Discount Tire (America’s Tire in California) were exclusively brick and mortar stores with a separate e-commerce online presence until 2016. In 2017, they converged both aspects of the business by allowing customers to make online reservations and/or purchases rather than relying solely on calling the store or visiting a location in hopes of receiving successful service (depending on if the items sought were in stock at those locations).
Upon implementation of the new online shopping experience, shops were not prepared for the increased requests, especially when it came to managing the flow of traffic in stores, increased inventory from online reservations (later, purchases) and having the ability to plan ahead for efficiency.
- The online shopping experience as it was created (externally) did not account for the unique parameters that are to be considered while shopping for tires and wheels (ex: standard sizes vs. aftermarket sizes vs. staggered vehicles).
- Shops only allow for services to be performed on a first come, first serve basis.
- Shops are often met with scenarios where customers bring multiple vehicles to be serviced simultaneously.
- Customers were unaware of the wait time involved with their requested services. They are presented with the option to leave their vehicle at the desired location and are notified via phone once the service has been successfully concluded.
The UX team did extensive research on best practices and participated in service in-person shop visits when it came to how to best approach these concerns. Since many Discount Tire’s competitors did not have capacity to utilize a system to address these types of processes due to lack of storefronts, we drew a great deal of inspiration from Google map results and non-automotive related e-commerce stores to reference in the new feature. We also worked with the data analytics team to uncover the following information which were useful to the users to include:
- Average time needed to successfully complete services on the top 100 vehicles owned by customers.
- Store foot traffic trends for each location.
- How to set expectations or avoid customer and shop employee pain points as expressed via various means.
With these things in mind, the general consensus was that a feature would be created for the online experience (during check out) which would allow customers to operate with the intention of setting appointments for their tire and/or wheel purchase installations.
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