Nissan believes that customer experience will be the key differentiating factor for automotive companies in today’s competitive marketplace. Thus, they have been on a journey to transform the experience they deliver across their interactions with customers.

The global pandemic presented new challenges and accelerated the development of new and innovative digital journeys. It created global supply shortages and drastically changed how customers could shop for vehicles. When people were stuck at home, Nissan needed a way to show and sell their new flagship electric vehicle. The challenge was to share a sensory experience like shopping for a car with customers who couldn’t walk into a showroom.

Nissan wanted to build tangible value with its online presence, creating a scalable global e-commerce solution while removing barriers between online and physical experiences. It was essential to foster engagement through the entire buying journey - from initial vehicle research until the customer took their first drive in their new car.

It was an enormous task to transition their global web presence from a purely informational tool to an e-commerce platform. Delivering the pre-order experience for Nissan’s new vehicle was the first step on this journey.

In an industry known for a buyer journey that takes place face-to-face, we focused on a seamless blend of both physical and digital experiences, where customers could utilize online and offline tools and resources in their purchasing decisions.

We focused on envisioning the future customer experience with the latest technology, developing an integrated design and product solution, and generating new value streams beyond the car itself.

We integrated data from all touchpoints with customers, industry reports, and original research to create a complete view of the ideal customer journey. We synthesized the data to create a new framework, “Moments that Matter Most”, for identifying and quantifying the fundamental interactions that drive a positive customer experience. We were able to pinpoint the essential user needs that are most relevant when considering a purchase, from initial research to the first interaction with the dealership and, ultimately, the decision to purchase.

By mapping these interactions we created a parallel journey across all digital channels that enabled users to feel confident about choosing a car and paying a deposit online, even though they couldn’t get into dealerships in the same way as before.

Pre-order was a project that expanded Nissan's website into something more than just a purely informative tool. It was the beginning of their customer experience reinvention, allowing them to reposition the brand towards becoming a profitable e-commerce company.

Nissan customers could now configure and reserve a vehicle with a deposit before it was available for purchase. It opened the door to new possibilities for Nissan's customers, fostering an ongoing partnership while fueling a sense of empowerment, inspiration, and excitement around the car buying experience.

Even after customers made a purchase, we continued to enhance their experience, identifying moments for engagement to lead to a more solid foundation for retention. With the supply chain issues increasing wait times before a pre-ordered car was available to drive, Nissan filled that gap with detailed order tracking and guided learning about their new vehicle through the Smartskills app. This app is a modern owner's manual that provides vehicle and driving data with guided experiences to help them master new features and technologies in their car. A personalized handover with recommendations to help them get the most out of their car and relationship with Nissan accompanied their new vehicle.

The project was transformative for the Nissan website, representing the first step toward becoming an e-commerce company. The results were highly successful, exceeding the KPI set for the project of 2,000. In Japan, one key market, there were 100 pre-orders in 30 minutes, 1,000 pre-orders in 4 hours, and the 5,000 target was broken on the first weekend.

Year to date, the pre-order page has received more than 550,000 visits and over 13,000 deposits were taken. This represents more than $6.8M USD in revenue.

Nissan's customer experience reinvention was made possible by integrating and collaborating with multiple teams within the organization. However, creating an optimized customer-centric experience and applying effective management while strengthening the connection in 9 primary markets would be only half the breakthrough. The other half adopted a new organizational mindset that allowed high-performance teams to thrive with a new agile research methodology applied within the workflows. These changes resulted in a more effective design process, faster delivery, more intelligent decision-making, and ideating options with a lower cost.

The solution was launched in Japan in June 2021 and has since rolled out to 7 other countries, including the UK and the United States.