Internal Communication Tool For Toyota Dealerships
The Challenge
For this project, the team was tasked with creating a solution that can help Toyota implement an aligned vision for customer experiences across dealerships, create a consistent customer experience across Toyota dealerships.
(Toyota is not actually associated with the project. Toyota was picked as it is one of the car companies which maintains some control across dealerships)
Team: 4 Students (all juniors)
Duration: 4 Weeks
Deliverables
User Research
Low Fidelity Prototypes
My Role
Working in a team with 3 peers in my class, I was an integral part of our project and the decisions the team made. I provided the team with a unique perspective as I had recently been part of the car buying experience so I had researched dealerships and how they work on my own. With this background I provided the team with a hint of an expertise in the field in our context.
In the project, I conducted a user interview, online research, user tests, created two storyboards, provided important direction to service blueprints and I created the final iteration of our prototypes which we delivered.
The Process
Guiding Questions
& our Process
Why do dealerships need/want to talk to each other?
Why would they partner with other dealerships?
How does this impact the overall customer experience?
How do dealerships currently communicate?
Research
Secondary and Competitive Research
It was found that dealerships communicate with the Toyota for parts. And dealers find customers going to a different dealer disappointing as they have invested a lot of time.
Geographic location may have different restrictions on user information, overall, dealerships don’t really share much information to each other.
Interviews
We interviewed someone running a car dealership and two recent customers. We found car-buying process is streamlined if users come in knowing what they want. Customers value transparency.
The only reason dealerships communicate with each other is to arrange “trade deals”. A trade deal is get a car they don’t have which their customer is looking for and another dealership has it.
Current
Service Blueprint
Based on the secondary research (online research), and the interviews conducted, we created a service blueprint of how dealerships operate during a car buying experience.
I provided important insights based on my research as well as recent car buying experience. While I realize I am not solving for myself, I was able to connect with some information in our research.
We found an opportunity for how we can improve on the experience.
Our Opportunity
Through one of the interviews, we found that dealerships support processes rely heavily on phone calls and texting during the time a customer picks out the exact car they want. The dealership wants to make sure they have the car/ they can get a car for the customer in the promised time but sometimes due to communication gaps/ delayed information, they make promises which they can’t keep regarding timeline for delivery.
We decided to create a platform to support this inter-dealership communication regarding what exact cars are available in their inventory and whether they are under negotiations to make sure if a dealership wants to make a trade deal, they won’t get bailed on.
Following is a storyboard to help explain the scenario in detail.
Our ideas!
With our ideas, we were able to approach 3 of our experience principles: committing to a transparent and streamlined car buying experience, provide exemplary customer service ensuring inventory fits needs and anticipating needs/expectations of customers hence providing information on sales in a timely manner.
Testing the Idea
Goal
To determine how the users understand the concept of our design.
Structure
Show a specific feature and see how they interpret its purpose and capabilities
Scenario
Letting the users imagine they’re a car salesperson and walk through the prototype
Takeaways
Separation between your inventory and local needs to be more distinct.
Cars need some sort of label to distinguish better
Make the distance selection automatic because users would search for type of car first, not location.
Medium Fidelity Prototypes
New
Service Blueprint
Based on our solution, we were able to aid the support process and backstage contact action during the “Salesperson checking inventory” stage of the journey.
Our solution improves on the overall customer experience by enhancing the inter-dealership communication creating a consistent customer experience across Toyota Dealerships. This was our initial goal for the project.
Following is a storyboard of the previous story with our new solution implemented.
Our Solution
A tool allowing sales staff to know their own and local inventory to prevent a false availability conveyed to customers.
The following high fidelity mockups were made entirely by me after the conclusion of the project.
An easy entry to “Your Inventory” or “Local Inventory” and finding the needed vehicle
Allowing a clear and easy way into either the dealership’s inventory or the inventory of dealerships around is key to our solution.
Providing a “Recent Search” option is needed as customers come back a day later and continue discussing the same car.
Quick ability to change status of a vehicle at your dealership
Allowing the sales staff to quickly and easily change status of a vehicle ensures more of a commitment to an updated flow of information.
Accessibility was a consideration, hence the icons inside the colors.
Easily change the radius of the local inventory.
Dealerships commit to customers a delivery within a day or two, hence they need to find dealerships within reach.
This allows sales staff to set customer expectations appropriately about days until car is ready to pickup.
Conclusion and Reflection
Based on peer and instructor feedback, our designed was praised for being able to do what we set out for.
“great work on this, y'all! Your presentation was SO easy to understand”- instructor
“One word for y'all: Excellence.” - member of the team who wrote the project brief
Our design improved customer experience as avoids false hope and ensures quicker turnaround.
While this project was seemingly difficult from the start as there was no apparent flaw, I was pleased to see our process being able to lead our decisions, all the steps we took through the project were informed by our thorough research and insights.
I was overall very satisfied and proud of the project we were able to present. Also, I was happy being able to expand my work portfolio working as an interaction designer for a tablet interface.
I intend to creating a high fidelity mockup of the experience and add it here on my portfolio!