Boosting Revenue and Driving Customer Value
Background
Cox’s Vehicle Inventory Platform (CVIP) is continually evolving to address the needs of Cox Automotive’s dealer solution products that rely on vehicle inventory. One key request was to support pre-VIN vehicle data, a feature representing a $1.2 million opportunity in yearly revenue.
HCD Methods
Interviewing > Affinity Mapping > Problem Tree Analysis > Journey Mapping > Storytelling
The Challenge
With limited resources and competing priorities, the question arose: why should we invest in pre-VIN support? Being the lead UX Architect for the platform product team, I lead the discovery research that answered this. Ultimately demonstrating how the lack of pre-VIN support in CVIP impacted dealer customers.
Entering Problem Discovery
I began the discovery phase by conducting interviews with subject matter experts and dealer customers. Followed by secondary research. Using an Affinity Clustering method, I drew insights from the disparate information collected from each source (See Image A).
Image A - Affinity Clustering method performed in conjunction with the product team on the project via a digital whiteboard.
Research Key Findings
SME Interviews
Goal: Learn about pre-VINs, informing additional research.
Key Findings:
CVIP cannot to handle vehicles without a valid VIN.
Source: Product and architect leaders.
Dealer Interviews
Goal: Learn customer impact in the current experience and how it effects their business.
Key Findings:
Sales are impacted.
Workflow disruption.
CSAT is impacted.
Source: Recruited dealership inventory managers.
Secondary Research
Goal: Learn what is driving market demand for pre-VINs.
Key Findings:
COVID supply chain issues affected transportation.
Chip shortages impact manufacturing.
Source: Car news websites and blogs.
What are pre-VINs? Why do they matter now?
Pre-VINs are digital representations of vehicles yet to be built or in the process of being built, before being assigned a full VIN (Vehicle Identification Number). They have become crucial due to chip shortage and supply-chain disruption, creating a low inventory environment, driving the need to market vehicles earlier in the production process, as pre-VINs.
Defining the Problem
The dealer interviews reveal that the lack of pre-VIN support in our products created a domino effect of problem for dealers. (See Image B). Three root causes ultimately impacted a dealer’s ability to acquire vehicles from OEMs, which reduces sales. This was critical due to OEMs allocating vehicles to the dealerships with the highest sales and CSAT.
Image B - Problem tree analysis demonstrating serious of cause and effects.
Visualizing Dealer Impact
From the research findings, I visualized how the lack of pre-VIN support in the vehicle inventory platform negatively impacted key dealership workflows. (See Image C)
Image C - Experience Map shows the vehicle journey from OEM acquisition to customer delivery.
Three Root Causes
Automatic Lead Matching
The inability to match leads to arriving vehicles reduces sales.
Sold Follow-ups
The inability to address customer issues after purchase affects CSAT.
Marketing Lead Time
The inability maximize marketing time reduces sales.
Problem Statement
Problem discovery research gave us solid understanding of how we impact dealer customers when our CVIP the lacks pre-VIN support demanded by the market.
How might we help dealer customers avoid losing OEM vehicle allocations due to reduced sales and CSAT caused by the inability to automate lead matching, sold follow-ups, and maximize marketing time?
Solution Discovery Kickoff
Our problem discovery effort paid off. I answered why should Cox Automotive invest in pre-VIN support on the CVIP? Because dealer customers, facing a low-inventory market, rely on it to boost their limited sales opportunities.
I presented the research findings, cause and effect analysis (Image B), and where root causes manifest for dealers with an experience map (Image C). Then, I brought it to life by telling the story of how market force brought the demand for pre-VIN to our door step (See Image D).
Image D - Story arc I used as a prompt in explaining how dealer and shoppers are affected.
Envisioning a New Experience
Once the problem was presented, it was followed a vision. A vision of the new experience, where our vehicle inventory platform (CVIP) powers dealer’s Cox Auto products with pre-VIN support, resulting in value realization! (See Image E).
Outcome & Results
The pre-VIN support work moved to the Solution Discovery phase, where the CVIP scrum teams made the implementation and released the feature. This enabled automated lead matching, sold follow-ups, and maximize marketing time so that dealer customers avoid losing OEM vehicle allocations and CSAT impact.
This solution resulted in unlocking a $1.2 million a year opportunity, calculated by total revenue brought by pre-VIN vehicles.