CASE STUDY
Mapping Out the Experience of Traveling with BlaBlaCar
- August 9, 2019
We analyzed user behavior when traveling in carpooling to help redefine BlaBlaCar's communication strategy.
Date:
Techniques Used:
April 2019
Client:
Country:
Spain
Objectives
BlaBlaCar, a leader in carpooling services, asked for help in designing its new communication strategy in Spain to adapt the message to the various profile types of current and potential customers of the platform.
BlaBlaCar Spain’s Marketing team wanted to conduct research with users to obtain findings and actionable insights on two key aspects:
- Understand why consumers use (or do not use) its service;
- Discover what its customers’ journey is like, from planning their trip to arriving at their destination. This way, they would be able to identify the main areas of frustration and contentment with BlaBlaCar’s service.
Research
We started by carefully developing a research proposal adapted to our client’s needs, defining the methodologies of UX Research and the documentation to be delivered, along with setting out the pertinent expectations concerning the result of the research activity.
We planned to carry out a series of group sessions of up to two and a half hours in order to include a large number of participants and also to be able to design a tailor-made methodology that would allow us to apply different research tools with users:
- Focus group: we designed a guide that included key questions in order to understand the travel habits of participants and their perception of BlaBlaCar.
- Survey: in order to avoid possible biases, which sometimes occur in group interviews, we asked participants to answer certain key questions individually in writing before sharing their answers with others.
- Customer Experience Mapping and problem prioritization (divergent-convergent): we used findings from the first two phases to create a map of their travel experiences and identify their main points of frustration and contentment when they travel. In a second phase, we opened up a debate about the map we had just generated and the most relevant positive and negative aspects of their experience. This helped us to identify areas of improvement in BlaBlaCar’s communication and define new messages to help users overcome their fears and start using the service.
The sessions took place in our UX lab in Madrid and the BlaBlaCar team was able to follow the studies live from the observation room.
Thanks to the workshops we had a deeper understanding of the key messages and it was very useful for us to focus on the key message per segment.
Results
After analyzing the data, we handed in a complete report with the main findings and videos of the sessions in both languages (Spanish and English).
The insights provided answers to the research questions that BlaBlaCar had posed:
- What are your travel habits?
- What are the most important factors when traveling and choosing transportation?
- Does the destination or origin of the trip affect your decision concerning the means of transport?
- What are your needs and difficulties when planning a trip?
- What are your needs and difficulties during a trip?
With this information, BlaBlaCar was able to redefine its campaign messages by better understanding its customers, drivers and passengers and knowing what their needs and particularities are.
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