Increasing Customer Retention at the Dealership
Background
The client, local dealership, sought to increase customer service retention by increasing sales of Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM) plans*. The goal was to demonstrate how NEC’s Visitor Recognition white label product would achieve the business objective.
*PPM plans: Cover a predefined period of scheduled vehicle maintenance—such as oil changes and tire rotations—based on the guidelines in the vehicle's owner’s manual. Leading to customer retention as well as upselling.
Project Overview
User Interviews > Problem Definition > Ideation Workshop > Storyboarding > Process Blueprint > Validation
The Challenge
As the Sr. UX Designer, I was challenged with leading my team and the client through a Design Thinking discovery engagement that included interviews, feedback synthesis, and artifact production.
The Team
Customer Success Manager - Worked with client to establish a working agreement and remove barriers during the discovery phase e.g. on-site employee interviews.
Product Manager - Ensured the solution worked towards the client goals while establishing a value-delivery roadmap.
Solution Architect - Lead the implementation with the client’s environment, integrating to CDK’s and NEC’s services
NEC’s Visitor Recognition Product
Research - User Interviews
Customer Interviews
Customers perceived dealership PPM plans as costly and with long service wait times and prefer fast, affordable, and professional services.
Customer Needs:
Avoid paying higher dealership costs.
Minimize the time spent getting vehicle serviced.
Maintain their vehicle in optimal condition.
Protect the value of their purchase
F&I Interviews
PPM plans present cost-savings for customers. Typically, they are purchased during or after the F&I phase of the vehicle purchase process.
PPM Plan Benefits:
Fixed Costs: Protects from inflationary prices.
Fast Service: When scheduled ahead of time.
Value Protection: Serviced by OEM-Cert. Service Technicians, extending the vehicle lifespan and resale value.
Problem Definition
The research revealed that customer’s perception on PPM plans overshadowed the true benefits. Therefore our problem statement focused on creating an experience that changed the customer perspective on PPM plans.
How might we help customers see PPM plans as the obvious choice to meet their needs?
Solution Ideation
Together with my product team and an SME (F&I Sales Rep), we flushed out ideas that answer the problem statement. The ideas centered around ways to present convincing content that compared the cost-savings of a PPM plan against the rising costs of going to non-OEM certified vehicle repair shops over time risking the vehicle value.
Presenting the Solution
We presented a visualization of the end-to-end experience, with a Process Blueprint (See Image D) that demonstrated how the customer experience is supported by touch-points, back-end services, and the F&I sales reps. This helped the client see how the solution fits and enhances the customer journey.
Image B - Process Blueprint, showing the all aspects of the solution.
The Impact
During the pilot, 4 PPM plans were sold as a direct result of the new customer flow, which enabled F&I Representatives to engage customers with personalized information about the benefits of the PPM plan. Increasing the monthly PPM plan sales by 24%
Image D - NEC’s Visitor Recognition table UI with the dealership’s branding.
What went wrong?
Not every customer opt-ed in to use the solution due privacy concerns, asking “why does my dealership need my face?”
Employees were hesitant to learn and explain to customers how the solution worked without seeing clear benefits to them (e.g., extra training for no commission boost).
Asking customers to register biometrics before arriving added upfront effort, we sent coupons via text with a registration link to entice.
Key Lessons Learned
Customers reject products not only because of the product’s flaws, but due to misaligned mental models (e.g., "dealerships are expensive").
Reframing PPMs as "cost-saving shields" (vs. "upsells") through comparative data visualization.
The "Visitor Recognition" kiosk’s success depended on employee buy-in, not just customer adoption.