FEDEX MOBILE
Designing critical interventions in a global mobile app to gain millions
in operational savings
IA Collaborative
Project Lead & Design Director
IA Collaborative
Project Lead & Design Director
CHALLENGE
Define new customer-facing interactions in the existing mobile app that gave couriers information they could use to make proactive, real-time adjustments to deliveries and pickups based on customer availability.
Seeking to capture massive operational savings by preempting missed deliveries, FedEx tasked my team to design new functionality within already-defined use cases and flow in the FedEx mobile app. Going on the road with FedEx couriers showed us first hand how a lack of customer communication puts pressure on their routes and leads to service disruption. When something goes wrong, a small team of dispatchers coordinates solutions, couriers find in-the-moment workarounds, or customers are left to deal with customer service reps—all inefficient and expensive options.
Seeing these pain points, we broke down the existing app to find key moments where customers might communicate throughout the shipping journey if they were given the opportunity. After prototyping UX concepts with customers in Chicago and Amsterdam, we designed the “four buttons:” timely interventions nested into already-built flows for pickup and delivery enabling customers to share critical info that couriers can use to adjust their routes accordingly.
Define new customer-facing interactions in the existing mobile app that gave couriers information they could use to make proactive, real-time adjustments to deliveries and pickups based on customer availability.
Seeking to capture massive operational savings by preempting missed deliveries, FedEx tasked my team to design new functionality within already-defined use cases and flow in the FedEx mobile app. Going on the road with FedEx couriers showed us first hand how a lack of customer communication puts pressure on their routes and leads to service disruption. When something goes wrong, a small team of dispatchers coordinates solutions, couriers find in-the-moment workarounds, or customers are left to deal with customer service reps—all inefficient and expensive options.
Seeing these pain points, we broke down the existing app to find key moments where customers might communicate throughout the shipping journey if they were given the opportunity. After prototyping UX concepts with customers in Chicago and Amsterdam, we designed the “four buttons:” timely interventions nested into already-built flows for pickup and delivery enabling customers to share critical info that couriers can use to adjust their routes accordingly.
OUTCOME
The four buttons provide solutions for major delivery & pickup exceptions—preventing missed deliveries when nobody is home, unproductive pickups when regulars have nothing to ship, and increasing volume to secure pickup points as an alternative to doorstep delivery.
The four buttons provide solutions for major delivery & pickup exceptions—preventing missed deliveries when nobody is home, unproductive pickups when regulars have nothing to ship, and increasing volume to secure pickup points as an alternative to doorstep delivery.
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Unlocked over $577 million in annual operational savings across the Express &
Ground network in the US
alone:
$70M from unproductive pickups (68k/day)
$123.5M from inaccessible addresses (50k/day)
$2.3M from early pickups (1.6k/day)
$380M from unreleased deliveries (356k/day) - $27.5M in additional potential savings from reducing customer service calls related to problem resolution and delivery management
- Empowered product owners to implement faster technical alignment clinics with FedEx team leads (such as engineering, systems, operations, legal, etc) to map implementation requirements against current capabilities and potential breakpoints that could slow development (eg,legacy information architecture)
