Revving up Roadside

Founded the UK in 1905 to help motorists avoid speed traps,
The Automobile Association - The AA for short - has the largest breakdown and recovery fleet in the UK. But as the category leader, they need to continually innovate so that their services remain relevant to their members.

Turning to Engine, The AA asked for help in re-designing their Roadside offer; developing a range of both significant and incremental innovations across a five-year time frame, backing each up with high-level business analysis and implementation plans.

Exploring motoring moments with customers

The project began by lifting the hood of The AA to discover how it worked. We visited call-centres, went on the road with Patrols (the technicians who repair vehicles), watched cars being fixed and spoke to their members on the roadside.

We interviewed key stakeholders from across the business and hosted a series of design research sessions with motorists to unearth their views on how The AA could be a future-proof motoring organisation. The insights developed from this research were profound, and set the scene for a series of inspired co-creation sessions with the business.

Exploring business capabilities with stakeholders

Attended by Patrols, marketeers, operations and business analysts, the co-creation sessions explored the businesses capabilities against a set of emerging differentiators and hygiene factors to establish a clear set of development priorities. The sessions then employed a Distributed Brainstorming technique to explore how a series of service design principles could be brought to life at key motoring moments for a series of carefully constructed and provocative customer persona’s.

At the end of the session, the ideas generated were screened and prioritised, and over the following weeks a series of nine propositions were developed, underpinned by a big and very secret strategic opportunity.

Distributed Brainstorm in action

Working with the senior management team, the propositions were reviewed, prioritised and further seeded with existing business developments to produce a high-level implementation roadmap, identifying interdependent work streams and responsibilities. With the propositions approved, all that remains is for the pilots to be completed, which will happen during 2008.