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Mary Fran Wiley

Experience Design Leader

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Ford Logo in white on transparent background

Payments for Remote Retail Vehicle Service

Problem Statement

How might we provide a reliable and trusted payment experience for people who service any vehicle wherever and through any method (mobile service, pickup and delivery or in-dealer repairs) who need a timely, accurate and secure payment confirmation?

Solution

Utilize common Ford infrastructure for various e-commerce platforms to allow customers to pay for their services at an automatically emailed link and define standards for integrating with existing dealership point-of-sale technologies.

Approach

From August-November 2022, we completed research, improved the maintenance & repair customer journey to have better clarity around moments and actions required to make payments and defined what the payment experience should be for a remote customer experience.

Research

We began our research knowing that there are plenty of existing platforms that dealers can use to collect a payment from a customer who isn’t present at a dealership and allow for charging a card nearly anywhere.

We sought out dealerships providing remote services (mobile repairs or pickup & delivery for vehicle service) where we could interview users of all types (technicians, managers, accounting). We conducted interviews in pairs with members of the Ford team of both those employees and customers who utilized remote services

Analysis & Journey

I led the cross-functional client & agency team through theming and coached a junior strategist through leading her first sessions in this part of the Human Centered Design process.

We updated the Payment moment in the journey map to be 3 parts to more accurately describe the customer experience and highlight what our solution needed to support both from a customer and dealership perspective.

Solution Definition

The client team was new to CX as a discipline and had never gone through an HCD process, so I took time to adapt various brainstorming activities to work well in virtual workshops with inexperienced participants.

Once we had an experience framework defined, we developed ideas deeper with role-playing scenarios. A MoSCoW was completed based on this work as well as an accessibility lens to ensure a build that was accessible from the start.

Defining the Solution

Illustration of a Stripe card reader and mobile device with the Stripe logo to the left and the Ford logo to the right

There were significant challenges that had to be overcome in order to deliver the experience we designed.

  • Ford announced a shift from FiServe to Stripe as their payment processing provider after discovery had been completed.
  • Existing Ford payment systems did not work together, meaning customers had to set up profiles in multiple checkout systems.
  • Dealerships are individual businesses who use a wide range of both dealership management tools and payment processors resulting in hundreds of possible software combinations.
  • Each of the 3 user groups required different access points including a native app, consumer facing web & vehicle apps and a dealer web app.

Selling a vision

Once the ideal experience was defined, it was time to get to work bringing it to life. We determined that a patchwork of payment solutions guided by a set of standards for the experience was only workable in the short-term.

In order to build a consistent service & maintenance experience for customers, Ford needed to build its own payment UI.

This payment experience impressed leadership so much that it was added to a roadmap as the payment experience for both in-dealership and remote service payments for a new service department management tool Ford is rolling out in 2023 & 2024.

In order to gain real-world feedback, 2 work streams were launched to pilot the ability of technicians to accept physical payments and allow customers to pay by link.

A mockup of a payment success screen in a white iPhone skewed to the right.

Resulting Projects

The initial work of gathering customer, dealership and Ford requirements resulted in additional projects once the initial definition was complete.

Black & white image depicting someone making a payment with Google Pay on a mobile device

Payments Pilot

Ford, 2023

ux

Payments UI

Ford, 2022

ux

Project Details

Role
Experience Design Lead

Client
Ford

Team Members
Experience Strategy: Marli Thurow
Experience Strategy Director: Eric Garza

Process & Methodologies
CX / Service Design
Brainsteering
Ideation Workshops
Customer Journey Mapping
User Research
Role playing

Mary Fran Wiley

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