Storyboarding

Service Design Case Study

Customer Management for NAPA Auto Parts Stores

NAPA's customers could be considered the driver and owner of a car that needs to be repaired. You could also call the shops that do the repairing and buying of the individual replacement parts, the customer. Our stores do more than just source the part for shops, they also acquire and manage shops that order from the store. They manage their customers.

Stores can be owned by a independent person, as well as store that is owned by NAPA corporate (Genuine Parts Company). Corporate stores have more built in relationships and standardizations, where the independent store owners are more free to do what works best for them. This means the independent store owners are more varied in their management styles, sales strategies and administration tasks.

 

NAPA wants to streamline the registration of repair shops into our system so it is easier and quicker to start a relationship with NAPA part stores. How might we create this streamlined process without alienating or upsetting our independent store owners who have their own processes when it comes to registration, and their individual relationships with their customers. How might we make sure we don't break their trust if HQ streamlines tasks these store owners would usually handle manually on their own?

“We don’t sell parts, we sell service”

Independant NAPA Store Owner

Research Partcipant

The Challenge

Innovating without isolating independent store owners and breaking their customer's trust

The Approach

Use Storyboarding to present concepts to independent store owners to gage their interest/reactions.

The Outcome

Three storyboards and a research readout educating stakeholders on the reactions of their partners in the stores.

Independent store owners build relationships with their own customers. NAPA HQ acts more like a parent company in these relationships. Store owners use their own sales tactics to acquire those customers, and maintain or manage their customer’s information with their own digital (and manual) tools. Store owners build those relationships with their customers in person, and HQ is apart of that relationship by proxy in the customer’s mind.

 

In the past HQ’s relationship with these store owners has been strained. Implementing digital solutions with little to no training or awareness of the change, insisting store owners change their business models to fit these digital tools, and overall a disconnected less personal approach.

 

NAPA HQ has made customer management and registration a top priority for their roadmap. Independent store owners manage registration with their customers manually with data entry and phone calls. They also use this as an opportunity to build relationships with the customer and gut check them for service level agreements and credit applications. HQ wants to make this process less manual, potentially even automatic. With this project comes along a desire to repair relationships with independent store owners. The challenge is how might we automate registration without alienating our independent store owners and take away a main source of relationship building with their customers?

This problem lead to a lot of discovery research before applying or hinting at any solution. All the ideas for solutions were taken as concepts to be tested in infancy. Workshops with stakeholders allowed us to gather their thoughts and put their ideas down on paper, we then took those ideas and prioritized them by the problem they were trying to solve.

Phase 1

Stakeholder & Designer Workshops to create stories

Phase 2

Pair the stories with images to create a comic like story board

Phase 3

Write a scrip to answer as many stakeholder questions during interviews.

Once we had the layout for each story, we begun to refine those stories and use AI to generate comic like images to go with. Creating something that our users could react to, relate to, and give feedback on. We refined these stories with stakeholders and designers before writing the discussion guide to go with it. We carefully went through all the questions our stakeholders had around these topics and paired them with individual frames of the comic creating sort of a script. This helped us get all our questions answered, and provide open dicsussion feedback from our users.

Concept 1

Customer self registration and reporting. Stakeholders expressed that their stores have concerns about fake accounts during self registration.

Concept 1’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 2

Customer self registration without automatically delivery. Stakeholders wanted to if customers who self register can be set up with delivery automatically and had heard stores opposing this idea.

Concept 2’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 3

Customer self registration with credit cards. Users in other studies complained about the need to run a credit check to be able to purchase from NAPA. When creating self registration what are the pros and cons for a store to accept a credit card instead?

Concept 3’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

We took several independant NAPA store owners through these concepts and asked

Independent store owners had a lot of negative reactions. This was not discouraging, in fact it was part of the exercise! We wanted to see what would upset our partners in the stores, and why they would be upset. To understand how to find the best solution, we had to understand the hardships. We wanted to repair the history GPC has with store owners of releasing digtial solutions without asking for feedback.

Together with my research partner, we went through and created a read out deck with all the compiled feedback and recommendations based on that feedback. I created an overall story for stakeholders to reference while creating roadmaps and design mocks. This was a step by step plan of release allowing for testing and gut checking with independent store owners a long the way. Creating a iterative plan of release to reach full customer self registration.

