Defining new digital propositions to move from legacy organisation to next gen
Driving force
Established in 1905, the AA is a motoring institution and the UK's number one breakdown service provider. Facing a future where people drive less, car ownership is falling, and vehicles are increasingly reliable, their challenge was to imagine a future beyond breakdowns. The AA approached 383 to help define their product vision and improve digital experiences for existing AA members, B2B partners, and internal stakeholders.
Legacy to next gen
Transforming a legacy organisation and moving beyond breakdowns meant re-imagining the entire digital experience from end-to-end. To do this, we needed to immerse ourselves within the AA, partnering with teams across the business. We embedded one of our senior designers, Sam, into the AA CX team for eight months, driving change from the front line through human-centred design and agile practices.
Now and next
The focus was on designing products that would be useful right now and also remain relevant in the long term, reducing friction across the user journey. We connected with customers and staff directly with dedicated user tests and by listening in at call centres. These sessions fed into pre-launch product iterations and allowed us to add ideas to the icebox for future releases. By tuning into customers and stakeholders to understand and forecast their needs, we were able to pair user frictions with business strategy. Future relevancy was baked into the products we worked on from the very beginning.
Show, don't tell
The next step was to bring these new customer journeys to life in simple, step-by-step, visual explainers, before turning them into clickable prototypes that could be used to gain investment from OEM partners. We were able to quickly take multiple ideas through the feasibility stage, shortening the AA's usual timescales from months to weeks. Our prototypes showcased the AA's potential to become an integral part of any motorist's life, from helping them to know more about their vehicle and when it needs a service, to finding and paying for fuel and parking, whilst also helping to reduce call centre overheads and speed up fleet response times.
Sharing is caring
Understanding a product happens much more immediately when it’s in a stakeholder’s hand, especially when compared to digesting a deck. This meant quick conversations could happen in the corridor, rather than the conference room, generating excitement and anticipation around what could be delivered. To wrap up what we created, we delivered an internal campaign to broadcast the AA’s digital experiences across the wider business, showcasing and elevating the work of the CX team. Because of the interactive and visual approach to our outputs, many were shared between teams and went 'viral’ inside the organisation, gaining visibility at the highest levels of the company for key projects.
Meet Car Home
Our work with the AA included developing a new proposition and concept, 'Car Home', as well as reimagining and redesigning key UI flows, helping the team to win the 2018 UXUK award for 'Report a Breakdown' in the category of 'Best Effect on Business Goals'. The Car Home proposition has become the foundation of the AA's ongoing strategy to support customers throughout their entire driving life cycle. Alongside these initiatives, an icebox of features for development will help to ensure the AA can develop a roadmap (pun entirely intended...) to remain relevant beyond breakdowns.
