Designing Let’s EV’s Service Module Ecosystem

Fleet managers had trouble capturing VTS alerts quickly, which led to delays in scheduling vehicle maintenance and tracking issues, causing downtime and operational inefficiencies.

What is Let’s EV?

Let’s EV, a subsidiary of Gensol Engineering, is India’s leading EV leasing company, offering end-to-end leasing and lifecycle management solutions for electric vehicles. With a strong focus on providing innovative leasing platforms and financing solutions, Let’s EV is committed to making electric vehicle adoption more accessible and efficient for businesses and individuals alike.

What’s our Product

To support this mission, Let’s EV aims to develop a Service Module to streamline vehicle maintenance, reduce downtime, and ensure warranty compliance. This module needs to integrate real-time service alerts, automate service documentation, and build workshop partnerships to optimize vehicle servicing operations and enhance the customer experience.

Problem Statement

The service operations at Let’s EV faced critical challenges due to the absence of standardized processes and a small team of three individuals managing over 1500 leased vehicles. Without a dedicated customer support function, the workflow relied on manual coordination, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and operational bottlenecks.

Why a Solution Was Needed ?

The service operations at Let’s EV faced inefficiencies due to manual workflows, fragmented communication, and lack of documentation, which led to delays, warranty lapses, and reduced vehicle resale value. Scaling these processes was unsustainable as fleet size grew, making it critical to implement a centralized system to automate tasks, improve coordination, and ensure operational transparency.

Goals & Objectives

The primary goal of the Service Module was to establish a scalable and efficient system for managing Let’s EV’s fleet service operations while ensuring a superior customer experience. Key objectives included:

• Streamline Service Workflow: Develop standardized processes for issue reporting, workshop coordination, and repair approvals to reduce reliance on manual efforts
• Ensure Warranty Compliance: Implement robust tracking mechanisms to prevent warranty lapses and safeguard the resale value of vehicles post-contract
• Minimize Downtime: Reduce vehicle downtime by improving scheduling efficiency, enhancing workshop coordination, and expediting issue resolution
• Enhance Preventive Maintenance: Create a proactive system to nudge customers for timely PMS visits while ensuring minimal waiting times at workshops
• Improve Documentation & Transparency: Automate service tracking to maintain detailed records of issues, repairs, costs, and compliance, ensuring operational clarity and accountability

Understanding the User

To design a scalable Service Module, we conducted extensive research with Let’s EV’s in-house service operations and leadership teams

Service is a Time-Intensive Process !!!

It involves multiple stages, each consuming significant time and often spread across several days, Here’s a breakdown of the key stages

• Initiation: Starting conversations with customers to report issues or schedule services took 1–2 hours, often spread over 1–2 days, depending on customer availability and responsiveness
• Scheduling: Coordinating with workshops to confirm availability for servicing required 2–3 hours, typically spread across 1–3 days, as it involved back-and-forth communication
• Diagnosis & Estimation: On the day of service, diagnosing the problem and obtaining cost estimates from the workshop took an additional 1–2 hours, adding delays to the repair process
• Workshop Repairs: Actual repair work consumed 3–4 hours on the service day, with delays if parts or approvals were pending
• Post-Service Communication: Communicating repair details back to Let’s EV’s internal team and updating records took another 1–2 hours, usually completed within a day after repairs
• Invoice Processing: Managing invoices, approvals, and payments required 2–3 hours, spread over 1–2 days, as it involved verifying costs and aligning them with contracts

Process Details

Alert Capturing

• Alerts are generated 15 days before the service due date or 1,000 km before the service mileage threshold, ensuring timely notifications for upcoming vehicle maintenance.
• Alerts can automatically transition into service tickets or be manually converted by users for further action.

Ticket Creation

• Tickets are created either manually by users or automatically from alerts
• Key Statuses: Ticket Created, Scheduled, In Servicing, Job Completed, Service Resolved

Scheduling

• Workshops are assigned based on pre-configured details, ensuring availability and minimal waiting times for customers
• Pick-up and drop-off services are scheduled with mandatory fields for specifying the pickup and delivery dates and times.

Servicing at Workshop

• Vehicles are sent to workshops where repairs are conducted based on job cards documenting sub-issues and repair tasks
• Sub-issue statuses: Reported, In Progress, Resolved, or transitioned to new tickets if unresolved

Invoice Processing & Service Closure

• Invoicing workflows are integrated into job cards, allowing users to upload documents and finalize payments directly within the module
• Tickets are marked as resolved once invoices are processed and all sub-issues addressed

Design System

As a Product Designer, I developed this design system for the “Let’s EV Service” module to ensure consistency across the platform. The system includes typography, color palette, and iconography guidelines, streamlining user interactions and enhancing the overall experience.

What’s in our End Product?

