Developing a Bespoke Roadside Assistance App with React Native
Expertise Delivered
Industry
Client Brief
The client has been delivering advanced roadside assistance services in the United States for a decade and a half. They started by offering towing services and eventually scaled to other areas by incorporating services like tire change, gas delivery, battery jump-start and replacement, and stuck-in-a-ditch and winch services.
Project Scope
Roadside assistance requires providing immediate solutions to its customers. With the traditional approach, customers had to wait for extended periods without clarity on who would be their savior in their time of need. Additionally, there needed to be more communication and transparency on the customer's problem and the service provider's expertise, whereabouts, and total expense.
For about 15 years, our client had been conducting business the conventional way, where agents would receive roadside assistance inquiries via phone calls, and they would rapidly connect them with nearby vendors for their needs. The client always relied on sophisticated internal tooling for its call center agents.
Furthermore, there were instances where a vendor needed help to gauge the magnitude of the customer's problems and would show up unprepared. This would result in unpredictable wait times for the customers when they encounter an accident or vehicle breakdown.
To find an efficient solution to all these issues and gain a competitive advantage, the client decided to devise an end-to-end mobile-based digital experience for their customers.
At a high level, the idea of the project was centered around the following - after learning their project requirements, our development team narrowed down their project scope to the following:
- Customers could know the locations and types of vendor services on their screens.
- Design an app that shares the estimated time and cost in real-time for the assistance required.
- Provide quick and agentless roadside assistance.
Challenges
The client’s team encountered numerous challenges in delivering their roadside assistance services. Hence, they planned on disrupting the current market practice by introducing a mobile app to access their services. Their primary aim was to streamline communication between customers and vendors by offering 24 x 7 services using a digital platform.
To achieve this feat successfully, several challenges needed to be addressed. Here’s a list of those challenges.
Develop a mobile application that caters to -
- 7000+ roadside events per day
- Efficiently manage around 4 million yearly dispatches
- Address high demands covering more than 25,000 zip codes
- Assists 2 million drivers and more than 500,000 service providers
- Incorporate chatbot module and dedicated call support
Furthermore, the challenges included formulating an enrollment process that can filter competent roadside service providers and including third-party integrations such as geo-location, online payment gateways, and a business analytics tool.
Why Maruti Techlabs?
Our client found Maruti Techlabs on Clutch, an online platform connecting businesses with service providers, and noted our impressive Net Promoter Score of 4.8. The client had a checklist to scrutinize vendor credentials such as industry experience, client references, and certifications to find the right fit for their project's needs and requirements. Moreover, they needed to assess whether the service provider had prior experience working in the automotive or related industries.
A Request For Information (RFI) was disseminated in succession to the identification phase. Subsequently, 8 shortlisted service providers submitted a Request for Proposal (RFP). After a comprehensive evaluation of the RFP responses, along with extensive discussions between the client and our Sales, Business Analyst, and development teams - Maruti Techlabs emerged as the preferred vendor for our client.
They were impressed with the quick reaction time from the business team at Maruti Techlabs, and the readiness, coupled with the ability to put together a cohesive plan and a dedicated team within two weeks.
Following the vendor selection phase, a 4-week project discovery workshop was instigated to delve into project specifics. The discovery workshop started with an introductory meeting between the client and our team comprising of solution architect, technical project manager, business analyst, developers and designers.
The discovery workshops aimed to devise a project blueprint by exchanging and assimilating insights into the project scope, technology stack, and overall phase wise development approach for the roadside assistance app.
This workshop was crucial to both the client and Maruti Techlabs, as it served as the cornerstone for the project, establishing a robust framework encompassing project timelines, design, development, and assisted in ensuring both teams hit the ground running once the actual development starts.
Solution
The core features of the application were centered around the mobile app, admin app and the service registration portal that allowed service providers to get onboard. Based on the workshop output, our teams collectively agreed on the following flow for each -
Mobile App Development:
- We needed to design 2 mobile applications with unique features, i.e., for customers and service providers.
- Initially, our design team created sketches for developing wireframes and shared them with the client, so that we could incorporate feedback and make immediate changes.
- After finalizing the design, the features were assigned to the developers.
- The features were coded in the app as per the specifications.
- The app was passed to our quality assurance specialists for bugs and usability issues.
- Addressing the issues and feedback shared by our QA experts, the app was deployed to end users.
- Our delivery team had a fair idea of the vast amount of customer and vendor data that had to be collected and managed. Therefore, we leveraged Elasticsearch to fetch quick and accurate results.
Service Provider Registration:
An essential aspect of designing a roadside assistance app is enrolling service providers while classifying them based on their expertise. Here’s a summary of how this feat was achieved.
App Registration:
- Service providers must download the app and register as a vendor.
- During registration, they must offer business information and contact details and agree to the app’s terms and conditions.
Profile Verification:
- After their registration request, the administrator reviews their profile.
- Profile verification includes checking business legitimacy, towing licenses, mechanic certifications, and insurance coverage.
Background Checks:
- Every service provider has to undergo mandatory checks where their criminal history and driving records are thoroughly examined to examine if they adhere to the moral code of conduct set by the company.
