A Car Wash Experience Unlike Any Other
- You can wash your car as much as you like for a predictable monthly subscription
- You can use any one of their multiple locations around the Southern California area
- They provide a concierge service that focuses highly on the customer experience
- They are focused on conservation and giving back. Partnering with Wells Bring Hope, an organization that drills wells to bring safe water and sanitation to West Africa.
Situation
The Bliss Car Wash brand was already pretty great. They had a rising subscriber base and were opening new locations on a regular basis. Many of their metrics are moving in the right direction (up and to the right). What they were lacking was the technology that would make it easier to use their service and provide valuable features to their customers. Much of their existing technology was focused on the washing systems and guest service attendants and not targeting the customers. Specifically online tools or a mobile experience.
Approach
This type of engagement is very much digital product development. We were able to use our previous experience building products and services to help implement a comprehensive digital experience. Like every other project we work on, the first phase is the strategy phase where we focus on:
- User Journey: We walk through each touchpoint the customer has with the experience and evaluate the pains and gains delivered in every step.
- Brand Alignment: Evaluation of the brand and understanding the key messaging, purpose, and positing was very important to ensure what we create is 100% on-brand.
- Technical Consulting: At the end of our research we needed to be able to provide recommendations for the best user experiences with the known constraints.
Solution
It was determined that the next step for Bliss was to create a mobile application that could enhance the in-person experience as well as provide online tools available through the web to help manage other available services. It was also determined that customers should be incentivized to use the application and services by providing loyal customers with high-value rewards.
We followed our well established digital product development process to design and develop these new products.
- Discovery: A deep dive in the brand, technology systems, data, and competitors informed a need to create a mobile app that provided extra enhancements to the customer, like being able to buy washes from their phone or gain access to vacuum codes on location without waiting for an attendant.
- Design Sprints: The phase in which we designed the overall User Experience (UX) and visual design of the application. After designs were approved they were put into a fully working prototype.
- Agile Development: With a fully approved prototype we were able to start our development process using our product development 70/30 rule. Each two-week sprint we completed both new features and hardened the product along the way.
- Testing: Even though we tested the application every sprint, time was reserved at the end of the project to validate all of the previous work and assured that not only the application was functional, it was fun and easy to use.
- App Store Submission: When the time comes, we need to launch the applications and start gathering customer feedback.
“Our entire team is extremely happy with the work that Solid Digital is producing. They are always on time and very appropriately-priced for the work they do and the time and energy they’re putting in. ”
Ash, Vice President, Bliss Car Wash
