SOFTWARE, SERVICE & ACCESSORIES
Creating a hyper contextualized ecommerce platform designed for the autonomous age.
UX Desgin / Research / Product Strategy
PROBLEM
Volvo aims to attain leadership in the luxury car market. However, this requires more than luxury cars - the entire digital and physical ecosystem must enable premium experiences. As we looked beyond the car, we investigated accessories, services, and software to enhance the user’s experience across the ecosystem. Behind these offerings, our research uncovered these core problems:
“Customers need a personalized experience offered in a cost effective way, with products they understand.”
Based on these problems, we set out to offer additional products that could be precisely merchandised based on vehicle compatibility, educating customers on these new products outside their mental model, and offering logical value behind the offerings. We established a software, services, and accessories platform called Add-Ons to hyper-personalize the customer journey. Touching on all moments of their lifecycle.
ACCESSORIES
Customers are accustomed to personalization through physical accessories, but also need a simple way to know what is compatible with their vehicle and which items fit their life needs. Our hypothesis was to focus on a few bundled accessory sales during initial purchase, prove out purchase adoption, and then move into more in-depth catalogs, merchandising, and usage phases later on. Our initial UK launch of 6 bundles proved-out demand, which also paved the way for a larger assortment with the ability for enhanced merchandising capabilities. Initial efforts also helped us establish new visual assets, asset production needed to run a larger commerce experience, and begin building a targeted usage sales phase within our mobile app experience.
SOFTWARE SALES
Our initial research revealed a few key factors that helped shape our software sales north star. 1: Customers respond positively to software sales if it’s in their existing mental model. 2: They view software trials as a way to save on total cost by only investing in features that they truly use. 3: Many advanced features are currently overlooked or missed by owners. To solve these problems, we proposed a hyper targeted CRM strategy that educated the user on available software features, and provided the appropriate educational content along the shopping, onboarding and usage phases. This new type of content strategy also required a unified CMS to deploy across web, mobile and car, to make sure customers were viewing consistent content in a non repetitive fashion.
To prove software sales viability and test our systems, we built an MVP around existing Pilot Assist capable cars in Norway. We located a significant number of vehicles capable of pilot assist that had never activated the feature. Through email and push notification marketing, we were able to convert 10% of these drivers into software subscribers, and remotely activate the feature. This adoption rate helped further the case to build the needed functions to reach our north star vision and support the autonomous driving features that lie on our horizon.
SERVICES
The last observation we made is that customers expect to be known and receive a personalized experience.
To create a luxury experience, we wanted to offer services that addressed customer needs, and needed to do so in an informed way. We focused on servicing the vehicle first, with many concepts to expand this offering, but creating a good service experience would require the ability to connect the retail experience with the vehicle and mobile usage phases. We built a service MVP in the US that connected a retailer platform with usage data to gain adoption and prove the business model. Scaling it globally would be a long term investment which is still underway.
ESTABLISHING A BACKEND PLATFORM
As we began to expand our product offer portfolio, was saw a clear problem emerging: Disconnected data sources lead to input errors, inability to merchandise and customer pain points.
To solve this, we set out to create a unified backend experience with less data entry errors, a better customer conversion rate, and ultimately less people hours per item sold.
We focused on refining existing tools by eliminating manual steps, and eventually unifying toolsets to live under a unified platform. Once unified, we were able to better surface errors across the platform and to appropriate users.
REFLECTION
As Volvo continues to tackle leadership in the luxury car market, it is evident that it will take more then luxury cars to create luxury experiences. The ecosystem of digital and physical features will need to continue to advance with the new sense of premium that exists.
To attain this new complexity, we set a strategic foundation through a rich discovery and research process. Supported a vision of the future through robust north stars and vision work. But vision alone can’t take Volvo to the level it needs. Rapid iteration, quantifiable results, and continuous evolution as demonstrated above are critical to guiding the organization, multiple product teams, and ever evolving digital landscape.
