Experience Strategy
Toyota Express Purchase was a digital strategy engagement to reimagine the future of the automotive retail buying experience. We created a roadmap for delivering a customer focused buying experience across all channels of the business, and demonstrated the impacts of the changes to all US dealers.
Highlights include:
Customer research, persona identification, and journey-mapping
Coordination across brands (Lexus, Scion) and multiple departments
Interactive wireframe prototypes
Feedback via customer focus groups and strategic dealers
Roadmap for stakeholder alignment strategy
Web, iPad, and iPhone prototypes
Full-scale exhibit with actor-led customer experience demonstration for all US dealers
Timeline
2015-2016 (1.5yrs)
The project began with a limited scope customer journey-mapping exercise. Through intense and positive interaction with the client stakeholder team, the scale of the work extended to further explore executions of a future-state, customer focused vision.
Team
My Role: Experience Lead
Initially, my role was focused on advocating for human-centered design principles and translating the research efforts into the current-state customer journey. Following that, I oversaw the design of preliminary wireframes and prototypes and presented to a subset of US dealers for alignment and feedback. As we moved to gain national dealer support, my role shifted to oversight of the overall experience vision and story-telling experience.
The team included: 2 UX Designers, 2 UI Designers, 2 iOS Developers, 1 Content Strategist, and Project Management.
Challenges
We underestimated the severity of the skepticism and pushback we received from the dealer network initially. It took a coordinated effort of our internal and stakeholder teams, presenting prototypes grounded in customer research, to address their concerns to create advocates for the vision.
Outcomes
Several aspects of the prototype experience have been adopted at both the OEM and dealer levels. Accurate inventory lists and smart vehicle matching were among the first features to hit production. The roadmap continues to be a driving force within the organization for alignment of various Toyota departments and the national dealer network to a unified customer experience.
Research
Customer Journey
Based on review of extensive customer data and focus group sessions, we were able to better understand customer behavior, expectations, and frustrations.
The key takeaways (which we referred to as the 3 “T’s”):
Lack of Transparency
Lack of Trust
Takes far too much Time
Personas
We developed 3 customer personas:
The Rookie
The Loyalist
The Veteran
Madison, our Rookie, was the basis for several aspects of the Express Purchase core functionality.
Wireframes
Inventory Listings
It starts with accurate inventory lists based on location and customer build/preference matches.
Purchase Options
The entire purchase process is available online with guidance for finance and lease options, trade value, and add-ons.
Transparent Process
The entire process was built around increasing trust and transparency in the process.
Digital meets Physical
We worked with a subset of Toyota dealers, called The Trailblazers, to refine the solution and understand the impacts to their respective businesses. Incorporating this critical stakeholder group’s feedback, and ultimately bringing them onboard as advocates, was key to the overall project’s success.
The complete Express Purchase experience was unveiled at the Toyota US national dealer meeting in Las Vegas in September of 2015. To fully demonstrate the program and ease the concerns of dealers, a full-scale replicas of both residences and dealerships were created and actors were hired and trained to demo the new digital experience.
Overall, we had over 1000 dealers and guests take the guided experience over the span of 4 days.
“It’s really an effort to better connect the digital world with what’s going on in our stores and providing a lot more flexibility for the guests to transact with us the way they would like.”
— Bill Fay, SVP Toyota Motor North America.
AutomotiveNews Sept 2019