‘KNOW YOUR PORSCHE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE’ - A NEW TOUCHPOINT CONNECTING DOTS OF A CUSTOMER JOURNEY.
As research lead for a multi-country task-force team, I guided team in choosing the right research methods and managing the quality, helped them to focus on the common pain points of the customer journey. As the in-house UX subject matter expert, I guided the agency to design the wireframes and the MVP concept.
The first touchpoint would be receiving an email and clicking a video.
How might we answer customers’ technical questions more effectively?
Vehicles are increasingly loaded with more complex technical features. A super-premium brand like Porsche, is faced with increasing challenges in communicating customers about costly and complex new features.
During an interview with a customer
“10 years ago when I bought my first Porsche, the only thing I had to learn was where to put the key.”
“If I pay for a £800-a-bulb headlight option, I would like to know exactly what’s so special about this option.”
- Porsche customers
Why should a customer opt for a new headlight option worth £800 a bulb? One wouldn’t, if one wouldn’t be able to understand what’s so special about them. At the same time, an average Porsche customer waits for 7 months before one get the car delivered for a handover. Could we keep our customers excited about new features of the car, while waiting for their car to be assembled and delivered?
Understanding the problem
We (Participants from the UK,France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy) have met for a round of co-creation workshops in London and in Zuffenhausen between September 2018 and January 2019
As the research lead for the multi-country workshop team, I helped the team to interview customers and sales staffs in their own countries, to identify key common points of the customer journey and identify key pain points. We’ve also talked to sales staffs to learn from their experiences, and to better understand what digital solutions might be feasible and how they would fit into the touch points with the sales staffs.
Journey: today and tomorrow
Once we’ve generated solution ideas, we’ve extracted them into 5 key concepts. I helped the team to create concept boards and test them with customer workshops in their own countries.
Ideas generated
After an intensive brainstorm and prioritisation session, we came up with 5 key solutions ideas.
A single contact point : that can be given from the very start of the customer journey
A pre-handover survey sent on customers’ media usage and preferences : After the deposit is paid by the customer
Video FAQs
Livechat appointment with a Porsche technician (equivalent to Apple ‘genius’)
Ask Porsche community
To alleviate customers’ sense of being in the dark throughout the process, we’ve found out that it is important to keep them engaged, which makes the solution no.2 (A pre-hand over survey) and the solution no.3 (Video FAQs) a priority. By offering these two, we would have opportunities to catch up with the customers between the order of the vehicle and the handover, which had been haphazardly left to the sales staffs to cover.
Solution concepts were co-created and voted by customers, sales staffs and market leads.
A sample of concept boards, translated and tested in 5 countries
Assigning priorities and settling on the MVP concept
Everyone saw the need for the solution no.4(a live chat feature), which was to be developed with the longer time frame in mind. While the idea no.5 (Ask Porsche Community) was very popular among the digital portfolio managers including myself, we all knew that there is a wide Porsche peer community, not moderated by Porsche. We deemed it would not be worthwhile to recreate a service competing against organically grown communities of users.
With the outcome of this workshop was expected to be shared to the board of Porsche AG, we really wanted to create a tangible digital output and have decided on prototyping the idea no.2: a pre-handover survey on customers’ media usage and preferences.
The initial user flow of the media preference survey
Tag cloud UI inspirations
Low-fidelity wireframes for the initial user flow
Inspired by the tag cloud UI concept, we’ve designed the user flow of a short survey on mobile platforms.
The initial user acceptance testing using low-fidelity wireframes revealed that, if the customer already has a MyPorsche account, it would be easy to match with their cars. Also, it would make sense to store this information on MyPorsche account for future purposes, with customer consent.
Identifying the first touchpoint
How do we get the customers to start our survey? The sales staff would send a video of an interesting feature of the customer would like to discover, and once the customer clicks the video, they would be asked to sign-in/sign-up for ‘MyPorsche’ account and will be asked if they would be happy to complete the survey.
User flow iterations
The revised user flow, after an early user-acceptance testing
Mid-fidelity wireframes
The final output and roll-out
Experience the clickable journey
What did we achieve through ‘Know your Porsche, anytime, anywhere’?
The MVP was an important strategic step toward the full digital experience Porsche aims to provide because:
A new touchpoint is created with which, Porsche can proactively get in touch. The customer is no longer left alone between the deposit and the collection - previously a service void.
A personalised experience (vehicle collection)
A new communication channel is built - throughout the ownership experience, the customer will be able to learn more about his/her own vehicle and would know where to ask technical questions.
The workflow integrates Porsche Centres to work together with Porsche AG. It is critical for the success of any new digital initiative to be inclusive of retail partners, as they could really drive the adoption of the tools if they feel a part of the journey.
A market-driven, a bottom-up learning experience for Porsche AG as opposed to a HQ-driven, top-down initiative.