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Bandhan - Amaron Batteries Ltd

DIGITALIZING THE WARRANTY

Amaron/Amararaja Batteries LTD is the lead battery manufacturing company in India with 100,000+ battery sales per day. In the process of any sale a paper based warranty card is issued, the customers have to save the card till the end of warranty period 

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Often customers loose/misplace the warranty card and it is leading to an unsatisfied experience when the customers visit for battery service/replacement under warranty

I was part of ambitious project to digitalize warranty for 200+ Franchisees, 70,000+ Dealers & 100M+ Customers

The Problem

Amaron has not changed its warranty process since the inception of the company back in the year 2000. In the 1st decade they did not face any challenges but, as the customers mindset and behaviour changed over the last decade, customers are no longer saving the warranty card

 

Which was leading to:

  • Pay for the battery service

  • Buy new battery though the battery is in warranty period

  • Due to lack of knowledge on terms and conditions, often cheated by the retailers

  • No records sale is found, unless they battery sale is available at the retailers bill book

Amaron battery warranty card

The Challenge

Deliver the experience in 12 months

Our challenge was to bring back the same level of customer satisfaction of the early days of Amaron. The old way was simple, save the card, provide the card to retailer/franchise and claim free service or free battery replacement.

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Our High-level goals were to:

  • Digitalize warranty registration

  • Give access to warranty information at any point of time

  • Pan-India access of the battery and customer information

MY ROLE

I took the responsibility of the design along with one visual designer from Dec-2019 Sep-2020.

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As part of the design activities, I have taken care of field research, user interviews, wireframing & prototyping.

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I was moved to another project when the project was in development mode.

The project is currently in early access in Playstore

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Yet to be launched Pan-India wide.

Kickoff

Understanding the business perspective

At the beginning of the project we did not have clear vision or goal for the warranty experience. I attended the Amaron stakeholder meeting and found out the vision of the projects, known problems from the business and the entire lifecycle of the battery from manufacturing to scrapping the dead batteries.

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After the initial kickoff meetings, I along with Amaron executives done research in major cities and selected villages across Pan-India

Early Insights from the field

With basic/minimal information on the targeted users groups (Customer, Retailer & Franchise) we have kickstarted the field research and found that there are huge gaps in the entire eco-system, continued the research considering the other possible personas (Service Engineer, Area Sales Manager, Call Centre Executive & Corporate Executive)

Glimpses from the field research(Pic Credits: Ramu)

High-level Insights

Paper was the culprit

Traditional paper-based transaction for management of warranty, replacement or service for a battery is challenging if the battery does not belong to the same store where the customer bought

Who are our customers!

No or incomplete details stored about customers

Turn around time was real pain

Slow resolutions in case lost warranty cards and false claims

No clear communication

Due to lack of information the comunication was not clear

Unsatisfying : Retailer rewards 

Ambiguity in awarded incentives and redemption at the retailer and franchise end

Along with the insights listed above, we have identified all the touchpoints for every persona and created journey map for visualization of the improvement areas.

User Journeys

Journeys that changed the course of the project

After concluding the field research, the possible scope to address most of the problems was too high for me and our team to take a call on, the persona-wise needs and user journeys considering all the touchpoints are presented to the stake holder committee. 

Personas and Journey Maps

"I am delighted to see the detailed & extensive research report done on our user groups; this gives clarity on problems exist in the current system"
-CEO, Amaron
 

To our surprise, after the presentation of the findings and detailed discussion the stake holder committee approved to add additional features that solve most of the users problems also by extending the project timelines

User Flows

Agreed features were translated into user flows as per the personas the journey of each user began...

Franchisee

Retailer

Amaron Service/Corporate

Call Center Executive

End User

White Boarding & War-Room InThe Initial Phase 

Initial whiteboarding and plan was discussed with the available designers to make sure I was in the right direction, a war-room was created to discuss, destroy and generate ideas in the most constructive way. The process was repetitive through the design phase pf the project.

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These exercises helped me in:

  • Quick correction of my thought process

  • Received critique on the approach I've taken up

  • Generated ideas for the experience

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People say "too many cooks spoil the dish" but I feel a team with constructive critique can elevate the experience, we are trying to design

...and yes, I do take help from team and I help my team! Ask me why?

Few glimpses from the war-room.

Interactions

The initial inputs and the ideas generated from the war room are considered based on the context and need of the user sufficing the business needs.

I wanted to provide natural interactions in this application, adapting from the applications used by personas in their daily lives.

The biggest problem of all!
Serial number

In order to register a battery code, the users need to enter the 14 digit alpha-numeric serial code of the battery. It was a painful process because of these below reasons:

  • The serial number is engraved on the battery which is barely visible

  • The serial number is printed on the warranty card which is not readable unless someone keenly observe.

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The above two pointers were crucial as well as prone to errors.

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One common behaviour observed in all the personas is that they are using UPI applications in their day to day transactions. This point helped me in providing solution for the problem we have....

Why do the user need to enter the serial number when they can scan it!

The stakeholders also understood the problem and together we have taken a decision of printing a QR code that can be scanned in all lighting conditions.

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Wireframes

Product Registration

Battery Finder/Fitment Chart

Analytics Dashboard for Corporate Users - Web application

Analytics Dashboard for Corporate Users - Web application

Visual Design - Mobile App

Visual Design - Desktop

Impact

Positive feedback and much more to do

The pilot launch of warranty registration app was one of the important digital initiative for Amaron in 15 years, it was well received by the Franchisees, Retailers and the dealers.

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Currently this application is in the pilot stage and yet to be released to the consumers across Pan India

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