CarMax App
When thinking through the next generation of iOS and Android app at CarMax, we knew from customer discovery over the years that it needed to be a few things that it was not then…Personalized, Unique and Enabling. Below, I’ll walk you through a high-level of the research we conducted and solutions we brought to life and testing in the hands of customers across multiple stores.
We first evaluated and documented a process that lent itself to unique opportunities in the mobile space, which was the at store experience. The app has traditionally been a shopping and lead gen tool, similar to the website. We didn’t want to be in the business of creating an alternative to the website, but rather a supplement to the web experience. By letting the website handle the heavy upper funnel action, how might we create a smooth hand off and craft unique to mobile and “no way it can do that” moments in the app? How might we use mobile technology to reimagine the in-store experience?
We started by understanding the existing in-store customer experience…
Contactless Test Drive
From discovery to strategy to execution and iteration, we let research to guide and uncover opportunities and to dial in the execution to truly exceed Customer’s expectations.
The line to a manual check-in process grows as lunch time nears
A manual book of test-drive forms Associates need to distribute to customers prior to a test drive.
License plates that need to be checked out vis legacy technology.
Mapped out 3 segments of customers that frequent the store for a test-drive and mapped avg. time to task
While we did spend a fair amount of time mapping and researching the existing Customer experience, we could not ignore the pains in the CarMax Associate experience because after all, the pain and hiccups in their experience trickle down and are felt directly by the customer.
Below, you’ll see an example of what is described above. In some busy lots, inventory are double parked, moving around all day for test drives and cleanings so finding a vehicle is pretty impossible sometimes. We witnessed multiple Associates take Customers to their car and it was not in the previously marked spot. Then the Associate started to wonder around looking for the vehicle, all while the customer is starting to form doubt in their mind and wonder if CarMax sold a car they called dibs on as long as a week ago.
Between the waiting in line to check-in, waiting up to and sometimes more than an hour to speak with an associate, not being able to test-drive a car until an associate can help you and the amount of time it takes to get in the test-drive even then…we knew there was opportunity here.
We introduced Contactless Test Drive as a single store pilot.
The idea of Contactless Test Drive was born from the various issues we saw during our months of research and how it really impacted those who had the highest expectations of all…customers who scheduled a test drive appointment.
MVP Experiment flow with ideation organized at the bottom and all edge cases accounted for.
Once we tested service flows with Customers and Associates in the store, we designed out the screens we’d need.
Alternative Concepts & Experiments
While we were focusing on the section of the customer experience where Customers were scheduling a test-drive, setting expectations for their store visit and eliminating the gap between arrival and sitting in their dream car, we had a few other crazy ideas to help smooth over the experience.
We released a pilot lot GPS to a few stores that allowed Associates and Customers to find their test drive and or find relevant vehicles on the lot in real time.
We also prototyped and ran discovery with an AR enabled utility that would provide an alternate form of guidance to their vehicle and also provide some helpful tips and info when they got to it.
