Bread Product Disputes

Improving self-serve capability and reducing customer support call times by allowing customers to submit product disputes on Bread’s Member Portal.

What is Bread and what did I do there?

Bread is a technology-driven payments company transforming the way consumers shop and manage their finances with our buy now pay later and personal loan products. As the sole designer on the member experience team, I lead design for the Member Portal, where our customers go to make their payments, and the Servicing Portal, which our customer support team uses to help service our customers when they call for assistance with their loans.

When I joined Bread, I inherited the basic member portal but over the course of my time there, added multiple key features to it. One of the main goals of the member portal is to help reduce customer support call volume by allowing for more self service functionality. One of the features that we added is submitting a product dispute, which is currently one of the top customer support call drivers.

The Problem

Due to continuously increasing loan volume, our customer support team is becoming overwhelmed with calls. Product Disputes is one of the main call drivers.

Prior to developing this feature, customers would have to call Bread’s customer support for help if they had an issue with their order. This greatly increased customer support call times, which in turn costs Bread more money.

The Goal

By creating the ability to dispute an order or product issue directly on Bread’s member portal, we will reduce customer support call volume and time by allowing the customer to submit the dispute into a queue where a designated customer support representative can review it.

The main goal of this project is to:

Allow customers to easily submit a product dispute directly on the member portal.
Create a dispute queue on the servicing portal for easy review of submitted disputes.

Our main priorities were to make sure this feature was discoverable, easy to use and easy to track post submission.

The Team

I was the sole product designer on this team and owned the entire process from end to end. The member experience squad consisted of one director of product, 2 product managers, 1 engineering manager, and 5 front end engineers.

Tools:

Figma
Usertesting.com

Duration:

This project is ongoing. I finalized the customer dispute flow and are currently working on the servicing side of the disputes.

Feature Requirements

Allow the customer to initiate a product dispute on their loan page.
Prompt the customer to confirm that they have reached out to the merchant and could not resolve the issue directly with the merchant.
Prompt the customer to select a reason for their dispute from a list that was provided.
Prompt the customer to upload evidence supporting their dispute. JPG, PNG, or PDF files can be uploaded. Providing evidence is required to help the Customer Support team resolve the dispute.
Inform the customer of the dispute process and timeline within the flow.

Competitive Analysis

Before I jumped into designing the screens, I did a quick competitive analysis of our biggest competitors (Affirm, AfterPay, and Klarna) to see how they handle product disputes. I conducted this competitive analysis on mobile web since that’s how we would be designing disputes in the Bread platform.

Some key learnings from the competitive analysis were:

Affirm handles product disputes directly, but AfterPay and Klarna require the customer to solve any purchase or order issues directly with the merchant. Bread plans to handle the product disputes directly.
All companies require the customer to reach out to the merchant initially to try to resolve the dispute first.
Affirm, AfterPay, and Klarna all offer a chat feature for their customers. This is a feature that could further reduce customer support call times and due to this finding, it has been added to our 2022 roadmap.

Preliminary User Flow

I started with a preliminary user flow to make sure the process was smooth and to account for all of the steps required for a product dispute.

Designs V1

Because we were working with a tight timeline, I had to jump into high fidelity wireframes right away. First, I had to decide where this feature should live. Since this isn’t a very common feature, I decided to put it into the hamburger menu instead of on the loan screen.

If you would like to click around, you can access the Figma prototype here.

Key Design Decisions

Usability Testing

I ran usability tests through usertesting.com with 15 participants. Some of the questions I wanted to answer through the usability testing were:

Is the product dispute feature discoverable?
Do users find anything about the flow confusing?
Does the language around dispute reasons make sense to the user?
Do users understand the specific evidence that is required along with their dispute?
What are the expectations for time to resolution?

Test Case

Imagine you have placed an order for a laptop and a mouse from Falska using Bread - a buy now, pay later payment plan. When your order arrived, the mouse was defective and wouldn't work. You called Falska about 3 days ago for help with your defective item, but you haven’t heard back yet.

Tasks:

TASK 1 - (without clicking) Is there anything confusing on this screen?
TASK 2 - (without clicking) Please both talk out loud and describe in writing how you would get help with your defective item from here. Please walk us through verbally, step by step.
TASK 3 - You may now click to show what you would do to resolve your issue -[recap of scenario depending on which test case]. Please remember to talk out loud and note if anything is confusing or surprising. Click "Next" when you feel you have completed this task.
TASK 4 - Overall, this task was...? [7-point Rating Scale: Very difficult to Very easy]
TASK 5 - Was anything confusing or surprising? Please describe in detail.

Key Results and Recommendations

9/15 users expected the product dispute feature to be in their order details instead of in the hamburger menu/navigation.

Recommendation - Place the product dispute option in the order details drawer, but keep it in the hamburger menu/navigation as well for maximum discoverability.

85% of users rated this experience as easy or very easy

Although discoverability of the purchase dispute feature was low, once users found the feature, most found the process to be easy.

8/15 users were confused when selecting a reason for their product dispute. They didn’t understand the drawer feature and kept trying to select one of the top three even when it wasn’t the right dispute reason.

We need to explore different language for the dispute reasons to make them more identifiable and user friendly. Also, instead of hiding less common dispute reasons in the drawer, we should list them from most common to least common.

100% of users were shocked that it would take up to 90 days to resolve a dispute. Some wondered if they would still have to make their payments during that time period.

Based on other companies that have this flow, 90 days is an abnormally long time to resolve a dispute. Some users even said they would not use our product again if this were the case and expected a resolution within a week. After speaking to my PM and the customer support team leads, we were able to reduce it to 30 days and added messaging that the user doesn't have to continue making payments until their dispute is resolved.

