Case study: Fashion retail #processfail – what happened (B2C)?

It’s a great time being a customer.

We’re living in a great world. At the touch of a few fingertips, we can order stuff that is delivered to us at home within just a few days. Very convenient for us as consumers. But:

• What if this convenience fails?
• Do we (as customers) still stay loyal to retailers who make it that easy to shop for stuff?

A recent case study of what happened to one of my friends.

Situation.

The case study is about a big online #retailer for fashion, a known brand.

The organization has transformed its business model in the past years from

1. selling fashion directly to consumers to
2. being a platform provider having shops selling to consumers through their platform.

The initial situation from a customer perspective:

• A customer (a friend of mine) of the retail store ordered fashion items recently with a bigger order value.
• Not all order items were intended to be purchased, parts of the order were supposed to be returned later again.
• The customer chose the payment method – on the account. Very convenient for the customer. Because from the very beginning, it was never intended to keep everything but to select the nicest stuff out of the order.

Now the cliffhanger – not everything went smoothly.

What happened next?

• The order was delivered, and everything was fine. The order had been delivered in partial shipments, depending on the vendor/shop that sold the order items in the retail platform.
• Returned items were sent back by the customer.
• The customer received the first reminder for payment, but the customer ignored it because the fashion retailer app stated that the customer account was in balance (“no debt”).
• The customer received a second reminder for payment with debt collection measures being in place.
• The customer then tried to get in contact with the fashion retailer and answered the emails which were sent.
• Reaction: Emails cannot be answered– error message received by the customer due to the attempt to send a response to a mail account that is not supposed to be a recipient of emails (donotreply@....).
• Then, the customer started to find a way to contact the retailer. Finally found a contact form on an imprint page on the web page.
• The customer then got a reply from support and was asked to state formally in a letter template that the items have been returned. In this email, the customer was asked to send the letter back by email as a scan.
• The customer filled the letter template out, sent it to the email address, and received an answer: Emails cannot be answered (donotreply@....) – error message. The customer wonders what is going on here.
• The customer wrote a second email – now it was received by the retailer, but the PDF had not been accepted due to missing data.
• (Btw. the convenient customer app still shows the account to be in balance).
• The customer gave it a second try, now the letter is being accepted and processed and the payment reminder was stopped – apparently.
• Then, the customer received a collection letter. This scared the customers.
• …

The case is still ongoing.

Well, what has happened here?

For me, the case does not sound weird – I could imagine that this is happening all the time. I am not an expert in complaints management processes, but it is obvious that this process has had some flaws. And the effects of these flaws are:

1. The customer had a bad customer experience with annoying parts and a lot of time spent working around the problem.
2. The retailer/platform provider had some efforts spent in processing the case, potentially faced negative impacts on their key performance indicators (adherence to payment terms, net promoter score (NPS), churn rate, etc), and potentially invested into waste (especially in debt collecting).

It’s unclear what caused the problem.

• Has the returned item been lost during shipment?
• Has the returned item never been sent back? (I do trust my friend that this wasn’t the case)
• Has the returned item been booked the wrong way?

We don’t know.

However, this case may have had a big impact. Will the customer ever order something from this retail platform again? This probably depends on the number of viable alternatives for the customer and the perceived negativity of the case above. I can tell you the customer was upset about this.

What could have been done better?

(1) Scoping the problem

First, the process could have been designed in a more customer-friendly manner. Internal processes of the retailer had a direct interface with the customer – in the world of Customer Experience Management (#CXM ), this is called a touchpoint. And in combination, a so-called moment of truth happened here – the customer realizes the mess of how an organization treats you as a customer once things are not working fine. We could ask:

• Is the process running smoothly enough?
• What is the assumption for designing and executing the process (here – issue caused by customer or issue caused by us/retailer or simply “unclear”)?
• What do we derive from this assumption for our process design?
• What is the tone of voice in customer communication?
• How do customers perceive the process?
• Will they still stay customers despite having had a problem?
• What could make them stay?
• ...

(2) Brainstorming on some first ideas

(2.1) Description to understand the situation and scope of the problem

Even in less complex scenarios and without complex information systems I sometimes sketch the situation to create an overview of what I expect to happen. To understand and analyze the process, a visual documentation/description of the processes and customer journeys could have helped also in this scenario to build a stable baseline for people involved in designing, implementing, and controlling the process and the KPIs affected by the process.?

This documentation could look like this:

• ?A higher-level value-added chain diagram that contextualizes the Complaints handling in the domain of Customer care.

• An Enterprise BPMN diagram to refine our Complaints handling that describes the situation above in detail - obviously lacking a feedback loop between the complaints management and debt collection process. Causing waste - unnecessary investments, process execution time, and customer satisfaction issues).

• A customer journey map that joins the outside-in and inside-out perspectives through customer journey steps, mapping to internal processes, and touchpoints that relate customer journey steps to processes and more.

(2.2) A stress test for the process

The process could have had next a process stress test in which obvious flaws could have been detected and eliminated before being put into production (e.g. the inability to answer emails, the inconsistency to ask for responses in emails in combination with the inability to answer emails, the inconsistency of the app account balance vs. actual "truth").

Many business processes and business applications supporting these processes are tested against security penetration requirements but are they also tested for customer experience reasons?

Make sure you consider the #risks in your processes! (btw. the #ARIS Enterprise BPMN diagrams allows adding risks and other objects in a simple manner).

From an ARIS perspective, the simple Steps View and the ability run a change request workflow could have helped during such a process stress test.

(2.3) Did recent changes impact the process negatively?

Changes in the process made could have been mirrored against expectations: Potential side effects of e. g. digitalization/automation activities (e. g. moving from an email-based service communication to a more structured ticketing-based approach) could have been mirrored against the process descriptions and customer journeys expected.

(2.4) Does data prove we have problems in our processes?

The performance of the process could have been analyzed with #ProcessMining and #Simulation in terms of

• Long-runner process cases/instances – what is causing long runners?
• Process complexity – what is causing the complexity (e. g. loops)?
• Cross-process analysis with a simulation of process changes – how many debt collection processes could have been prevented (money saved for the company, if a 3rd party might be involved in processing this)?

Summary.

I probably missed a lot as I am clearly no domain expert. But obviously, the process was broken and the case sounds like what might happen not only with my friend but with many other customers as well. A good process is supposed to have a great customer experience.

Don’t take a good process for granted.

With every change you make to your business, you need to ask yourself – how does it affect your internal or external customers and suppliers?

With a transformation suite like #ARIS , you gain transparency to map processes and customer journeys and get the necessary means to analyze weak points and ideate and act on improvement proposals.

And transformation for the better is something that is supposed to be happening all the time. I am confident that the fashion retail company is also following a Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) approach but it’s even better if a bad process doesn’t materialize at all. We help you with our #ARIS transformation suite to make sure that your process shines. In every light.

About the author:

Dominik Vanderhaeghen is Vice President at Software AG and Head of ARIS Product Management. He follows a big passion for driving the success of companies and organizations from business needs to IT solutions.

Further links:

• https://www.aris.com/
• Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Past articles:

February 2023

• #ARIS release – a recap of October 2022 (ARIS 10.0 SR20)

January 2023

• Corporate success - by accident or chance? | LinkedIn
• “Don’t talk product, talk value.” – “Are you serious?”