Ford Service Reservations

Ford Motors is known for its innovation in vehicle manufacturing and mobility solutions. With a vast network of independently operated dealerships across the United States, Ford is able to provide personalized service for customers nationwide. These dealerships play a crucial role in delivering Ford’s vehicles and services to customers, offering a diverse range of products from vehicle sales to maintenance and repairs. The independent nature of each dealership, however, can lead to inconsistencies in customer experiences, especially now with smart cars putting technology more and more to the forefront.

The Challenge

With the Reservations initiative, Ford wanted to forge a direct, ongoing relationship with vehicle owners, following the promise of the latest smart car technology being integrated into their vehicles. Owners in the past were entirely reliant on dealerships, service centers, or their own maintenance knowledge to properly upkeep and maintain their vehicles.

With more and more tech being built into the vehicle, we can provide consumers with information beyond a simple “Check Engine” light. How might we create a new model for vehicle service that takes advantage of this advanced degree of connectivity, as well as keep the Ford brand as a primary touch point throughout the lifespan of the vehicle?

My Role

The project’s design team was only a handful of creatives, allowing us to rapidly iterate and prototype as we tested our designs and worked to align stakeholders.

While I did consult on the dealership experience, my primary focus on the project was to independently handle the design and workflow for the vehicle owner journey. This formidable task began with deep research into the wide array of dealership services across the various Ford vehicles and the regional differences that come with a country as diverse as America. This was then followed in many exercises to consolidate and simplify these services into a shortlist of services that could be understood by even unexperienced vehicle owners.

A tangential goal for the project, and a secondary focus for me as a contributor, was to deliver an audit of the various design systems and UI patterns that had cropped up across Ford’s digital ecosystem. Between various web portals, the consumer facing ford.com, the Ford mobile app, and in-vehicle displays, a wide array of treatments were creating discord as users moved between the different applications. Our designs were to act as recommendations and guidelines for the internal brand team to pick up and further iterate on in their unification efforts.

Impact

My involvement with the project ended after the initial roll-out into our first official test markets. The new service tool and booking platform were both well received. The integration of personalized service recommendations based on vehicle data into the Ford app helped customers stay on top of their vehicle maintenance, reducing the likelihood of costly repairs, and provided a model for streamlining app notifications into immediate service bookings. Additionally, the dealership platform improved operational efficiency, allowing Ford dealerships to streamline their service offerings while still catering to local demands.

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