The Service Module introduces automation and structure to Let’s EV’s service processes, addressing inefficiencies and improving operational scalability. It streamlines preventive maintenance alerts, ticketing, scheduling, job card management, and invoicing workflows to reduce downtime, enhance transparency, and improve customer satisfaction

Automated Alerts for Preventive Maintenance

1. Triggering Alerts: Alerts are automatically triggered based on time intervals (e.g., 1 month before the service date) or mileage thresholds (e.g., 10,000 km before service).
2. Automatic Transition: Alerts seamlessly transition to tickets on the expected service date, ensuring proactive maintenance scheduling.
3. Manual Ticket Creation: Users can manually create tickets before automatic transitions by updating odometer readings and service details, allowing flexibility in managing early maintenance needs

Comprehensive Ticketing System

1. Issue and Sub-Issue Management: Users can select or add issues and sub-issues (e.g., PMS or customer-reported problems) until the ticket reaches the In Servicing status, enabling granular tracking for complex repairs.
2. Workshop Scheduling: Workshop details are updated after coordinating with customers, including pick-up/drop timings and workshop availability, ensuring smooth scheduling.
3. Status-Based Tracking: Each action in the service lifecycle is tracked through statuses like Ticket Created, Scheduled, In Servicing, Job Completed, and Service Resolved, providing clear visibility at every step.

Digital Job Cards

1. Issue Management: Users can add or edit issues and sub-issues (e.g., PMS or customer-reported problems) as vehicles are inspected by workshop technicians. Default issues are pre-listed in the job card.
2. Workshop Coordination: Users collaborate with workshop managers and technicians to confirm repair details, cost estimations, parts usage, and labor requirements, ensuring transparency.
3. Job Completion Tracking: Users update actual pricing, mark sub-issue statuses (Resolved, Not Resolved, Not Needed), and document unresolved sub-issues by transitioning them to new tickets.
4. Comprehensive Documentation: Job cards capture all repair activities, including pricing info, ensuring warranty compliance and maintaining a clear service history for each vehicle.

Invoicing and Ticket Closure

1. Invoice Reconciliation: Users reconcile workshop invoices by ensuring the listed jobs match the actual services performed. Invoice copies are uploaded for record-keeping and warranty compliance.
2. Sub-Issue Status Updates: Users update sub-issue statuses (Resolved, Not Needed, Not Resolved) and can transition unresolved issues into new tickets for further action
3. Ticket Closure: Tickets are closed after updating all final details, ensuring every reported issue is either resolved or elevated for follow-up, maintaining service accountability

Impact & Results

• Reduced Scheduling and Maintenance Time: Average service resolution time reduced by 30%, from 10 days to 7 days, by automating scheduling and streamlining workshop coordination
• Improved Operational Transparency: Centralized tracking of tickets, job cards, and invoices eliminated manual errors and improved visibility across all service activities
• Enhanced Warranty Compliance: Proactive alerts and automated documentation increased warranty compliance to 98%, reducing risks of lapses that could impact resale value
• Customer Satisfaction: Timely nudges for preventive maintenance and reduced waiting times at workshops improved customer satisfaction ratings by an estimated 25%

Challenges Faced

1. Complexity of Designing the Entire Module in One Go: Taking on the complete module design at once proved to be a significant challenge. It led to extended timelines and multiple iterations, which could have been avoided by breaking the project into smaller, manageable phases.
2. Manual Processes and Lack of Standardization: Mapping out unstructured workflows and transitioning them into a streamlined system required extensive effort and collaboration with stakeholders.
3. Stakeholder Coordination: Balancing the needs of internal teams, leadership, and end-users while ensuring alignment with business goals was a challenging but rewarding process.

Key Learnings

1. Phased Approach is More Effective: Breaking down large projects into smaller phases allows for faster delivery, easier testing, and more focused iterations.
2. User-Centric Design is Crucial: Regular feedback from the in-house service team helped refine workflows and ensure the solution addressed real-world pain points effectively.
3. Documentation is Key: Centralizing all service data not only improved transparency but also laid the groundwork for future enhancements like analytics and predictive insights.

Future Improvements and Iterations

1. Workshop Integration: Incorporating features to onboard workshops and recommending them based on issue type, location, and cost can further streamline coordination.
2. Customer Feedback Mechanisms: Adding a feedback loop for completed services can enhance customer satisfaction and provide actionable insights for continuous improvement.
3. Predictive Analytics: Implementing dashboards to track service KPIs, warranty compliance, and vehicle health trends can enable data-driven decision-making for Let’s EV and its customers.

Conclusion

The Service Module for Let’s EV successfully streamlined the vehicle servicing process, addressing inefficiencies and manual bottlenecks while ensuring warranty compliance and operational scalability. By automating workflows, centralizing documentation, and improving coordination, the solution reduced downtime, enhanced customer satisfaction, and safeguarded the resale value of vehicles. This project not only optimized current operations but also laid a strong foundation for future growth and innovation in EV fleet management.

Designing Let’s EV’s Service Module Ecosystem was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.