Empowering Users Through Self-Service: An Automation Revolution
Company: Farfetch, Global Luxury Platform
Role: Senior Director, Service Design
Focus: UX Design, Self-Service Strategy, UX Research, Customer Journey Management, Digital Transformation
Customer: B2C, B2B, Enterprise
Industry: Tech/ eCommerce Platform/ Digital Marketplace
Determining the whens and hows of self-service experiences is deceptively simple. Customers expect experiences that seamlessly follow them wherever they go, but not all moments in the journey are created equal - not for the customer and not for the business. While some touch points are best automated, others benefit from human connection. Some moments need to be effortless and others pose opportunities to connect, wow and amaze.
Knowing which interactions hold which opportunities is critical to building designing omni-channel experiences that allow your service teams to shine and build long relationships with your customers. What is the key? Strategic, targeted, friction.
Customer Self-Service at Farfetch
Business Challenge:
Anyone who has worked in retail knows that Q4 means peak season. In an online marketplace, it means all systems are at risk of becoming overloaded, supply chain, delivery logistics, tech systems - Customer Support is no exception. There are many reasons why a customer’s journey may not go as planned. Many of them require simple fixes, a wrong size ordered, a wrong address entered. Customers expect that these simple fixes will require simple transactions. Unfortunately back in 2018, there were no simple fixes at Farfetch. Every issue required a human intervention and in peak season, that had catastrophic impacts to the customer experience.
Research:
Our existing data at the time was purely based on volumes of contacts from the workforce management team. While volumes were an important indicator where in the journey customers were in need of service, it didn’t offer enough information on where to take action in providing self-service opportunities in the on-site shopping journey. We took the research a step further to look into the root causes behind each contact center category, then reviewed the content of those interactions to evaluate the sentiment of those communications. That told us which customer contact reasons were causing unnecessary, frustrating friction from a customer POV.
Prioritization & Planning:
Self-Service Program
The Voice of the Customer & UX Research research gave us a solid starting point to identify the best journey for self-service. Cross-referencing our root cause and Net Emotional Value data, we identified the most appropriate journey moments and build a strategic plan for building and implementing the changes.
Working in step with Product Management & Engineering, we sized the work and built a roadmap of priorities, ranked by customer impact. Considering the back-end systems had not been originally designed for self-service and most of the initiatives also impacted supply chain logistics, none of the solutions were simple. This high effort meant business cases needed to exhibit clear impact and financial value to support negotiations for roadmap trade-offs.
Designing Feature One:
Order Cancellation
Order Cancellation made the top of the list as a prime candidate for self-service. Volumes were high and anxiety was low. The UX research indicated a clear expectation and drive to cancel orders when needed. We set to work on the design of the feature.
“It’s not possible to cancel on the website, but I guarantee it’s possible if I call the company. The customer is always right! If they don’t help, I’ll just charge it back and never shop with you again.”
Consistency Challenge:
The first hurdle we ran into was consistency. Without a way to consistently deliver the feature, we could not proceed. That meant that the rules of the feature needed to align with what backend logistics teams and systems could perform - and since the majority were run by partners, that meant aligning 1200 businesses to new fulfillment process criteria.
Global merchant partners to align around order cancellation processing.
Success rate target for cancellation processing across merchants.
Outcome:
We set our target at 80%. Anything less was a no-go due to negative impacts to the customer experience. After testing several models and consulting with partners to help them overcome their constraints. After running several models and scenarios, we hit the goal. We set new operational criteria, updated the partner contracts, and forged ahead.
Testing Feature One:
Order Cancellation
Challenge:
As soon as we had the technical and operational systems up and running, testing began. One of the biggest fears of offering self-serve cancellations to the site was a negative impact to trade. We ran early experiments across key global regions to test financial impacts and observe customer behaviors. It was critical to monitor metrics across both Product and Operations to understand the total impact
Outcomes:
In a 3 month A/B test, we observed that the total rate of cancelled orders remained stable, the organic adoption of the button was trending at ~70% and the cost-savings to Customer Service were significant.
With a green light from our trade committee and a little patience waiting for a window between Q4 development freezes, we launched on web just in time for peak season 2019.
“I assume it’s because Farfetch is trying to be extremely responsive to the customer, getting the orders out as quickly as possible. I think it’s a very reasonable policy. Some places don’t let you cancel at all. It’s a perk! Unexpected perk!”
Feature results:
Testing showed a stable cancellation rate, with no negative consequence to conversion or GMV.
of customers repurchased at an equal or greater order value after cancellation.
Organic customer adoption of the new feature in the first 3 months.
Reduction in Contacts per Order in the cancellation-by-customer category.
Select Program Results:
The Cancellation feature set the pace for the remainder of the self-service program, with 14 initiatives launched across 12 markets, positively impacting sales and operational cost-savings metrics, for example, cost to serve, returns logistics, etc. Product feature adoption metrics remained high, contributing to improved customer sentiment overall as speed and ease improved with customer autonomy.
Customer adoption on average across all self-service features launched across global markets.
of transactional contacts avoided across all managed customer service channels.
Increase in sales through Customer Service channels with new focus on high-value interactions.
in operational cost savings per year with total program benefit realization.
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