Defining and validating a new mobile customer experience
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HomeServe have been taking care of homes for over 25 years, providing home emergency repairs to 1.8 million customers with a national network of engineers. Their innovation arm, HomeServe Labs, was set up to design innovative products and services using smart home technology. HomeServe Labs approached 383 with an idea to help users manage their accounts and assistance needs effortlessly. They wanted help to imagine and define their vision of a digital first customer experience.
Defining the vision
With a growing customer base and thousands of online interactions every week, there was clear potential for a mobile product that would be the central place for customers to manage their interactions with HomeServe. This shouldn't just be another communication channel. It should provide genuine utility, solving common customer pains, helping to ease anxiety during stressful situations, and preventing unnecessary calls to the emergency line.
Mapping the journey
Our first task was to create a vision for what the future customer journey could look like, investigating common frictions through a series of customer interviews. Talking to customers showed us that our product design process had to be driven by giving users more control and transparency, alongside speed and ease of use. Ultimately, when it comes to your own home, it’s all about peace of mind. Enabling quick access to a human helper was key, particularly in emergency situations.
Testing the theory
Taking these principles as our guide for the first version of the product, we worked in fast track design sprints using our rapid prototyping framework to map out the essential features and user flows and develop a prototype to be tested with customers.
Working as partners
In partnership with HomeServe's digital transformation team, our design and engineering teams worked collaboratively to architect, build, launch and manage iOS and Android mobile applications, focusing on key requirements identified and validated with customers during our rapid prototyping. We also developed a backlog of features and a prioritised roadmap, before transitioning the ongoing maintenance and future development of the apps back to the HomeServe engineering team.
Meet the HomeServe app
The mobile application we produced for iOS and Android offers HomeServe customers a completely new way to manage their homes, validated by their real-life customer base. We achieved our chief aim of giving customers more control and transparency over their interactions with HomeServe, with the added benefit of reducing pressure on other areas of the business through self-service options. Our work provided HomeServe with an easy to digest vision of the future, helping them to define and prioritise their digital roadmap.
