Equipped with the knowledge from our initial research and experimentation, we wanted to get a more nuanced understanding about the specific problems that exist in the current used car buying experience. Our goal was to begin exploring what high-value opportunity areas exist for a conversational agent to augment the experience.
With our focus being to improve a service, not a product, we knew that to discover opportunity areas we needed to understand the perspectives of the different actors on both the consumer and business sides of the experience. With this in mind, we conducted interviews with people currently/recently in the market for a used car, recent CarMax customers, CarMax sales consultants, and online CarMax chat agents.
We identified two major types of shoppers as candidates of use for a conversartional agent. One is the Validation Seeker, whose goal is to find a car that is the ‘right’ fit for them. They typically rely on their own research and seek interactions that reward their efforts. They want to come to their own conclusions and are willing to take the time required to do that.
The other type of shopper is the In-Store Explorer who wants to maximize value in their car purchase. They conduct some research before arriving at CarMax, but primarily rely on their experiences with the experts and the cars themselves to narrow their decisions.
In addition to customer personas, we created journey maps to examine of both of these ideal personas move through the car-buying process. By creating 2 separate journeys, we can identify overlapping pain-points or areas where the conversational agent may need to adapt to the unique needs of the variety of customers who shop with CarMax.
