UnLACED. the Returns.    

LACED’s return process was manual, slow, and invisible to everyone involved. The impact was simple: customers stopped trusting the platform, and the business was losing money on every return.

DISCOVERY

I mapped the full process across three groups: the customer, the CX agent, and the authenticator. All three were frustrated. None of them had visibility into what the others were doing. From the research, I identified 17 return reasons — the most common triggers for a customer to initiate a return. Those were crossed with 9 authentication criteria to determine when a refund should be granted or denied. That logic had never been written down in one place. It became the foundation on which everything else was built.

User journey's, flows, logic mapping and return scenarios
Mapping of the original comms and timing during the return process
WHAT I DID

With the logic mapped, I designed the new internal flow. Every return followed a clear, traceable path, from CX triggering the process with the customer’s initial information, through to the authenticator giving a verdict. Refund functionality was available on every eligible purchase within the 14-day SLA window. Manual steps became automatic where possible. Every stage was visible to the people who needed to act on it. The goal was full self-service: customers triggering their own return from their profile without needing to contact CX at all. But we hit a problem. The back-end was mid-migration, and we weren’t confident the system could handle the additional load. So we split it into two phases. Phase one was internal: customers still contacted CX by email, but everything behind that was now structured and traceable. Phase two, customer-triggered returns, would launch once the system proved stable.

To start rebuilding customer trust in the meantime, I redesigned the communication layer. Previously, it was either silent or a templated rejection with no explanation. Customers now have confirmation their return was received, updates while the item was being assessed, and a specific reason if their refund was denied.

It wasn’t the full solution from day one, but it was a deliberate compromise between what users needed, what the business wanted, and what the system could handle at that moment.

LACED-Returns – Admin – wires
LACED-Returns – Admin – HiFi-States
OUTCOME
Emails asking why a return was denied dropped by 85%. CX tickets fell by 35%. Post-return retention improved by 15%. Where Is My Order tickets dropped by 75% just from making the order status visible. Full self-service, the original long-term goal, became on phase 2.

85%

DROP in “Why denied?” emails

35%

FEWER returns-related CX tickets

15%

Retention post-return

There are three mobile screens with the main steps to setting a Refund on the admin side. First, you can click the button to start the process. Second, fill in the details, and finally, fill out the summary.
Desktop view of the Admin account with the refund form to open a refund.
Refund emails series and timing. Timeline from Day 0 to the final resolution with the refund.

Company

LACED.

Year

2022-23

Design Tools

Figma and Overflow

Uncover more of my work

  • Savio app. My first first ever mobile app
  • Created the brand, avatars, world and UI for this Mobile Mini-Game prototype.
  • Redesigning Samsung's seller app(web and native) to turn training into a game, one bite-sized win at a time.
  • Receive, process, authenticate, classify, store, inventory, and resell processes are synchronised with the rest of the system.
  • LACED's warehouse ran on paper manifests and guesswork. Authenticators spent hours searching for boxes in unmarked piles. A QR-coded shelf system and redesigned mobile and desktop interface cut pick-up time by 37% and hit 100% accuracy post-launch.
  • Redesigning Samsung's seller app(web and native) to turn training into a game, one bite-sized win at a time.
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