Storyboarding

Service Design Case Study

Customer Management for NAPA Auto Parts Stores

NAPA's customers could be considered the driver and owner of a car that needs to be repaired. You could also call the shops that do the repairing and buying of the individual replacement parts, the customer. Our stores do more than just source the part for shops, they also acquire and manage shops that order from the store. They manage their customers.

Stores can be owned by a independent person, as well as store that is owned by NAPA corporate (Genuine Parts Company). Corporate stores have more built in relationships and standardizations, where the independent store owners are more free to do what works best for them. This means the independent store owners are more varied in their management styles, sales strategies and administration tasks.

 

NAPA wants to streamline the registration of repair shops into our system so it is easier and quicker to start a relationship with NAPA part stores. How might we create this streamlined process without alienating or upsetting our independent store owners who have their own processes when it comes to registration, and their individual relationships with their customers. How might we make sure we don't break their trust if HQ streamlines tasks these store owners would usually handle manually on their own?

“We don’t sell parts, we sell service”

Independant NAPA Store Owner

Research Partcipant

The Challenge

Innovating without isolating independent store owners and breaking their customer's trust

The Approach

Use Storyboarding to present concepts to independent store owners to gage their interest/reactions.

The Outcome

Three storyboards and a research readout educating stakeholders on the reactions of their partners in the stores.

Independent store owners build relationships with their own customers. NAPA HQ acts more like a parent company in these relationships. Store owners use their own sales tactics to acquire those customers, and maintain or manage their customer’s information with their own digital (and manual) tools. Store owners build those relationships with their customers in person, and HQ is apart of that relationship by proxy in the customer’s mind.

 

In the past HQ’s relationship with these store owners has been strained. Implementing digital solutions with little to no training or awareness of the change, insisting store owners change their business models to fit these digital tools, and overall a disconnected less personal approach.

 

NAPA HQ has made customer management and registration a top priority for their roadmap. Independent store owners manage registration with their customers manually with data entry and phone calls. They also use this as an opportunity to build relationships with the customer and gut check them for service level agreements and credit applications. HQ wants to make this process less manual, potentially even automatic. With this project comes along a desire to repair relationships with independent store owners. The challenge is how might we automate registration without alienating our independent store owners and take away a main source of relationship building with their customers?

This problem lead to a lot of discovery research before applying or hinting at any solution. All the ideas for solutions were taken as concepts to be tested in infancy. Workshops with stakeholders allowed us to gather their thoughts and put their ideas down on paper, we then took those ideas and prioritized them by the problem they were trying to solve.

Phase 1

Stakeholder & Designer Workshops to create stories

Phase 2

Pair the stories with images to create a comic like story board

Phase 3

Write a scrip to answer as many stakeholder questions during interviews.

Once we had the layout for each story, we begun to refine those stories and use AI to generate comic like images to go with. Creating something that our users could react to, relate to, and give feedback on. We refined these stories with stakeholders and designers before writing the discussion guide to go with it. We carefully went through all the questions our stakeholders had around these topics and paired them with individual frames of the comic creating sort of a script. This helped us get all our questions answered, and provide open dicsussion feedback from our users.

Concept 1

Customer self registration and reporting. Stakeholders expressed that their stores have concerns about fake accounts during self registration.

Concept 1’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 2

Customer self registration without automatically delivery. Stakeholders wanted to if customers who self register can be set up with delivery automatically and had heard stores opposing this idea.

Concept 2’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 3

Customer self registration with credit cards. Users in other studies complained about the need to run a credit check to be able to purchase from NAPA. When creating self registration what are the pros and cons for a store to accept a credit card instead?

Concept 3’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

We took several independant NAPA store owners through these concepts and asked

Independent store owners had a lot of negative reactions. This was not discouraging, in fact it was part of the exercise! We wanted to see what would upset our partners in the stores, and why they would be upset. To understand how to find the best solution, we had to understand the hardships. We wanted to repair the history GPC has with store owners of releasing digtial solutions without asking for feedback.

Together with my research partner, we went through and created a read out deck with all the compiled feedback and recommendations based on that feedback. I created an overall story for stakeholders to reference while creating roadmaps and design mocks. This was a step by step plan of release allowing for testing and gut checking with independent store owners a long the way. Creating a iterative plan of release to reach full customer self registration.

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Service Design Work

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Storyboarding

Service Design Case Study

Customer Management for NAPA Auto Parts Stores

NAPA's customers could be considered the driver and owner of a car that needs to be repaired. You could also call the shops that do the repairing and buying of the individual replacement parts, the customer. Our stores do more than just source the part for shops, they also acquire and manage shops that order from the store. They manage their customers.

