Venture building for an online car service
How is Germany’s biggest car insurance company setting new standards? By being the first to develop a holistic approach to all car services – and we’re talking every single situation that could be relevant for customers today. From the purchase or leasing of a car, through to the financing and insurance, from maintenance and repairs to the sale of a used car. We have joined forces with HUK COBURG to create the first mobility eco system that seamlessly brings together both digital and stationary touchpoints for private mobility. HUK AutoWelt means: One reliable source. One uniform user-experience. One platform. All relevant services.
Insights
- service partners in this huge network
- 460
- to the nearest garage - maximum distance customers face
- 8min
- months to market
- 5
No more confusing price policies when buying a car, no more extortionate insurance rates and no more nasty surprises at the garage. We have considered every single touchpoint involved in the lifecycle of a car. Finally, a transparent and straightforward experience – amazing what's possible in a sector that hasn’t seen structural change for decades. HUK Autowelt consists of four main services: AutoKauf, AutoVerkauf, AutoService und AutoAbo. We have taken the analog hustle and transformed it into a digital and stationary user service. The AutoService experience proves just how fast change is possible. It's the very first, utterly new digital service building-block, developed and implemented in less than five months.
AutoService: A garage can be simple, online & transparent
A tricky search, non-transparent services, and a nasty surprise when you see the bill: to be perfectly honest, a garage has often been a place where customers simply get... well... annoyed. We’ve transformed that. Our digitalized HUK AutoService makes booking garage appointments really easy and the service provided more transparent than ever. Everything from choosing the right garage and the necessary services to paying the bill is now done online. A completely new user experience in a sector where the structures haven’t changed for decades. We’ve turned analog garage hassle into a real online user service.
For HUK-AutoWelt and the 12 million customers of Germany’s No. 1 car insurer HUK-COBURG, we created HUK AutoService so that every customer immediately knows what it is: a new and extremely uncomplicated means of finding a reliable, certified garage close by, booking an appointment there, and getting nothing but reliable, favorably priced service. But for HUK AutoWelt it’s about more than just that. For them it’s all about the verticalization of a business segment, opening new market potentials and areas through consistent digitalization of a traditionally ultra-analog business, and developing a future-proof product in an extremely short go-to-market time.
“Garages and all their related services are a very traditional market. HUK AutoService makes this business fit for the future. Right from the start, Edenspiekermann established a sound and solid foundation through precise research and user testings, as well as demonstrating how a well-thought-out user experience can not only prove helpful, but can also lead to enhanced credibility and better service. The outcome is the first consistently implemented digitalization of a previously elaborate and ultra-analog business model.”Sebastian Lins, CEO HUK-AutoWelt
Explore
Right from day one of the product development process, we established a sound foundation through qualitative analyses and research. In concrete terms, we visited users and garages, conducted interviews, and analyzed processes and structures. The starting point was qualitative user interviews to validate the pain points and riskiest business assumptions. We then focused on the overall journey and after that, the user flow within the product. One key insight: We differentiated between two user types: the comfort-oriented and the price-oriented ones. Real field research formed the cornerstone of a successful project.
Strategize
We rethought how we visit a garage in such a way that such visits could be perfectly digitally mapped in our user journey. Hardly an easy job in a long-established system. That’s why we made the digital user experience the core of the product and worked in the same way as the service itself will be used: mobile first.
Design
Optimized user guidance and a seamless digital experience – that’s our goal. All the findings of our research and analyses were fed into the development process in innumerable speedy iteration stages in order to create the perfect user experience. And we actually did that in two separate designs: one optimized for HUK-COBURG customers in their branding, and one for HUK24 customers in their branding. In this way, these two groups of customers can enjoy a compelling and intuitive brand experience.
Build
Parallel to this, we implemented all the strategic findings and solutions hand in hand with our strategic technology partner foobar Agency out of Munich. The outcome: the best possible integration into the existing structures of HUK AutoWelt and thus an optimized, intuitive user experience along with a high-performance, event-based technical architecture for powerful back-end service.
“We love Venture Design projects where the opportunities for digitalization are so incredibly obvious — and rewarding for our clients’ customers. And where the time to market is so short even we talk about a real challenge.”Christian Hanke, Managing Director & Partner, Edenspiekermann
Traditional business segments are often limited in their growth potential. This is particularly true of the automotive segment. That is why with HUK AutoService we created a completely new value-added model that can be perfectly incorporated into existing structures. But to be honest, we actually created a completely new customer journey – simpler, more intuitive, more digital. This business model is nicely in tune with our client’s core business supplemented by vertical added value and brings the users real benefits. It makes their life easier and perfectly links digital and analog touchpoints.
For us this is an ideal example of successful corporate venturing. As the strategic partner in this venture, we developed a viable, future-proof product in the shortest possible time and brought it to market as a scalable MVP. This is not just an extremely powerful outcome for our client; we are also absolutely certain that 36 million car owners in Germany will profit from this service.
A reformation of the garage experience: bringing such an extensive product to market in just seven months is a huge success for us and HUK AutoWelt. But that’s no reason to rest on our laurels. We’re already working on the next steps. After all, that’s the only way innovation stays innovative.
