Scott Griffith – User Experience is in our Mission Statement – Zipcar [uxweek08 notes]

Image by sachman75 via Flickr

Scott Griffith is CEO of ZipCar – http://www.zipcar.com

They record videos since itâ€™s easier to explain to new users.

Confluences of trends that they have to think about when designing a service

Gas prices

Education members about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Urban Living

More people living in urban area then ever before. Cities in US are vitally important to lifestyles.

About 40% percent of global population is living in a city, and in 20 years this number will grow to 60%. Itâ€™s a worldwide trend.

Sustainability

People are more concerned about greener and sustainable lifestyles. Living green is a big issue for consumers now.

Example: hybrid only parking spaces

Self-service

The ATM started this, but with Internet things like Netflix become commonly available service. Even self-service checkout option at the grocery stores.

Zipcar mission statement – to enable simple and responsible urban living

People arenâ€™t really in love with their car, theyâ€™re really in love with the freedom that this car gives them. So the goal is to give as much freedom to the users as possible.

Itâ€™s all built on self-service built user community.

Five core values in place:Â

Be a Zipster: develop a sense of belonging and an unparalleled user experiences for our membership community

Keep it Simple: We win through simplicity and continuos innovation

[and three more, less important for this presentation]

Another cool slogan: Selling car ownership – one hour at a time

Every Zipcar takes 15-20 personally owned cars off the road. It also means that you save about 600 dollars a month.

The Zipcar Experience – Behind the Scenes

Philosophy – the experience is the brand.

What back office tools and infrastructure is needed to be able to provide such experience to the front-office, itâ€™s something thatâ€™s always on mind.

They have 225k members randomly using 6k vehicles. Bad things happen, a lot.

Approach

Traditional product marketing replaced with experience team

Member feedback and input

Internal alignment on priorities

Strengthen social contract members

Social contract with members

6 simple rules â†’ member education

The brand is about freedom, not about cars .

The brand is the total experience and the experience is everything

Core values that drive a culture of high performance service

It takes a commitment to the experience approach from leadership – to make the hard choices

A strong social contract with users – community