Stores can be owned by a independent person, as well as store that is owned by NAPA corporate (Genuine Parts Company). Corporate stores have more built in relationships and standardizations, where the independent store owners are more free to do what works best for them. This means the independent store owners are more varied in their management styles, sales strategies and administration tasks.

 

NAPA wants to streamline the registration of repair shops into our system so it is easier and quicker to start a relationship with NAPA part stores. How might we create this streamlined process without alienating or upsetting our independent store owners who have their own processes when it comes to registration, and their individual relationships with their customers. How might we make sure we don't break their trust if HQ streamlines tasks these store owners would usually handle manually on their own?

“We don’t sell parts, we sell service”

Independent NAPA Store Owner

Research Partcipant

The Challenge

Innovating without isolating independent store owners and breaking their customer's trust

The Approach

Use Storyboarding to present concepts to independent store owners to gage their interest/reactions.

The Outcome

Three storyboards and a research readout educating stakeholders on the reactions of their partners in the stores.

Independent store owners build relationships with their own customers. NAPA HQ acts more like a parent company in these relationships. Store owners use their own sales tactics to acquire those customers, and maintain or manage their customer’s information with their own digital (and manual) tools. Store owners build those relationships with their customers in person, and HQ is apart of that relationship by proxy in the customer’s mind.

 

In the past HQ’s relationship with these store owners has been strained. Implementing digital solutions with little to no training or awareness of the change, insisting store owners change their business models to fit these digital tools, and overall a disconnected less personal approach.

 

NAPA HQ has made customer management and registration a top priority for their roadmap. Independent store owners manage registration with their customers manually with data entry and phone calls. They also use this as an opportunity to build relationships with the customer and gut check them for service level agreements and credit applications. HQ wants to make this process less manual, potentially even automatic. With this project comes along a desire to repair relationships with independent store owners. The challenge is how might we automate registration without alienating our independent store owners and take away a main source of relationship building with their customers?

This problem lead to a lot of discovery research before applying or hinting at any solution. All the ideas for solutions were taken as concepts to be tested in infancy. Workshops with stakeholders allowed us to gather their thoughts and put their ideas down on paper, we then took those ideas and prioritized them by the problem they were trying to solve. Is this valuable to the company? Is it helpful to the customer? Does it positively impact the store? These we then turned into storyboards.

Phase 1

Stakeholder & Designer Workshops to create stories

Phase 2

Pair the stories with images to create a comic like story board

Phase 3

Write a scrip to answer as many stakeholder questions during interviews.

Once I had the layout for each story, I begun to refine those stories and use AI to generate comic like images to go with. Creating something that our users could react to, relate to, and give feedback on. I refined these stories with stakeholders and designers before writing the discussion guide to go with it. I carefully went through all the questions our stakeholders had around these topics and paired them with individual frames of the comic creating sort of a script. This helped us get all our questions answered, and provide open discussion feedback from our users.

Concept 1

Customer self registration and reporting. Stakeholders expressed that their stores have concerns about fake accounts during self registration.

Concept 1’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 2

Customer self registration without automatically delivery. Stakeholders wanted to if customers who self register can be set up with delivery automatically and had heard stores opposing this idea.

Concept 2’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

Concept 3

Customer self registration with credit cards. Users in other studies complained about the need to run a credit check to be able to purchase from NAPA. When creating self registration what are the pros and cons for a store to accept a credit card instead?

Concept 3’s Script

Questions for each frame as they are introduced

I took several independent NAPA store owners through these concepts. Interviewing them with the stakeholder questions and script to capture their feedback and gauge their reactions to customer self registration. I separated them into positive reactions, negative reactions, outstanding questions, and takeaways.

Independent store owners had a lot of negative reactions. This was not discouraging, in fact it was part of the exercise! I wanted to see what would upset our partners in the stores, and why they would be upset. To understand how to find the best solution, I had to understand the hardships. I wanted to repair the history GPC has with store owners of releasing digital solutions without asking for feedback. With these storyboards I was able to open communication with independent store owners allowing them to give us feedback, and be apart of the eventual solutions.

Together with my research partner, we went through and created a read out deck with all the compiled feedback and recommendations based on that feedback. I created an overall story for stakeholders to reference while creating roadmaps and design mocks. This was a step by step plan of release allowing for testing and gut checking with independent store owners a long the way. Creating a iterative plan of release to reach full customer self registration.