John Lewis

Developing a new Technology Trade-in service.

Task

Within six months to have designed, validated, and implemented a new online and in-store Trade-in customer experience; coinciding with the launch of the iPhone 15 in September 2023.

Hypothesis

By addressing the key pain points of the existing service we can provide incremental revenue gains, improved customer sentiment/perception and improved sustainability metrics.

Contribution

Senior Experience Designer; developing the service blueprint for the digital and in-person proposition, designing and testing wireframe flows, and finessing final designs.

AS-IS

The existing Trade-in journey was overly complex, not well integrated and hard to find within the buying process. This meant that there was high abandonment rates and low customer satisfaction scores.

Customer Pain Points

To-Be

  • The service was hosted on an unbranded external webpage, in which 95% of customers bounced as they arrived.

  • The customer journey was complicated, requiring tasks to be completed on two different websites for buying and selling.

  • As an affordability initiative it had little relevance, as customers couldn’t see nor use the value of their old device to reduce the price of a new product.

  • Our re-quote and return rate was high, suggesting that the device grading questions were ambiguous or there was a lack of flexibility with our current vendor.

  • We offered less value for graded devices compared to our competitors.

  • The service was online-only, despite 40% of John Lewis trade coming from in-store sales.

  • The service was buried in the promotions section on product pages, when competitors typically featured trade-in options more prominently within the shopping journey.

(The existing John Lewis Trade-in service was operated by a vendor named SquareOne ) When we set out to implement a new trade-in service, our first step was to identify and analyse the customer pain points of the existing proposition. This was in order to set requirements for selecting a new vendor and to identify opportunities to enhance the customer experience. We used AS-IS Experience Mapping, Adobe analysis, and competitor benchmarking to identify these issues.

Likewize was also the only vendor to assess devices automatically, using robots!

Vendor selection

One of the first tasks of the project was to onboard a new third-party vendor. By utilising the pain points identified from the previous trade-in service, we created a requirements list to evaluate potential providers. After interviewing nine candidates, our selection was Likewize. They were chosen for their robust API, which enables various functional capabilities for building an integrated trade-in solution (for example device serial number and IMEI searches). In addition they had high Net Promotor scores, honouring 98% of customer valuations and providing payment within 4 days of device grading (ten days faster than SquareOne our current provider). Other benefits included improved shipping options, such as the auto generation of prepaid labels and packaging, and the ability to support native in-store platforms.

Analysis

While selecting the new vendor, we began the design development phase with a To-Be experience mapping session. Over three days, I led a workshop to visualise the future digital journey. This helped the team align on the ideal customer experience, identify technical limitations, and plan the next steps for each stakeholder. Involving the development team allowed us to map features of the Likewize API, enabling us to quickly assess technical feasibility and make adjustments where required.

Customer Flow

I created a flow diagram to detail how customers would navigate through the new Trade-in journey. From completing this we learned that it would be inappropriate to surface trade in on Product Listing Pages as there was a disconnect with the new item they were purchasing.

The customer journey has four stages:

  1. Find Device – The customer searches for their device model or serial number.

  2. Grading – A series of questions are asked to assess the device's condition.

  3. Valuation – Based on the information, a price is shown for the customer to accept.

  4. Checkout – The customer completes the trade-in and order, filling out any required details.

Summary

The new Trade-in service, launched in June 2023, has resulted in three times as many customers completing trade-ins compared to the previous process, with 98% of all customer quotes being honoured.