Creating a product portfolio for one of Australia's largest retailers

Background

• hipages is a two-sided marketplace where homeowners can connect with professional tradies to complete projects around their home
• In late 2017 Bunnings approached hipages and several of its competitors to investigate if one of the organisations could help it build a series of in-home services
• After pitching, hipages was asked to partner with Bunnings
• The project kicked off in January 2018 with a go live date planned for mid-March

Problems

• How do you design and define a new product type, one the organisation has no experience in?
• How do you test the concept prior to launch?
• How do you work with a new partner to launch a combined product for the first time?

In January 2018, hipages had only ever had one product for their lead generation business. This was called GetQuotes and it basically facilitated a homeowner connecting with up to three similarly qualified tradies. As the name suggests, those tradies could then quote on the work with one being selected as the winner.

Bunnings requested a variation to this, their goal was for someone to purchase a fixture or fitting in-store and then use hipages to arrange an installation. The cost, scope of work and inclusions would all need to be fixed and ideally the customer would only have to deal with one tradie, not three. I was set the challenge of designing how this new, fixed-price install model would work. I needed to cover all aspects of the consumer experience starting with the purchase in-store through to them reviewing and completing the installation.

In order to compete with a recent ALDI promotion, Bunnings asked hipages to facilitate the install of a toilet, assuming a like-for-like replacement. This is when a toilet is already installed and the consumer wishes to replace the toilet with a new unit.

Objectives

We had eight weeks to:

1. Create a new type of product that could be sold instore at Bunnings Warehouses
2. Ensure the product had good product-market fit
3. Design the customer and tradie experience for the product both offline and online
4. Build the product and distribute it plus all of the marketing materials to all the fifteen pilot stores
5. Train the Bunnings team members so that they could sell and support the product

Approach

Research, research, research

I first needed to get up to speed with how a toilet is installed and the details of the installation such as parts, duration and typical problems. To get the basics I conducted some desk research on DIY websites and Youtube.

Once I knew the correct terms and language I began talking to our customers. I started by calling some of our consumer customers who had recently completed toilet install jobs by connecting to plumbers through our normal GetQuotes service . I asked them about how long the job had taken, whether the plumber had come across any issues, how much the job cost and did the plumber take their old toilet away. From these interviews I was able to build up a high-level view of what’s involved in a toilet installation.

I then arranged a workshop with six plumbers to get the plumbers' perspective on toilet installs. During the workshop we walked through a typical toilet installation starting with how they prepare for the job and how they discuss the installation with their customers so as to understand their language and questioning style. We discussed what they charge and what they normally include for that price. Once we knew their world today, we were able to do some value testing for the proposed product to understand how desirable they thought it would be. By experimenting with different price points, inclusions and time frames we were not only able to design a compelling product but also define the detailed specification of the product in a single session.

We ran a workshop in order to understand the tradies' perspective, here we are getting the room set up

To validate my findings I conducted a simple survey with all of the plumbers who were already on the hipages platform to test two things:

1. Is the product definition we created acceptable?
2. Were there any regional variations across Australia?

I held sessions with project team members and senior stakeholders to discuss our findings and build confidence in the viability of the fixed-price product model. We discussed issues such as fairness, trust and revenue to fully understand the impact of just connecting a single tradie. We also had to design a fallback system in case the tradie pulled out of a job.

Once we were confident in the product we shared our research with Bunnings who checked it with their tradie colleagues and between us we came to the final price point and definition of a standard job.

We now had a product that we not only thought we could sell but that also resonated with our tradie users so moved on to designing the experiences for both consumers and tradies.

Experience Design

The product would be paid for in-store so needed to feel and behave like a consumer retail product. I reviewed several gift card purchase experiences and then did some research to understand how they work in the back-end. One problem we came to quickly was that for initial release we would not have time to build an integration into Bunnings POS system. As ease of use was the priority we decided to risk a less-secure system for the initial release. It was less secure as normally, vouchers and gift cards are activated as they’re purchased hence a stolen voucher is worthless. We discussed alternative ways of securing the product but all the solutions polluted the consumer experience so we risked a simpler, less secure process where the vouchers were activated on the shelf.

We worked with Bunnings to understand how the product would be purchased and how it would need to be packaged so as to feel like a Bunnings product. We produced multiple prototype designs for the install voucher and worked with Bunnings to understand which designs they preferred.

We also worked with a local printer to produce the physical install vouchers and again produced various prototypes which we shared with Bunnings and guerilla tested.

We had been inspired by iTunes gift cards and had worked with our printer to build an install voucher where the security code was hidden by a scratch off panel. The use of a hidden security code did three things:

1. Provided a feeling of being a secure product 
2. (Mostly) stopped people from booking installs they had not paid for
3. Allowed hipages systems to recognise the type of product you had bought

In actual fact the system was not secure as we couldn’t integrate with Bunnings POS system in time to make it so. But, by mimicking the instructions found on an iTunes gift card and the scratch off code also found on an iTunes gift card we made the system feel secure. 

Note: Shortly after the initial pilot concluded we worked with Bunnings to actually make the system secure.

However, the main product experience would not be visible at purchase time though, it would be during the creation and management of the job, this is where we needed to now really focus.

We started by mapping the complete end to end experience then working out how translate this into a screen flow and technical design.

From the analysis it became clear that the experience could be hugely simplified and the number of steps the consumer sees reduced to an absolute minimum.

