Wayfair's Report a Problem Workflow

Chanel Medeiros

Reporting a Problem

Creating a cohesive omni-channel experience for reporting incidents.

🔁 Overview

We consolidated Wayfair’s three “Report A Problem” workflows into a single, streamlined experience for customers and agents—enhancing consistency, reducing cognitive load, and improving both agent efficiency and customer satisfaction. The redesign, rolled out in two phases, introduced conversational copy and aligned customer and agent experiences for a more intuitive resolution process.

❇︎ My Role

As the design lead, I defined the detailed vision for the updated agent and customer experience that encompassed 11 workflows while also overseeing the work of two designers who helped with the validation and final design delivery processes. My responsibilities included:
Conducting ethnographic and evaluative user research
Current state analysis
Iterative usability testing and design
Crafting low and high-fidelity designs
Content design
Collaborating with partners across Product, Engineering, Design, and Operations

❇︎ Background

Wayfair, a leading online home retailer, serves 22.6M customers with over 33M products. Its post-purchase experience includes returns and issue resolution, but the Report A Problem workflow caused friction across self-service, virtual assistants, and live support. With agents navigating multiple wizards and customers facing a disjointed self-service flow, the experience needed a more intuitive, streamlined solution.

❇︎ Key Problems

👎 Customers have an inconsistent and suboptimal experience across channels.
😵‍💫 Having too many wizards adds mental burden, preventing agents from efficiently resolving incidents.
Previous customer experience
Previous customer experience
Previous agent experience
Previous agent experience

🔍 Discovery

Given the scope of this project, we had to spend time breaking down the current state to understand what the underlying problem was in the experience. Overall the discovery consisted of the following tasks and deliverables:
Conducting a gap analysis across the current state workflow products for agents and customers.
Conducting a gap analysis across the current state workflow products for agents and customers.
Call shadowing and focus groups with call center agents to understand their workflow
Call shadowing and focus groups with call center agents to understand their workflow
Litmus tests with agents, using the current state self-service experience
Litmus tests with agents, using the current state self-service experience
Creating journey maps across workflows for major use cases
Creating journey maps across workflows for major use cases

❇︎ Core Issue

Many customers prefer talking to a real person about incidents, resulting in a high cost-to-service. Customers feel like they’ll get more concrete resolutions for their issues by talking to a live person, resulting in more trust and confidence that their issue will be resolved appropriately.

❇︎ Defining Our Approach

Once we had clarity into the core issue, we were able to start defining our approach. We knew that the new technology we were moving to would have a significant impact on our design and create some limitations, but we didn't want that to limit us from creating a viable user experience.

How might we simplify the agent experience so they can effortlessly help customers?

How might we improve customers' online experience to encourage self-service and reduce live contacts?

Facilitating a prioritization workshop helped Product, Engineering, and Design align on what we wanted to incorporate now vs. later.
Facilitating a prioritization workshop helped Product, Engineering, and Design align on what we wanted to incorporate now vs. later.
Agent and customers now have a 1:1 experience
Agent and customers now have a 1:1 experience

✨ Solution

We reimagined the Report a Problem experience as a unified workflow for both customers and agents—ensuring consistency, reducing friction, and streamlining resolution paths.
A single workflow for all users: We designed a core workflow that applies to both self-service and agent tools, maintaining the same step-by-step structure with tailored functionality where needed.
For agents: We consolidated entry points, aligned self-service and wizard steps, and introduced human-centric copy to reduce cognitive load.
For customers: We prioritized incident-first resolution, broke steps into smaller, focused interactions, and refined the flow for more intuitive decision-making.
Updated self-service experience, showcasing the sequential and conversational approach.
Mapping out all 11 workflow products to show the new sequential approach and logic, and how it will impact the UI.
Mapping out all 11 workflow products to show the new sequential approach and logic, and how it will impact the UI.

❇︎ Approach

⏱️ Minimize wait time – Prevent agents from switching between wizards and waiting for them to load.
💥 Reduce extra noise – Eliminate unnecessary steps and questions to streamline the process.
🎨 Lean into reusability – Maintain a unified layout across workflows to reduce cognitive load.
🗣 Use a customer-centric voice and tone – Make diagnosis questions feel more natural and intuitive.
Agent and customer experience is almost an exact 1:1, with some nuances for certain features or callouts depending on their user-type.
Agent and customer experience is almost an exact 1:1, with some nuances for certain features or callouts depending on their user-type.
Comparison of the self-service experience.
Comparison of the self-service experience.
Comparison of the self-service experience.
Comparison of the self-service experience.
Taking a conversational approach with content helped reduce overall cognitive burden for agents, reducing handle time.
Taking a conversational approach with content helped reduce overall cognitive burden for agents, reducing handle time.
A sneak peek of some of the agent screen flows.
A sneak peek of some of the agent screen flows.

🔥 The Results

In 2022 the new Report a Problem workflow experience launched globally to 5,000+ service agents and 100% of customer traffic across North America and Europe 🎉
Reduction in Handle Time Globally: Reduced cognitive burden on deciding which wizard to run resulted in ~7s reduction in average handle time
More interactive tones and alignment with Self Service flows created more guidance in agents’ conversations.
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Posted Apr 3, 2025

Streamlined 10+ workflow products into one cohesive experience for customers and agents, increasing completion rate by 4% and driving $20M+ savings.

Wayfair's Refund Tracker
Wayfair's Refund Tracker
Wayfair's Help & Contact: A one-stop support hub
Wayfair's Help & Contact: A one-stop support hub