Volvo shoot in Halmstad, Sweden. 09/15/2021
Novus Select
A new app for iPhone and Apple Watch, available exclusively to Volvo Service technicians, is changing how they are interacting with customers, and each other.
The Volvo Service app from Volvo Car Sweden came about with the intention of creating more time with the customer—building customer relations is paramount, the company said.
The new app is currently live in Sweden and being tested in Norway but is planned to roll out globally in time. Because it works both on iPhone and Apple Watch, it offers flexibility and freedom from being tethered to desktop computers, as some of the systems were before.
As the customer arrives at the service center, the technician is automatically sent a notification to their wrist, so they can greet the customer promptly. As well as the customer’s name, the car’s service history is right there on the technician’s wrist. Previously, they’d have had to go to a desktop computer and read it there, or else print it out to be able to have it to hand back at the car. So, this new system saves paper, too, with paper printouts decreasing by 40% since the app was introduced.
The idea of putting the app on the Watch, as well as on an iPhone, is genius. Small and convenient though the iPhone is, you need a hand to hold it. However, even if both your hands are full with tools or bits of car, you need nothing to hold your Watch because it’s strapped to your wrist already, of course.
Not to mention that if you really need to touch the Watch screen when your hands are incontrovertibly full, you can resort to the most underrated input mechanism known to touchscreens: just lean towards your wrist and tap it with your nose. Or is that just me?
Volvo shoot in Halmstad, Sweden. 09/15/2021
Novus Select
When the car is ready, the system nudges the technician to remind them to call the customer. They can make this call, of course, right from the Apple Watch, assuming they are wearing headphones like AirPods. This means they can be working on the car even while they’re on a call.
I spoke with Sanna Lindström, Volvo Car Sweden’s head of digital transformation, Digitalisation Director Markus Lundström, and Erik Bylund, head of tech and architecture and asked how the app worked. Is it always-on, taking over the Watch or can it still be used conventionally, I wondered? In other words, could the technician still use it for other things like counting steps or listening to music as well as keeping track of the car repair?
Bylund explained: “The app is always available whenever the technician wants to use it. Like with other apps, you can listen to music, they can do whatever they want, calls are coming through as usual. It’s always in tune with the systems. Technicians also use other apps alongside the service app, they using the Walkie Talkie feature, for example. Instead of shouting to each other in the workshop, they can just press the Walkie Talkie and talk to a colleague who’s 50 meters down the hall.”
Lindström added, “We did have some technicians who even before they installed it said they still got huge value out of the Watch because they got notifications and could see who was calling and answer customers’ calls easily. That was a big finding actually, that there are benefits even without the Service app.”
Lundström said that far from taking over the Watch, what Volvo Car Sweden was doing was “feeding the data in the background to the Watch, so it’s there in an instant and so we don’t have to send a question to our core system, we’re always pushing the data to the devices.”
Training technicians to use the system is straightforward, apparently. Perhaps because Apple devices tend to be intuitive, the training time is pretty short: “It’s about an hour,” Bylund said, which is definitely quick. “From the start we wanted them to be able to use it intuitively, without much training. It’s designed to be as easy to use as a really good consumer app. That was our goal all the time. Our engineers stay out in the workshops, working with the service technicians, so when we add something to it, it’s already tested. Everything is about removing friction and making it easier for the technicians.”
Because the data was designed for the Watch screen, it means that only what is needed is there and is easily accessible, without filling the screen with extra details that would get in the way.
Greeting customers is more efficient with the new Volvo Car Sweden app.
Volvo
The app is already proving successful, with customers reporting that their ability to access a technician has significantly improved.
Apple’s focus on business apps and serving enterprise is nothing new, even if the addition of enterprise features has often been done quietly in the background. Always with the same focus on easy, enjoyable user experience that iPhone or Watch users, for instance, are familiar with in their personal lives.
Alongside that, Apple’s desire to create something that’s frictionless for everyone involved, from the user to the IT department deploying the app, fits perfectly with the aims of Volvo Car Sweden.
