Reduced contact-centre workload by 23%

The challenge

Order problems — missing items, damaged deliveries, wrong substitutions — were funnelling thousands of customers into Iceland’s contact centre every week. Each call was slow for the customer and expensive for the business, and there was no way to resolve an issue without talking to an agent.

The approach

• Mapped every reason a customer contacted us about an order, then clustered them by frequency and by how confidently they could be resolved without a human.
• Ran research with shoppers to understand the emotional moment of a botched order — people wanted certainty and speed, not an apology form.
• Designed a self-served refund flow that let customers report an issue, pick the affected items, and get an instant resolution with clear expectations on timing.
• Prototyped and usability-tested three variants; used AI-assisted synthesis to turn session recordings into themes in hours instead of days.

The outcome

The feature became Iceland’s first self-served refund experience and reduced order-related contact-centre workload by 23% — while giving customers a faster, calmer way to put things right.

Design the exit as carefully as the entrance. Recovering a bad experience well earns more trust than a flawless one.