MOBILE.DE
Mobile.de is a German online platform providing people with the opportunity to sell used cars. In the past, they have created “buying-stations” within car dealerships. My team was tasked to optimize the service and create a positive experience that increases the number of bought cars.
SERVICE BLUEPRINT WORKSHOPS
We started out, by mapping the current service of the buying station, using a service-blueprint. The big difference between a user journey and a service blueprint is that it also takes into account steps which are invisible to the customer, for instance those done by company workers or third parties. We conducted several workshops with mobile.de employees, in order to create a holistic and complete picture of what the current service looks like.
FIELD RESEARCH
Additionally we conducted many days of field research, both with car dealers and their customers. Their daily processes and pains further completed the service blueprint. In a second version of this blueprint, we then worked to selectively address pains and needs, and to create an improved process. This service was finally tested with two dealers over four weeks, after which we traveled around the south of Germany in order to observe the new process, document its challenges and successes, and to collect feedback directly from dealers and their customers.
DESIGNING TOUCHPOINTS
Another role of our team was to design physical touchpoints, which would support the dealer’s customers and address their need for clarity and orientation. Additionally we would test tools of third parties, for instance different apps, that meant to digitalize the car and upload it to a nation-wide auction for dealers. The challenge was, to not only view the people selling/buying a car as users, but also the dealers, which had their own needs, motivations, and fears within this new process.
Learnings
The four weeks in which the new process was tested showed, that the number of bought cars as well as the happiness of sellers increased. In 2020 the challenge will be to further incorporate the needs of the dealers, in order to make this new service adaptable nation-wide. In this project I learned many new things, such as conducting large scale research, to facilitate workshops with different teams, and to translate findings into ideas that balance the immobility of a big company with the needs of the users. But most of all I learned that there are always different sides of a process (and often many more than just two). That there are more people involved than just the customer, that their needs are as important, and how to reflect this with a method such as the service blueprint. Everyone in any process is in itself a user and “user centricity” can therefore mean a lot of things.