Mobile Service Redesign
Problem
Mobile Service was launched as a pilot program in 2019 and was rapidly scaled in 2020 due to the pandemic. The launch of Ford’s battery electric vehicles and changes in all sectors brought a new set of expectations from customers for on-demand and flexible service. At the same time, dealerships were looking to do more business through remote offerings.
This project co-occurred with the electric vehicle experience update, and information from that project was brought into this larger project.
Solution
The team assessed the current state of the mobile service offering to identify gaps and opportunities. We arrived at 3 main projects/workstreams, including:
- Define an ideal mobile service experience that includes proactive support and transparency around repairs for customers with varying levels of distrust
- Adapt Ford’s service department management tool to work with mobile service and take advantage of the standardized tools to create a universal brand experience
- Increase accessibility for customers and employees (although Mobile Service is inherently more accessible than an in-dealer repair, disabled customers are largely not thought of in the automotive world)
The Approach
We began by revisiting the established customer journey due to the changes in both consumer behaviors and Ford’s vehicle line. We spoke to dealers at events training them on mobile service to gather feedback about how the service was working and what they were seeing. We used Ford’s existing customer service tool to gather customer feedback on the offering. The team was also briefed on research into electric vehicle owners completed by the BEV team.
That updated journey allowed the team to identify gaps in the experiences and points of potential improvement. We completed a set of hybrid ideation workshops to turn the opportunity areas into actionable ideas.
Validation
Once the team had ideas, we brought them to potential customers for rapid validation around the utility and desirability of new offerings and features. There were limitations – we did not bring items that were logistics-based or accessibility to customers as their impacts would not have been easy to validate with a general car-owner user pool.
We used the results of this validation to prioritize which areas would be where we focused our energy going forward.
Experience Mapping
I had designed this artifact as part of the related workstreams I led with Ford’s Maintenance & Repair Customer Experience (CX) team, and this project was one of the validation tests to verify repeatability and refine the standard.
As part of the updated service playbook and a parallel software development project, I felt it was necessary to bring together stakeholders from across the organization to ensure alignment between the digital tool and the complete maintenance & repair offering.
While role-playing, we identified misalignments between how the mobile service offering worked and what the software team was building. Their focus on the software they were building missed nuances in off-screen interactions, as well as differences in how the mobile service differed from typical in-dealership repairs.
We identified key failure points, including loss of data connectivity during a call, incorrect assumptions about existing features, and missing critical data not flowing between tools.
This process proved the value of this particular artifact in general while leading to a stronger service playbook update and a north star experience all teams were working toward.
Improving accessibility
Mobile Service is inherently more accessible to customers than dealership repairs for many types of disabilities on the customer end. However, without considering how those disabilities affect customers and dealership employees, we leave unintentional gaps.
We spun off a project that brought together SMEs from product, CX, development, vehicle teams, and design, with varying levels of understanding of disability and accessibility. This hybrid workshop was the first time many had to look at an experience through a disability lens.
Outcomes
We discovered that we could enhance many moments by writing service standards and ensuring that dealerships were using the digital tools either currently provided by Ford, or soon to be released.
For example, messaging capabilities in upcoming service department management software would enable communication for all customers with auditory disabilities. However, that isn’t an ideal long-term solution. The team proposed that Ford needed to offer sign language interpreter services on request while also being able to indicate in a service reservation that they desired an interpreter. The team took that one step further to include those who would prefer communication in Spanish and other languages.
Incremental changes are being added to the offering to bring competing dealerships to the same standard of service utilizing the new service design and service standards.
New mobile service van configurations such as one focused on tire repair/replacement and one for repairs that only require hand tools have allowed dealerships to meet customer expectations and have fueled a 300% YoY increase in completed services and a 34% increase in customer satisfaction scores.
Project Details
Role
Experience Design Lead
Client
Ford
Team Composition
XD/XS Pair, 3 UX designers, 2 UI designers that rotated through various project stages.
Process & Methodologies
CX / Service Design
Role playing
Brainsteering
Ideation Workshops (Virtual, In-Person and Hybrid)
Customer Journey Mapping
Rapid Validation Studies