Service Reservation Platform
Case Study
Ford is transforming vehicle maintenance by delivering dealership-quality service directly to the customer's location. To support this strategic shift our current tool needed a facelift. We developed an intuitive scheduling experience, optimized for the unique demands of Mobile Service operations. This tool provides dealers and their advisors with the flexibility to efficiently manage and scale both fleet and retail appointments.
Problem
Dealers struggled with clunky Mobile Service scheduling due to unstandardized flows, manual practices, and unintegrated systems. This led to inefficiencies and negative customer experiences. It prevented them from scaling effectively, ultimately hindering our goal.
Solution
To tackle those old scheduling struggles, we built a smart solution! A new system that standardizes and integrates flows, cutting manual errors and boosting visibility of customer data. It simplifies setup to more effectively streamline appointments. The result? A flexible, intuitive tool ready to help dealers scale their Mobile Service operations
Research
Our entire approach was grounded in understanding the needs and behaviors of our users. For instance, our deep dive into the current platform usage revealed a majority of our users access the platform on desktop. Coming from our Amplitude data, this reveal, immediately informed our decision to focus on a desktop experience. We also discovered a blank slate – there were extensive limitations of the calendar tool on the platform, giving us the freedom to build something truly tailored from the ground up. This initial research phase was vital in shaping our overall strategy and the specific questions we brought to our interviews, ensuring we focused on key areas like user expectations, capacity management, and operational workflows.
Building a scheduling tool meant truly listening to the people who would use it every day. We conducted extensive interviews with both internal stakeholders and, crucially, our dealers, to get a crystal-clear picture of their goals and daily realities:
Stakeholders: Our internal partners emphasized the need for a flexible calendar view, the ability to easily select blocks of time and for fleet scheduling, flexible number of vehicles within the calendar view, and the capacity to manage single appointments with multiple vehicles, each needing their own reservation. They also highlighted the importance of considering both service advisor and service vehicle availability, setting recurring appointments, and even the potential for recommending specific service vans. A major goal was to significantly reduce the time it takes to schedule an appointment, especially when dealing with entire fleets.
Dealers: When we talked to and visited our dealers, finding variety in their existing scheduling methods. We saw everything from basic Excel spreadsheets and Google Calendars to third-party tools, and even some seasoned advisors still relying on physical whiteboards! This clearly showed us a massive opportunity to create a single, streamlined experience that would simplify life for dealers.
We didn't just look within the automotive industry; we cast a wide net! Our competitive and cross-industry audit focused on how leading platforms manage at-home logistics, scheduling, and customer expectations. We analyzed giants (Amazon, PODs, Black Tux, Chewy, BizzyCar) for transparent self-serve logistics and real-time tracking, easy-to-edit bookings and location-based accuracy, and smart calendar logic and dealer-facing visibility.
The design decisions were shaped by research, including benchmarking familiar tools like Google and Outlook Calendar and deep user interviews, allowing us to directly address the problem of clunky, manual scheduling systems.
As a product designer, my focus was on crafting a highly intuitive and efficient tool. I achieved this by simplifying the interface for enhanced clarity across all levels – from the overall user flow to specific vehicle and reservation details. To boost efficiency, I consolidated multi-step processes into intuitive modals, and to provide flexibility, I introduced customizable calendar views. These deliberate design choices directly streamlined workflows, empowered dealers to scale Mobile Service effectively, and perfectly aligned with our core business objectives.
The FSR+ platform, currently under patent consideration, has successfully rolled out to hundreds of dealers over the past couple of years. Our solution has led to increased product utilization, streamlined workflows, and improved satisfaction for both dealers and customers. Dealers can now efficiently schedule retail appointments and entire fleets in fewer steps, while customers benefit from faster, more flexible service without needing to visit a dealership.
Product Design: Ken Villapando, Leslie Black, Matthieu Reed