1. There was a URL on the install voucher that the customer went to.
2. There, they were directed to scratch off the security panel and enter their security code. 
3. From the code the user entered the system could confirm the type of install they had purchased
4. Ask the consumer to answer a couple of questions about their job
5. Connect them with a tradie to conduct the installation

Once the install code had been recognised we ask the consumer some questions. These were based on our own experience and the insights learnt from the tradie workshop. Finally, the customer was asked to select up to three convenient times for an install and their contact details. 

The customer’s lead was then advertised to hipages plumbers in the area.

To drive awareness with our tradies we built an email marketing campaign. Our campaign drove the tradies to a sign-up form that asked them to agree to all the terms of the project and gave them guidance on topics such as where additional charges were permitted, what aspects of the job were not included within the price and how to get paid.

We created reports to monitor coverage based on how many plumbers we had for each postcode in the pilot area and worked with our service and sales team on our ‘closing the gaps’ strategy for addressing coverage issues. 

So to recap, we had devised a new product model, designed it to look and feel like a Bunnings product then engaged and trained our on-platform plumbers. Now we just needed to launch the product in-store.

Bunnings put us in contact with the regional training officers and we worked with them to build a training plan for their team members. It was decided that hipages would facilitate the training directly as no one in the region was familiar with the service. Myself and our CEO arranged a whistle stop tour of six of the larger Bunnings stores.

Here's my CEO Roby in a training session with Bunnings team members from a number of stores in the pilot area

At each store we ran through a 90 minute training session on who were hipages, how did the service work and how to advertise the service in-store. We provided laminated guides, shared the problem escalation process and facilitated a Q & A session. We also gave away lots of hipages merchandise, drinks and donuts to get the team members excited.

I then arranged a follow up visit to each of the pilot stores to have a chat with each team separately. I also took spare merchandising with me to make sure each store was properly dressed and equipped with things like information cards and stickers. I also left additional help material with each team and checked their computers were set up with the correct internet shortcuts.

At each step of the journey we played back what we had learnt with our project teams both at hipages and Bunnings. We learnt so much by going out on the road and with new insights were able to update the FAQ web pages and help guides. We also learnt what the team members were concerned about and were able to add extra reporting allowing us to monitor the potential issues to understand if their concerns were warranted. 

Outcomes

The service launched on March 13th just seven weeks after the kick off. The response from our plumbers was amazing! The average time for a Bunnings customer to be connected with a plumber was just 43 seconds! Literally customers were completing the form and within a minute receiving a call from a plumber.

When the service launched we monitored it closely, All the digital parts of the experience were instrumented so we could track most aspects of the jobs. We also interviewed Bunnings team members, consumer customers and tradies who had completed work to get more qualitative insights. We discovered lots of positives and lots of potential areas for improvements but these were our biggest learnings:

Most customers got the form completed at the Special Orders desk
We had initially thought most people would complete the job creation process at home after visiting Bunnings but were surprised to discover that over 70% of orders were being completed at the Special Orders desk in-store. Working with Bunnings to understand this behaviour they shared that there is an older skew to their average customer which may explain the reluctance to go it alone. They also had a theory about learned behaviour, all other services had to be completed at the Special Orders desk so they suspected customers were just falling back to old habits.

After analysis we didn’t think this insight caused any major issues but did make us change the program's terms and conditions to apply to the purchaser rather than the user.

Tradies loved the service
Every tradie who had completed a few install jobs loved the service. Their biggest win was there was no haggling, no one trying to get other jobs done for the same money. The customers seemed to be very accepting that it was a fixed-price deal which had strict inclusions and exceptions. They also loved the speed of payments as all payments were guaranteed to be within 21 days but normally occurred in a little over a week.

Public awareness was super low
Talking to the consumer customers we discovered most of them were impulse buyers. They had gone to Bunnings to buy a toilet and were then surprised to find out they could also purchase an installation. Some people had seen the advertising Bunnings had produced but these were very much in the minority.

We worked with Bunnings to understand what if anything could be done to raise the profile of the service both in-store and externally but this became the biggest issue for the partnership ongoing. We tried various things but Bunnings have extraordinary strict guidelines for what can be done in-store and have much higher volume products like paint competing for airtime and space in print adverts so we struggled to address this issue.

We needed to do more to support Bunnings team members
We created a special hotline for Bunnings team members to help them get support plus there was a formal escalation process but we discovered these weren’t sufficient. Even though the hotline bypassed our standard call centre queues the average wait time was more than five minutes. More often than not Bunnings Team Members gave up and simply refunded the customer if there were any issues.

Working with the team members, their biggest ask was simply a way of checking on the progress of a job. For example had a tradie connected, had the work been scheduled, had the work been carried out. A basic portal page was designed that showed job information based on the install code and postcode of the installation. This page meant the team members could check on the job and then only call hipages if they needed to. This helped reduce call volumes and improve team member satisfaction ratings.

We also discovered that we had missed lots of people with training. We had trained everyone we could but we still got feedback that some team members didn’t know anything about the service. We got this through mystery shopper based research.

Working with Bunnings we collaborated on a series of training videos which could be delivered via Bunnings intranet. We also created a more detailed training manual and included guidance on how to use the merchandising available to dress the stores. This again was an ongoing problem as team members changed roles, moved stores, started and left so we worked with Bunnings to also develop an onboarding guide for their trainers.

The broader partnership

hipages and Bunnings released several fixed-price and GetQuotes products but toilets were our biggest success. Bunnings now partner with a number of service-providers to realise their in-home services. For a complete list of the in-home services Bunnings offer please see the services page on Bunnings' website.

Contact

Jules Munford
Phone: 0431 414322
Email: julian.munford@googlemail.com
Twitter: @julesmunford

© Julian Munford 2020