Fleet Optimization
Introduction
Zipcar, the world's leading car-sharing network, serves over a million users across urban areas, college campuses, and major cities worldwide. With a fleet exceeding 3,000 vehicles, efficient management is crucial for member satisfaction and revenue optimization.
As the Senior Product Designer and product lead for Zipcar's Fleet Operations Team, I was tasked with addressing critical inefficiencies in our fleet management process.
- Led end-to-end design process and product roadmap for a net new fleet management platform, driving innovation and operational efficiency for a 3000+ vehicle fleet.
- Partnered with senior leadership to shape product vision, driving key business requirements through fleet optimization, CX and repair time reduction, projecting significant revenue growth.
- Mentored junior designers and streamlined collaboration by leading the switch to Figma, resulting in a more cohesive design system and improved team efficiency.
- Conducted quarterly usability research across Zipcar’s parking stations and supply chain repair shops to inform and refine product designs.
The Challenge:
Our existing system was plagued with three main issues:
1. Limited Visibility: Identifying why vehicles were blocked for extended periods or for service repairs was not efficient. This impacts market managers all the way up to leadership.
2. Ineffective Issue/Ticket Management: Our ticketing system was drowning in noise. A staggering 72% of tickets were auto-closed or resolved without action. The first-in, first-out paradigm made it impossible to prioritize based on member impact, backlog or location of a fleet manager.
3. Inefficient Field Operations: Without a mobile friendly tool, our mobile fleet team lacked tools for efficient route planning and real-time communication. There was no unified platform to record vehicle updates, making it challenging to determine when a vehicle was truly "member-ready."
The Opportunity
Decrease block percentage = Increase revenue.
Every hour a Zipcar vehicle spent blocked represented lost revenue and diminished member satisfaction.
Reducing blocked vehicles by 5% in one market would potentially unlocking over a million dollars a year in revenue.
Research Questions
Every problem opportunity I identified went through a design thinking cycle that always begins with a specific how might we question that can be translated into an opportunity.
Starting with these questions enabled the team to consider the multiple avenues for ideation and ensure the UI is being design with user desired outcomes in mind.
How might we
How might we provide better visibility into new issues and ongoing repairs to drive down time per block?
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Ideation Phase
It was time to generate ideas through research insights, empathy and team inspiration pushing past the obvious ones.
Wild or future ideas are always encouraged. Some of these ideas were ready to prototyping while others prepared us for the next research study or how might we question.
I also use this phase to bring in non-designers and fleet managers into Crazy 8 style workshops. The fleet team felt passionate about these workshops because they felt their voice was heard.
I am not a huge believe in the proper crazy 8's so I wrote up my 4 step workshop layout here.
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Validate & Learn
I tested these prototypes using Maze and dogfood testing while in the field with our fleet managers. We set up fake (but realistic) tickets to assign fleet managers to get live feedback and validate (not not validate) certain workflow in the app.
Share The Story
To confidently present a brand new tool, I made the story about the opportunity.
Introducing this tool is not just about training or implementation plans. We are introducing a new process, new terminology, brand new OKR's.
Every minute the fleet team spends filtering through noisy vehicle reports, driving all the way to a vehicle for one minor issue that does not impact NPS results in vehicles being blocked for longer periods of time.
Every hour that a Zipcar vehicle spends blocked is lost revenue from being unavailable to members.
- Drive down time per block
- Build a product that will drive down blocked vehicles by 5% - 380 vehicles x $0.00 times 12 months = $0.00M vehicle costs ($ has been removed and set to $0 due to privacy)
- Drive down 20% for each market
The Solution
A 2-STEP FLEET OPTIMIZATION WORKFLOW
1. Better Visibility into vehicle issues
For our fleet managers, working on the computer, grouping reports and issues by vehicle reduces a significant amount of time searching through the noise.
2. Member Ready - mobile experience.
A new mobile first experience for the fleet team, who drive across cities managing a daily list of vehicles requiring issue resolution. The tool must quickly answer five questions from the list view:
- What vehicles are assigned to me?
- Where are the vehicles located?
- What tasks need to be resolved?
- How long will these tasks take? (helping decide if user plan the most efficient route)
- After the task has been addressed, is the vehicle considered member ready?
Notable Communication features
Communicating Vehicle Status
Zipcar fleet team used to create, manage and track tickets all in one tab. I introduced new tabs and new status options to better communicate the progress and responsibility of the ticket. Now, the fleet team will create tickets to assign and schedule in the Open Tab. They will regularly monitor ongoing tickets in the "Review" tab that need a final approval or escalation to a supply chain service location or requires a cleaning vendor. The Service Location tab will organize all vehicles out of service for repairs, often have a longer down time than vehicles with quick tasks in the field.
