Nine-Month Ecosystem Research Across Three Customer Groups
The challenge
New leadership, a significant technology investment on the table, and no shared understanding of what the actual problem was. Three customer groups: motorists, repair shops, and parts stores. All touching the same ecosystem, all frustrated in ways nobody had documented. Before committing to a major transformation program, they needed to know whether they were solving the right problem.
What we did
A national automotive parts supplier under new executive leadership needed to understand a confusing, three-sided ecosystem: motorists, repair shops, and parts stores. They needed to find the friction points holding all three back.
Over nine months, we ran three phases of research: remote interviews and concept testing with motorists, contextual inquiries at repair shops, and in-store field visits with parts stores and distribution centers across three states. We rode along with delivery drivers, interviewed technicians on the shop floor, mapped the supply chain from warehouse shelf to repair bay, and connected all three journeys into a single deliverable.
This deliverable became the foundation of a multi-year digital transformation program focused on making independent repair shops more efficient and profitable.
Additionally, part of the core team was hired to stay on and rebuild the client's UX Research department from the ground up.
What changed
The research became the foundation of a multi-year digital transformation program. The client used the three-journey deliverable to align executive stakeholders across divisions that had never shared a common picture of the customer experience. Part of the core team stayed on to rebuild the client's UX research department from the ground up.