National Mobile App
National Car Rental partnered with Merkle Inc to develop a holistic strategy that enabled and focused their design and technical efforts in both the near-term and long-term.
Overview
Objective
Merkle was presented with the opportunity to take an established mobile app and push it further, striking the perfect balance of maintaining features that loyal users loved while finding new inroads into more valuable and engaging experiences.
This took into account stakeholder input, customer-first opportunities, and identified new ways for National Car Rental to elevate the brand experience, member support, and overall satisfaction.
Approach
The first step to establish the North Star vision of the National Mobile App involved working closely with National Car Rental’s key decision makers to better understand the project scope and design resources needed for the project.
Strategic analysis of foundational documents, extensive stakeholder interviews and discovery workshops were fundamental in shaping the redesign efforts and the overarching project plan that spanned two distinct phases - current app redesign, and value-added innovative features and functionality.
After project planning and timing were solidified based on initial discovery, I worked closely with executive leadership to staff a team of Merkle design professionals, ensuring a rich and nuanced composition of skills and talent. This involved collaborating with Dentsu Global to find the optimal balance of project needs and budget. The resulting team blend encompassed both local resources and off-shore talent.
Project Deliverables
Phase 1 project deliverables heavily relied on the output of strategic discovery, competitive landscape analysis, insights, user interviews, and usability testing insights. The core focus was on enhancing the current experience, encapsulated within 10 high-priority feature sets.
For Phase 2, we introduced key features that supported the concept of blending the lines between business and personal travel, termed "Bleisure," as business and leisure are no longer considered distinct modes of travel. Innovative new functionality was created and implemented in the app to support customers' business and personal needs, aligning with the hypothesis that "with an experience designed to celebrate the fluidity of travel, customers will choose National more often, resulting in greater lifetime customer value."
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