Mechanics@Home

Abstract

This graduation project is carried out for PostNL's XL parcel delivery. PostNL is one of the biggest delivery companies in the Netherlands and one of their departments takes care of XL parcel delivery. This department is called Extra@Home. XL parcels can be seen as non-regular parcels, meaning odd sizes or weights. For Extra@Home, the XL parcel delivery comes with a delivery, installation and assemblage service. Products varying from wardrobes to washing machines can be delivered, assembled and installed in the customer's house.

Extra@Home proposed a graduation internship to analyse the current customer journey to search for possible service optimisations. Context analysis and literature research outline the graduation project's context.

The customer journey was composed with literature review and user research insights. User research was conducted by interviewing expert, experiencing a service delivery, interviewing Extra@Home's customers and experiencing the communication. From the customer journey negative and positive customer experiences were derived. Negative customer experiences were evaluated with the SERVQUAL model. The SERVQUAL model provided two different design directions: Extra@Home can be more customer-oriented and services of Extra@Home can be more user-centred. Several factors led to the decision to continue with the last direction.

This direction was the start of the designing process, with the outcome of Mechanics@Home (Figure 1). It is a service designed for Extra@Home that improves the current service. It is a user-centred service, that emphasises the core values and strengths of PostNL.

Customers and mechanics of Extra@Home are put at the centre of the service. The service is a personal approach to the current service. The customer gets the opportunity to get to know the mechanic before they come to their house to deliver and install a product. The customer also receives personal communication from the mechanic with updates about their delivery.

An integration with the current PostNL app makes sure that customers have a positive experience when encountering the service of Extra@Home. Instead of a lot of different communication channels, everything can be handled in the PostNL app. Transparant communication about what happens in the service journey is essential.

From the mechanic's point of view, the service highlights the skilled mechanics, which will create a feeling of responsibility from the mechanics. This feeling of responsibility exists, because the customer knows them., because they are responsible for their service delivery and they are known by the customer.

A service blueprint outlines the service of Mechanics@Home with front- and backstage actions. For a direct implementation a service roadmap was created. This roadmap has a three-step implementation strategy and it works towards the vision of integrating Mechanics@Home completely in the PostNL app and in Extra@Home.

Finally, Mechanics@Home was validated with all the important stakeholders in this project: customers, Extra@Home, mechanics and the marketing team.