CDK GLOBAL: Shortening the Sales Cycle
In 2023, I and a team of three other UX Researchers worked on a project for CDK Global to uncover innovative approaches for shortening the car sales cycle and enhancing the overall car buying journey. Our research culminated in the formulation of actionable insights that we presented to the CDK Global team.
UX Research Team and Deliverables
The Team
Gabriel Najera
David Kerr
Tara Rastogi
Abigail Gore
Deliverables
User Interviews
Interview Moderating & Notetaking
Qualitative Research
Test Documentation (Screeners, Moderator Scripts, & Participant Packets)
Affinity Mapping
Synthesis
Presentations to Stakeholders
Project Overview
Client Needs:
Our client, CDK Global was interested in finding ways in which car dealerships could shorten the car sales cycle by uncovering the impact of common car dealership activities on customers’ car buying experience(s). From this research goal, we embarked on a project to arrive at actionable insights that our client could use to design an improved car sales cycle for customers.
Methodology:
Our sole criteria restriction for our participants was that they had to have bought a car during or after 2020 from a car dealership.
We conducted 8 user interviews.
From the data we uncovered in our interviews, we constructed a broad persona and journey map. From there, we proposed a set of opportunities for the team from CDK Global to pursue for an improved car buying experience.
Participant Recruitment
Documents:
We figured out what criteria participants had to meet in order to ensure we gained highly reliable data. To view our screener click on the button below.
We recruited eight participants that met the criteria we set in our screener.
Additionally, we assembled a discussion guide so as to extract the most valuable data from our participants. Our discussion guide can be viewed by clicking the button below.
Participant Interviews
Interviews:
Our team carried out 8 interviews in total (2 per researcher), using the transcription component in zoom. To counteract any inaccuracies in transcription that commonly take place with this feature, we each checked the transcriptions for accuracy against the recording. To view one of my interview transcripts please click on the button below.
Afterwards, we coded each transcript, basing our codings on key occurrences and subjectivites experienced by our participants. With these highlights, we constructed an affinity diagram to assemble our findings and began extracting major themes. We began with each person’s findings.
From these findings we created an affinity diagram:
Afterwards we made several iterations of our affinity diagram (organizing by various themes and building out the final version). In the later iteration, we found a few more groups and added those and then distilled each group into an insight.
Conclusions/Analysis/Recommendations
Personas & Journey Map
Basing ourselves on the affinity diagrams above, we assembled a persona profile and a journey map of the car buying process. Both of these played a significant role in unearthing our key findings.
The persona profile was constructed with the following criteria:
Younger millenials (in their 30s)
Professional salaries, albeit still price conscious
Purchased cars from dealerships (not private individuals)
Wanted particular makes/models/components
Researched before going to dealership
Cautious about sales people because of anecdotes and general reputation derived from family and friends
Journey Map below
Key Findings:
Sales Associate Relations - The manner in which a sales associate treats the car buyer strongly impacts how the car buyer experiences the entire car buying process.
In arriving at this insight, we noticed patterns of both positive and negative relationships with sales associates. We spotted precisely when ech of these relationships began to frame the overall experience for the buyer.
2. Customer Success Management - It is essential to actively engage car buyers and give them feedback (high visibility of system status) as the car buying process unfolds.
Among the customer pain points we discovered, we found areas where car dealerships should convey “system status” updates to customers.
Recommendations:
In addition to these two key findings, we probed other insights (findings) and potential opportunities (recommendations).
