Reducing Dealer Call Volume: a Unified Order Tracking for Omnichannel Sales.
My Role
Product Design Lead
Team
1 Business PO
1 IT PO
2 Designers
18 Developers
Company
BMW Group
The Challenge
When a customer purchases a new vehicle from a dealer, their excitement quickly turns to anxiety. The process—from factory order to final pickup—can take months and spans multiple internal systems, creating a major transparency gap.
This friction manifested as a severe operational bottleneck:
Customer Pain
After leaving the dealership, the customer was left in the dark. Without any digital visibility, their only option was to repeatedly call the dealer for a status update, leading to high anxiety.
Dealer Pain
Dealership staff were overwhelmed, spending hours each week fielding repetitive "Where is my order?" calls. This diverted their time and attention away from high-value activities like sales and personalized customer service. The internal system was not built for customer communication, only for inventory management.
Design for Transparency and Trust
With a unified data model defined, we focused the UI on clarity, proactive information, and managing expectations.
We designed the Order Tracking Dashboard based on three key design principles:
Status Simplicity
The current milestone is visually dominant. We display only the four key status milestones, greyed out until achieved.
Proactive Information
For the current status, we included a brief "What Happens Next" text block. For example, if the status is On the way, the message reads: "Your vehicle is en route to your dealership and will arrive within the next 7-10 days. We will notify you again once it is ready for handover." This preempts the customer's next question and reduces the urge to call.
Closing The Loop (Omnichannel)
The final status, Delivered, displays an option to reach the dealer in case you need any clarification after the pick up, providing a seamless hand-off back to the physical channel on the post-purchase.
The Discover Hub: Proactive Preparation
To address the customer's anxiety and prepare them for vehicle ownership, we built the Discover page. This feature injected value and reduced the likelihood of future post-delivery support calls:
Contextual Content
Based on the customer’s ordered vehicle model (e.g., specific BMW or MINI model), the platform surface relevant content such as “How To” videos (e.g., operating the infotainment system, pairing the mobile app) and information on available connected services.
App Adoption
Explicit guidance and videos on how to install and connect the mobile application were provided, ensuring digital fluency before handover.
A unified order tracking and post-sale engagement service.
Prepare Handover: Digitizing the Final Mile
This feature was designed to tackle the omnichannel friction that occurred just before pickup, significantly boosting dealer efficiency.
When the vehicle status transitioned to "Ready for Pickup" (after final cleanup and inspection at the dealer), the customer received a prompt to complete the Prepare Handover flow:
Handover Preference
Customers chose their preferred handover experience (e.g., a quick pickup vs. a detailed technical explanation). This pre-empted the dealer’s time allocation.
Proxy Authorization
Customers could digitally submit the details of an authorized pickup person, solving a common last-minute legal and logistical hurdle for dealers.