PhillyCarShare
The Problem
With a very large diverse fleet of vehicles and locations, PhillyCarShare members were having difficulty finding an appropriate vehicle, at a nearby location, at the desired time. Members would sometimes not make a reservation not knowing that a suitable alternative was only half a block away. Furthermore, a change in customer rate plans meant that prices were no longer flat across the board, but rather varied with the type and location of the vehicles. The customer reservation interface needed to convey much more information to the user and allow the user to filter their search parameters by many more criteria including specialized vehicle amenities and estimated costs. PhillyCarShare engaged Metavera to address some of these key business issues through a technology addition.
The Metavera Solution
Metavera analyzed the customer requirements and suggested developing a brand new user interface for booking customer reservations. This unique interface was designed to accomplish the following goals:
- Remember members known locations (home and work addresses) and vehicle favorites
- Showcase the variety of all vehicle types in PhillyCarShare’s fleet
- Simple browsing of all the fleet locations in the city
- Differentiate the fleet by make, model and class of use
- Allow unique flexible time searches for time matches that may not be exact for members willing to adjust their reservation times by a small window
- Allow members to search for vehicles with specific amenities (child seat, extended cab, bike racks, etc)
- Present search results in both a geo-spatial and ranked list format
- Provide the user with all important reservation details before booking (cost, amenities, and photos)
Results
With the introduction of the new user interface, the following results were evident:
- More balanced fleet utilization
- Scalability to many hundreds of cars
- Fewer customer sessions with no reservations made
- Positive member feedback
- PhillyCarShare has recently won an award