Refund path clarity for a regional retailer
A six-week engagement that rebuilt how refund and exchange events were reported across store and online channels.
The client’s weekly numbers for refunds never matched the cash office. Online exchanges were counted twice when an item returned to stock and again when a replacement shipped. Store returns used a different event name for the same moment.
We scoped four flows: online refund, online exchange, store return, and store exchange. After mapping, we retired two duplicate events and wrote a shared definition for “refund opened” versus “refund settled.” The first reporting pack still showed a mild reservation from the cash office about weekend lag; we documented the lag as an expected exception rather than hiding it.
By the fourth weekly cycle, the variance between the pack and the cash summary sat inside the window the client had set. The handoff guide now lists who updates definitions when a new channel is added.