measurable improvements in both processing time and the number of steps required to create a request.
Reflection
What This Project Taught Me
Designing Streamliner changed how I approach complex products and services, especially when one experience needs to work across different contexts.
01 · Scalability Requires Controlled Flexibility
A global solution does not mean making everything identical. The core experience can stay consistent, but the system needs room for local rules, edge cases, and new markets to evolve without redesigning the whole experience.
02 · The Hard Part of Automation Is Knowing When to Stop
Automation is not just about deciding what to automate. It is also about designing the boundary between automation and human judgement. Designing that boundary meant accounting for ambiguity, regional variation, and cases the rules could not resolve confidently.
03 · Design the System, Not Just the Screen
Mapping journeys, processes, and backstage systems changed how I approached the UI. The interface is only one part of the experience; the real design challenge is making the people, rules, systems, and handoffs work together.