Final Flow

Final Designs

I iterated on the designs based on the feedback from the usability testing. Aside from the changes and additions shown above, I added a few more features such as an introductory screen, the ability to put in phone call details, and the ability to dispute a partial order to help both our customers and our customer support team.

If you would like to click around on your own time, you can access the Figma prototype here.

Next Steps

This flow has been finalized and is set to go into development in Q1 of 2022. Currently, I am working with the customer support team to create the product dispute queue on Bread’s Servicing Portal.

When a customer submits a product dispute on the member portal, that dispute will go straight to the queue where a customer support agent can review it and process it.

Bread Product Disputes

Bread Product Disputes

Improving self-serve capability and reducing customer support call times by allowing customers to submit product disputes on Bread’s Member Portal.

What is Bread and what did I do there?

The Problem

Due to continuously increasing loan volume, our customer support team is becoming overwhelmed with calls. Product Disputes is one of the main call drivers.

Prior to developing this feature, customers would have to call Bread’s customer support for help if they had an issue with their order. This greatly increased customer support call times, which in turn costs Bread more money.

The Goal

By creating the ability to dispute an order or product issue directly on Bread’s member portal, we will reduce customer support call volume and time by allowing the customer to submit the dispute into a queue where a designated customer support representative can review it.

The main goal of this project is to:

Allow customers to easily submit a product dispute directly on the member portal.

Create a dispute queue on the servicing portal for easy review of submitted disputes.

Our main priorities were to make sure this feature was discoverable, easy to use and easy to track post submission.

The Team

I was the sole product designer on this team and owned the entire process from end to end. The member experience squad consisted of one director of product, 2 product managers, 1 engineering manager, and 5 front end engineers.

Tools:

Figma

Usertesting.com

Duration:

This project is ongoing. I finalized the customer dispute flow and are currently working on the servicing side of the disputes.

Feature Requirements

Allow the customer to initiate a product dispute on their loan page.

Prompt the customer to confirm that they have reached out to the merchant and could not resolve the issue directly with the merchant.

Prompt the customer to select a reason for their dispute from a list that was provided.

Prompt the customer to upload evidence supporting their dispute. JPG, PNG, or PDF files can be uploaded. Providing evidence is required to help the Customer Support team resolve the dispute.

Inform the customer of the dispute process and timeline within the flow.

Competitive Analysis

Some key learnings from the competitive analysis were:

Affirm handles product disputes directly, but AfterPay and Klarna require the customer to solve any purchase or order issues directly with the merchant. Bread plans to handle the product disputes directly.

All companies require the customer to reach out to the merchant initially to try to resolve the dispute first.

Affirm, AfterPay, and Klarna all offer a chat feature for their customers. This is a feature that could further reduce customer support call times and due to this finding, it has been added to our 2022 roadmap.

Preliminary User Flow

I started with a preliminary user flow to make sure the process was smooth and to account for all of the steps required for a product dispute.

Designs V1

Because we were working with a tight timeline, I had to jump into high fidelity wireframes right away. First, I had to decide where this feature should live. Since this isn’t a very common feature, I decided to put it into the hamburger menu instead of on the loan screen.

If you would like to click around, you can access the Figma prototype here.

Key Design Decisions

Usability Testing

I ran usability tests through usertesting.com with 15 participants. Some of the questions I wanted to answer through the usability testing were:

Is the product dispute feature discoverable?

Do users find anything about the flow confusing?

Does the language around dispute reasons make sense to the user?

Do users understand the specific evidence that is required along with their dispute?

What are the expectations for time to resolution?

Test Case

Imagine you have placed an order for a laptop and a mouse from Falska using Bread - a buy now, pay later payment plan. When your order arrived, the mouse was defective and wouldn't work. You called Falska about 3 days ago for help with your defective item, but you haven’t heard back yet.

Tasks:

TASK 1 - (without clicking) Is there anything confusing on this screen?

TASK 2 - (without clicking) Please both talk out loud and describe in writing how you would get help with your defective item from here. Please walk us through verbally, step by step.

TASK 3 - You may now click to show what you would do to resolve your issue -[recap of scenario depending on which test case]. Please remember to talk out loud and note if anything is confusing or surprising. Click "Next" when you feel you have completed this task.

TASK 4 - Overall, this task was...? [7-point Rating Scale: Very difficult to Very easy]

TASK 5 - Was anything confusing or surprising? Please describe in detail.

Key Results and Recommendations

9/15 users expected the product dispute feature to be in their order details instead of in the hamburger menu/navigation.

Recommendation - Place the product dispute option in the order details drawer, but keep it in the hamburger menu/navigation as well for maximum discoverability.

85% of users rated this experience as easy or very easy

Although discoverability of the purchase dispute feature was low, once users found the feature, most found the process to be easy.

8/15 users were confused when selecting a reason for their product dispute. They didn’t understand the drawer feature and kept trying to select one of the top three even when it wasn’t the right dispute reason.

We need to explore different language for the dispute reasons to make them more identifiable and user friendly. Also, instead of hiding less common dispute reasons in the drawer, we should list them from most common to least common.

100% of users were shocked that it would take up to 90 days to resolve a dispute. Some wondered if they would still have to make their payments during that time period.

Final Flow

Final Designs

If you would like to click around on your own time, you can access the Figma prototype here.

Next Steps

This flow has been finalized and is set to go into development in Q1 of 2022. Currently, I am working with the customer support team to create the product dispute queue on Bread’s Servicing Portal.

When a customer submits a product dispute on the member portal, that dispute will go straight to the queue where a customer support agent can review it and process it.