service and product designer
service and product designer
Carrier rate card management at Wayfair
The business struggled with highly inaccurate shipping cost estimates, impacting vital calculations. Existing carrier (DHL, FedEx et al.) rate card maintenance was error-prone and inefficient, leading to multiple handovers / I developed a rate card management service, empowering operations to manage carrier rate data seamlessly, reducing errors and enhancing efficiency. This contributed to an approximate 85% reduction in inaccurate shipping cost estimates.
Actions performed
user research, service blueprinting, user testing, prototyping
My role
design lead
After reviewing all contracts, we identified a standard rate structure comprising base rate, accessorials, and fuel surcharges. Utilising the simplest UK contract as a reference point, we identified necessary features for supporting various charge types. To input rates into the system, users received rates from carriers, converted them into a standard template, created Jira tickets for engineering implementation, awaited implementation and testing, and verified functionality through spot-checking invoices.
Overall, the current service was costly in terms of time, error-prone, involved multiple actors, and offered users no visibility into what existed in the system. We identified opportunities for users to take full control of rate data end-to-end, including managing issues.
As a kick off with stakeholders and to understand the processes we held a kick off session where we mapped out the lifecycle of a rate card.
One of the main challenges stakeholders faced was the time and resources needed to standardise rates query them during analysis.
We were able to build a value proposition canvas using the data from user interviews, field study and the kick off session.
In addition to the rate card management system it became clear we would also need to provide a testing service that would help users feel confident in the rate card configuration and easily lookup a rate if needed.
In co-design sessions, we sketched out rate cards with users before moving on to replicating the various ideas in Google Docs and applying actual rate data. Users and stakeholders were invited to review the prototypes and offer guidance. This provided us with a solid foundation to build higher-definition prototypes and improved the team's understanding of the rate data.
High-fidelity prototypes/wireframes were developed based on the insights gained from the co-creation exercise. Users would access the service through the Carrier Platform menu, where they could view and access existing rate cards on the service homepage. If a rate card didn't exist, they could create a new one.
The rate card itself consisted of high-level information displayed initially, which remained consistent across versions. Everything below the "Rates" and "Settings" tabs was version-dependent. Users could switch between versions if needed for audit or rollback purposes.
The prototype was tested in a series of unmoderated usability tests.
The average time to amend a base rate was 1.12 minutes
The average time to add an accessorial was 1.50 minutes
The time to manually update the fuel surcharge was 15 seconds
Overall satisfaction was 80.25%
With the successful results from user testing, we commenced development. The project was divided into phases, with UK carriers being the initial focus, followed by Germany and then North America. With each phase, we had to incorporate features to accommodate the different carriers.
In addition to the tool release, we launched a support channel on Slack, a help section in Confluence (accompanied by video tutorials), and developed a training package with senior carrier managers to provide to new users.
Upon the initial release, we began tracking satisfaction and data confidence through a monthly survey, consistently receiving high ratings of around 5 out of 5 for both aspects. Users also provided valuable qualitative feedback in the survey, which we utilised to enhance the service.