Service Design Case Study

NAPA Auto Parts Delivery Promise

NAPA stores service the auto repair shops in the best way they can by offering various goods and services. One of the biggest offerings is delivery. Through exploring NAPA's ecosystem we were able to identify that NAPA wasn't meeting this service promise of delivering to customers, at the time NAPA stores were promising.

“2 to 5 minutes on our side, our side seemed like no big deal, but 2 to 5 minutes on their time on their side of the time is an eternity.”

NAPA Store Owner

Research Partci

The Challenge

NAPA isn't meeting it's ETA promised online when a repair shop is ordering.

The Approach

Do internal interviews across different domains to learn what we know and don't know. Then validated our research finds with NAPA stores.

The Outcome

Two iterations of journey maps for both internal store processes and customer perception, documenting the gaps.

NAPA is a very large company, with lots of silos. There's a huge valley in between the mountains of operations and IT. Store operations has largely been the same since the company was founded. On top of that each store is owned and operated by individuals with little to no corporate guidance or standards. Each store runs and operates based on the owner/manager's preference and management style. 

​

When fulfilling an order online, our systems pull from all available or physically close stores and DCs to the shop placing the order. This presents a challenge when it comes to inventory, stockrooms, speed of fulfillment etc. Over time deliveries have been unreliable according to auto repair shops, and their perception around the listed ETA online and in the checkout flow is negative. Shops claim (and were often right) that they cannot trust the online ETA and often call their servicing store for a more accurate delivery speed. We set out to discover why our ETA online wasn't matching with our actual metrics on delivery, and why the perception of delivery was so negative to the customer.

01 The Challenge

NAPA is a very large company, with lots of silos. There's a huge valley in between the mountains of operations and IT. Store operations has largely been the same since the company was founded. On top of that each store is owned and operated by individuals with little to no corporate guidance or standards. Each store runs and operates based on the owner/manager's preference and management style. 

​

When fulfilling an order online, our systems pull from all available or physically close stores and DCs to the shop placing the order. This presents a challenge when it comes to inventory, stockrooms, speed of fulfillment etc. Over time deliveries have been unreliable according to auto repair shops, and their perception around the listed ETA online and in the checkout flow is negative. Shops claim (and were often right) that they cannot trust the online ETA and often call their servicing store for a more accurate delivery speed. We set out to discover why our ETA online wasn't matching with our actual metrics on delivery, and why the perception of delivery was so negative to the customer.

This project started with the question of "Why do we struggle to meet the ETA we promised online when a shop is ordering a part(s)?". Through our research both internally and with store employees/owners we discovered that the problem is more than NAPA's digital experience could solve for. Our task became how might we show this ecosystem and it's impacts all in one graphic? How might we move forward to solve the pain points this graphic points out? How can the digital team partner with other teams within NAPA to create more holistic solutions?

​

Phase 1 was to do internal stakeholder interviews with all the different domains to learn what we know, and what we don't know. We talked to 14 internal stakeholders, some more than once, to get a picture of NAPA's knowledge across domains. We then documented those findings into a journey map from the prospective of an order going through all the systems.

View PDF of journey

Once we learned what we could internally, it was time to validate with NAPA stores who are in the weeds, fulfilling these orders. Overall the findings from NAPA's stakeholders were correct. We ended up learning a lot more about the experience overall and it's impacts to downstream systems. We took this journey map and expanded on it. Using the map itself in interviews with the stores to walk them through every step along the way. We asked them for feedback and to correct anything we got wrong. Afterwards we created a second version journey map that could show the breadth of all our combined knowledge.

After interviewing both stakeholders and store owners, we combined our research into one journey. We included iconography to highlight new findings from the store owners, and document in progress solutions to problems our stakeholders were already working on. Considering our voice was coming from the IT side of the company, we also paired the journey map with a table detailing how might we(s) split up by which domain could take on the task. We also detailed how our domains could work together to tackle these pain points. In the end we hope to partner with operations and bring service design to the business side of the company in order to create holistic solutions in a digital experience.

View PDF of journey

Service Design Case Study

NAPA Auto Parts Delivery Promise

NAPA stores service the auto repair shops in the best way they can by offering various goods and services. One of the biggest offerings is delivery. Through exploring NAPA's ecosystem we were able to identify that NAPA wasn't meeting this service promise of delivering to customers, at the time NAPA stores were promising.

“2 to 5 minutes on our side, our side seemed like no big deal, but 2 to 5 minutes on their time on their side of the time is an eternity.”

NAPA Store Owner

Research Partci

The Challenge

NAPA isn't meeting it's ETA promised online when a repair shop is ordering.

The Approach

Do internal interviews across different domains to learn what we know and don't know. Then validated our research finds with NAPA stores.

The Outcome

Two iterations of journey maps for both internal store processes and customer perception, documenting the gaps.

NAPA is a very large company, with lots of silos. There's a huge valley in between the mountains of operations and IT. Store operations has largely been the same since the company was founded. On top of that each store is owned and operated by individuals with little to no corporate guidance or standards. Each store runs and operates based on the owner/manager's preference and management style. 

