Return decision time
3 days to same day
Work Illustrative engagement · Commerce intelligence
Returns that resolve themselves. Almost.
- Client (illustrative)
- A multi-brand home & living retailer · 120 stores and online · Türkiye
- Scope
- Discovery Sprint Pilot to Production · 10 weeks · Team of four
01 Key results
Key results
Illustrative pilot targets
Cases needing full manual review
100% to about 35%
Policy consistency across channels
Measured weekly
02 The situation
The situation
Returns arrived through stores, the website, marketplaces and the contact center — each with its own form and its own rules. A small team reviewed every case by hand: reading the customer’s message, checking the order, looking at photos, and applying a policy that had grown to forty pages. Decisions took days, and the same case could get different answers in different channels.
03 The question
Could a system prepare each return decision — with the evidence attached — so the team only had to confirm, adjust or escalate?
04 What we built
Evidence first, then a person decides.
- A
A triage assistant that reads the request, pulls order and product data, and checks photos against the product record.
- B
A policy engine that cites the exact paragraph behind every recommendation.
- C
A review screen where the team confirms, edits or escalates in one click.
- D
Weekly quality reports comparing recommendations with final decisions.
- 01Order & product data read-only
- 02Photo check
- 03Policy retrieval with citations
- 04Recommendation + confidence
- 05Human review
- 06Decision logged
05 How we worked
Ten weeks, as a stream.
The band widens where the work was most intense and settles as ownership moves to the team.
- Weeks 1–2
Align & validate
Walked the returns process in two stores and the contact center. Built an evaluation set from 400 past cases. Agreed acceptance criteria.
- Weeks 3–6
Build
Weekly demos with the returns team. Integrated order data and the policy library. Designed the review screen with the people who’d use it.
- Weeks 7–8
Pilot
Ran alongside the existing process on live cases and compared decisions daily.
- Weeks 9–10
Embed
Trained the team, wrote the runbook, set up monitoring and a monthly review.
06 What changed
Evidence attached. Judgment where it counts.
- Most standard cases now arrive with a recommended decision, the evidence and the policy paragraph behind it.
- The team spends its time on unusual cases: damaged goods, repeat returns and high-value items.
- Customers get an answer the same day in most channels.
- Store managers see the same policy applied everywhere.
07 Guardrails in this project
Guardrails in this project
- Refunds above a threshold always need a person.
- The system never contacts customers directly.
- Photos are processed in-region and deleted after the decision.
- Every recommendation shows its sources.
08 What’s next
Extending the same approach to warranty claims and marketplace disputes.