Order Substitution Experience

Transform the substitution communications into a delightful experience with customer choices

@ Walmart - Online grocery

"When changes happen, speak honestly and be helpful"

Because of the nature of the fresh & produce products, out of stocks and product replacements are inherent challenges to all online grocery retailers & service providers. While building a more flexible supply chain, being honest and transparent about the orders being changed or delayed is the goal we try to achieve on customer experience level.

My contribution

• Conducted interview and collaborative research sessions
• Create E2E customer journey map & identify opportunity area to improve
• Created and deliver feature updates & testing

When substitution happens?

Shopping with online grocery shop platform, in case the items you ordered is out of stock, if you allow for substitutions, you will receive a replacement that is similar, larger or better brand or quality.

Research

To understand customer’s mental modal and pain points during building basket,  we studied customer’s behavior through in-depth interviews, concept walkthroughs and timeline collaborative activities.

Scenario walkthrough with sketches
Build the ideal user flow during research
Quantitive research to understand preference
Basket building & order updates tracking

Customer Journey Map

Translate insights into feature design

Ideate & recommendations

After identifying all the touch points and key opportunity areas, we decided to implements all the design concepts progressively through 3 key evolutions. While still keep a holistic view of the entire substitution experience & user flow in mind, prioritize different design concepts helped the entire product team to ship, test and iterate better.

Execute out the design

Scoping and Iterative process

Wireframe out the key touch point & interaction flow
IA updates to the current app system

Design Solution & Highlights

1. Education & guide customers about the substitution process
We send out order or item updates along the shopping journey. Customer will be able to know about their basket changes as soon as the picking process being finished.
2. Allow customers to accept /reject substitution
Giving customer controls is one of the key learning from research. So we provide the solution to allow customers to view and edit their substitution selection. The option will be provided at item level at the order detail page. And customer will be able to take actions anytime prior to receiving their groceries.

Results & Impact

The design changes has been tested in 25% of the Walmart store inventories and the overall customer acceptance rate of substitutions has increased by 10%.

Learning

From talking to customers and designing substitution flow, the biggest theme across is "giving customers the control". The balance between "giving users control" and "shaping their behavior with design" is a key challenge during the process. Meanwhile, more flexibility and options on customer side will ends up with more difficulty and effort on associate's side of world. Currently, we're able to provide customer some limited options of substitution, but moving forward, we're always aiming for more flexibility across the whole shopping journey.

Tools i've used in this project

Team highlights

• Conduct 2 cross-functional workshops    with business and product teams
• 2-weeks sprint work session
• Self-conduct & Self-analyzed
  research process

Next project

In-store shopping platforms
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