​

When fulfilling an order online, our systems pull from all available or physically close stores and DCs to the shop placing the order. This presents a challenge when it comes to inventory, stockrooms, speed of fulfillment etc. Over time deliveries have been unreliable according to auto repair shops, and their perception around the listed ETA online and in the checkout flow is negative. Shops claim (and were often right) that they cannot trust the online ETA and often call their servicing store for a more accurate delivery speed. We set out to discover why our ETA online wasn't matching with our actual metrics on delivery, and why the perception of delivery was so negative to the customer.

This project started with the question of "Why do we struggle to meet the ETA we promised online when a shop is ordering a part(s)?". Through our research both internally and with store employees/owners we discovered that the problem is more than NAPA's digital experience could solve for. Our task became how might we show this ecosystem and it's impacts all in one graphic? How might we move forward to solve the pain points this graphic points out? How can the digital team partner with other teams within NAPA to create more holistic solutions?

​

Phase 1 was to do internal stakeholder interviews with all the different domains to learn what we know, and what we don't know. We talked to 14 internal stakeholders, some more than once, to get a picture of NAPA's knowledge across domains. We then documented those findings into a journey map from the prospective of an order going through all the systems.

View PDF of journey

Once we learned what we could internally, it was time to validate with NAPA stores who are in the weeds, fulfilling these orders. Overall the findings from NAPA's stakeholders were correct. We ended up learning a lot more about the experience overall and it's impacts to downstream systems. We took this journey map and expanded on it. Using the map itself in interviews with the stores to walk them through every step along the way. We asked them for feedback and to correct anything we got wrong. Afterwards we created a second version journey map that could show the breadth of all our combined knowledge.

After interviewing both stakeholders and store owners, we combined our research into one journey. We included iconography to highlight new findings from the store owners, and document in progress solutions to problems our stakeholders were already working on. Considering our voice was coming from the IT side of the company, we also paired the journey map with a table detailing how might we(s) split up by which domain could take on the task. We also detailed how our domains could work together to tackle these pain points. In the end we hope to partner with operations and bring service design to the business side of the company in order to create holistic solutions in a digital experience.

View PDF of journey

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Service Design Case Study

NAPA Auto Parts Delivery Promise

NAPA stores service the auto repair shops in the best way they can by offering various goods and services. One of the biggest offerings is delivery. Through exploring NAPA's ecosystem we were able to identify that NAPA wasn't meeting this service promise of delivering to customers, at the time NAPA stores were promising.

“2 to 5 minutes on our side, our side seemed like no big deal, but 2 to 5 minutes on their time on their side of the time is an eternity.”

NAPA Store Owner

Research Partci

The Challenge

NAPA isn't meeting it's ETA promised online when a repair shop is ordering.

The Approach

Do internal interviews across different domains to learn what we know and don't know. Then validated our research finds with NAPA stores.

The Outcome

Two iterations of journey maps for both internal store processes and customer perception, documenting the gaps.

NAPA is a very large company, with lots of silos. There's a huge valley in between the mountains of operations and IT. Store operations has largely been the same since the company was founded. On top of that each store is owned and operated by individuals with little to no corporate guidance or standards. Each store runs and operates based on the owner/manager's preference and management style. 

​

When fulfilling an order online, our systems pull from all available or physically close stores and DCs to the shop placing the order. This presents a challenge when it comes to inventory, stockrooms, speed of fulfillment etc. Over time deliveries have been unreliable according to auto repair shops, and their perception around the listed ETA online and in the checkout flow is negative. Shops claim (and were often right) that they cannot trust the online ETA and often call their servicing store for a more accurate delivery speed. We set out to discover why our ETA online wasn't matching with our actual metrics on delivery, and why the perception of delivery was so negative to the customer.

This project started with the question of "Why do we struggle to meet the ETA we promised online when a shop is ordering a part(s)?". Through our research both internally and with store employees/owners we discovered that the problem is more than NAPA's digital experience could solve for. Our task became how might we show this ecosystem and it's impacts all in one graphic? How might we move forward to solve the pain points this graphic points out? How can the digital team partner with other teams within NAPA to create more holistic solutions?

​

Phase 1 was to do internal stakeholder interviews with all the different domains to learn what we know, and what we don't know. We talked to 14 internal stakeholders, some more than once, to get a picture of NAPA's knowledge across domains. We then documented those findings into a journey map from the prospective of an order going through all the systems.

View PDF of journey

Once we learned what we could internally, it was time to validate with NAPA stores who are in the weeds, fulfilling these orders. Overall the findings from NAPA's stakeholders were correct. We ended up learning a lot more about the experience overall and it's impacts to downstream systems. We took this journey map and expanded on it. Using the map itself in interviews with the stores to walk them through every step along the way. We asked them for feedback and to correct anything we got wrong. Afterwards we created a second version journey map that could show the breadth of all our combined knowledge.

After interviewing both stakeholders and store owners, we combined our research into one journey. We included iconography to highlight new findings from the store owners, and document in progress solutions to problems our stakeholders were already working on. Considering our voice was coming from the IT side of the company, we also paired the journey map with a table detailing how might we(s) split up by which domain could take on the task. We also detailed how our domains could work together to tackle these pain points. In the end we hope to partner with operations and bring service design to the business side of the company in order to create holistic solutions in a digital experience.

View PDF of journey