Vehicle Order Tracker
UX Research • Workshop Facilitation • Product Design
Overview
Vehicle order tracking application for Volkswagen Group dealerships
Client
Volkswagen Group
Timeline
12 Month Project
Role
Senior Product Designer
The Challenge.
VW Dealerships lacked a single system to track car orders once they had been placed at the factory. They had multiple, outdated systems to work with and no single point of reference to track all orders. This had a direct, negative impact on the customer experience as they were not actively informed on the status of their order and the date of arrival, meanwhile they would have to wait an average of three months for their car to arrive.
Project Kick-off.
We kicked-off the project by conducting stakeholder interviews to gain more context from the business’ perspective.
As the problem was originally identified by the business, we wanted to unpack it further with them, before conducting our own research on whether the problem was real and worth solving for our users.
Research Objectives.
Next, we created a user research plan and facilitated user interviews with salespeople in different dealerships across Europe.
With an overarching research question that we wanted to answer in mind:
“Will a car status tracker help empower the salesperson to assist customers with their orders and keep them informed and excited throughout the process?”
01
Understand top problems, needs and opportunities between when the car is ordered up until delivery
02
What information and services are offered to customers once they’ve ordered a car and before it is delivered
04
What information does the dealer care to see and be informed about
03
Learn how dealers currently track the car build status
What Salespeople Said.
“My main focus needs to be selling. I shouldn’t have to be fixing problems that aren’t my problems.”
— Salesperson from Portugal
“It’s a long logistic road until it gets to the customer, with a lot of black holes.”
— Salesperson from Sweden
“If we can track the car every day, that would be a huge improvement. We will always have customers that are really pushy, asking us where their car is.”
— Salesperson from Norway
“Sometimes when I have a lot of work, I forget about one car. Then I see, oh gosh, it's been in the showroom for one week already and I could have given it to the customer.”
— Salesperson from Poland
Key Insights.
01
Order Visibility
Dealers need to have visibility of all cars they have ordered from the factory to help them with planning and forecasting
02
Order Tracking
How dealers currently track customers' cars is not very intuitive and easy to use and it consumes a lot of their time
03
Trust in Data
Dealers need to be able to trust that the data is reliable. They do not rely completely on the ETA given by the system and always manage to add some sort of time buffer to manage customers expectations
Affinity map of user interview key insights
User journey map
How Might We Statements.
HMW
Give our salespeople more transparency about the order status of all their cars?
HMW
Provide our salespeople with the necessary information so that they don't have to go searching for it in order to stay informed
HMW
Help our salespeople manage customer's expectations and keep them excited during the waiting period?
Product Vision Statement.
For... Car Salespeople
Who... Need visibility of car's that have been ordered from the factory
Our product is... An application
That... Gives the salesperson visibility of car order status
Unlike... Current manual order systems
Our product... Maps a cars lifespan from order to delivery
User Personas.
Benchmark Analysis.
We also conducted a benchmark analysis to identify and learn from what competitors had done, as well as looking into best practices implemented by order tracking industry leaders.
We then went into ideation phase, where I facilitated a brainstorm with the product team. It was a time for us to get together and co-create the solution.
The outcome were rough sketches which I then turned into wireframes, followed by high fidelity UI design which we then tested with our users.
Wireframe Sketches.
Usability Test Results.
The Solution.
A vehicle order tracking application that integrates with factory and shipping data to provide up-to-date statuses to salespeople so that they are empowered to manage their customers expectations and give them accurate information about their order.
The pilot was rolled out to Volkswagen Group dealerships in 39 markets replacing old legacy systems, with a product adoption rate of 67% in the first month of it’s release.