Vehicle Inspection, Training, and Onboarding:
- If the vendor needs to use a tow truck or repair van, the administrator must inspect the vehicle to ensure it meets safety and quality standards.
- The inspection authority would need to provide training and onboarding materials to assist service providers in understanding how to use the app, access service requests, and foster efficient customer interactions.
Organizing and Categorizing Service Providers:
- The mobile app offered recommendations to customers based on their zip code or geographic location.
- This was effectively engineered by gathering information from service providers during their onboarding process about the zip codes they are willing to cover. Their results would be showcased to customers depending on their willingness and workforce to cover different locations.
- Based on a customer’s location, the nearest vendors would be listed to a customer. In case of no response from the showcased results, a user can expand their search criteria to further areas. However, only the vendors who have agreed to offer their services to far-off locations would appear in this expanded search feature.
- The client wanted to cover numerous verticals related to roadside assistance. Therefore, we implemented a multi-service aggregator model. This allows customers to choose from any roadside assistance they need from different service providers.
Administrator Web Application:
Developing an admin application is critical to an on-demand mobile solution. This allows the platform to successfully manage the customers, vendor registration, onboarding, and management, and continually collect insights on every interaction to enhance the app experience and features.
To help our client manage different aspects of the business effectively, we designed a web-based portal using the Domo analytics tool. It offered interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an easy-to-use interface. Here are the areas and processes where this tool provided the best results.
- Monitoring service data using dashboards and reports to collate, summarize, and present information straightforwardly.
- It captured a bird-eye view to conduct geospatial analysis by collecting, combining, and visualizing geospatial data.
- It allowed stakeholders to conduct customer analytics by studying their service preferences, pattern usage, and demographics.
- Our client could quantify performance over specific objectives by observing key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Admin can perform effectual cost analysis by inspecting pricing strategy, profitability assessment, budgeting and planning, and expense control.
- The portal analyzes call center performance by monitoring call volume, response times, duration, and customer issues.
- It optimizes the performance and user experience of mobile applications with behavioral analysis, identifying feature usage and other areas of improvement.
- Integrating data from diverse data sources, such as service requests, customer information, vehicle data, and data logs, ensures that all relevant data is accessible for compliance reporting.
Developing a mobile application from scratch is an immense undertaking. After extensive discussion with our development team, the project development roadmap was divided into 3 phases. Here’s a brief overview of each.
Phase 1: Customer and Vendor, Web App Development
Phase 1 consisted of developing a customer and service provider application. Both apps would be supported by a web portal for administering and managing user interaction and vendors. The estimated development time was calculated as 4 months. It would include development, testing, and deploying the app in around 15 states in the US, followed by scaling it across all the states in Phase 2. Here's how this task was brought to fruition.
Features & Functionalities:
- Customer & vendor registration
- Geo-location
- Service provider profile
- Real-time tracking
- Payment integration
- Chat & call feature
- Push notifications
- History & invoices
- Ratings & reviews
Maruti Techlabs team’s scope revolved around the overall design (wireframing and UI/UX design), development (backend, frontend, integrations) , testing (functional, usability, performance and security), deployment and post launch support of Phase 1. The designs were rolled out on Figma, with React Native being finalized for the development, and Braintree for payments integration.
Phase 2: App Scaling and Analytics Integration
The primary aim of this phase was to scale the app across the US while adding the Domo analytics tool and increasing the customer feedback channels by including in-app surveys, social media channels, in-app feedback forms, and email.
Phase 2 was estimated to be concluded in 3 months following the launch of the mobile app.
Phase 3: Iterative Development
Phase 3 began three months after the initial app deployment, emphasizing iterative development based on customer feedback from Phase 2 and cultivated insights from the analytics tool.
Additionally, the assessment and enhancement of security measures to comply with regulations was effectively conducted in this phase. Following Agile practices and dividing the project into three phases streamlined development for Maruti Techlabs teams, providing a structured, efficient process.
Your product idea. Our engineering prowess & seamless execution.
Communication and Collaboration
Communication can make or break a software project. Our teams laid a heavy emphasis on strong communication across different channels since day 1 to ensure that both parties are truly aligned, and there’s little to no room for errors on account of miscommunications.
The client remains consistently informed about the status of product development, receiving updates on progress and notifications about any encountered challenges. This enables the swift resolution of issues and empowers the client to proactively mitigate risks, before it snowballs into something bigger.
Both teams leveraged the following platforms for daily / weekly communication across the project lifecycle -
- Slack: For quick and daily communication, discussions, and updates related to the project.
- Zoom: We used Zoom for everyday verbal communication, reviewing project progress, demonstrating features, and addressing specific issues.
- Jira: Jira offers the best services to continuously update and track project progress to get insights into project health.
Developing a two-part mobile app and a web application requires several individuals with expertise and experience. At Maruti Techlabs, a foundational principle in team formation is the integration of core members with a shared history of collaboration. This unique approach helps the team progress fairly quickly through the storming and norming phases, allowing them to swiftly reach high-performance levels.
That said, the team's full-time commitment ensures that they’re able to deeply engage with the client's vision and requirements. This distinctive model not only injects fresh perspectives and energy into the overall project, but also ensures that team members maintain an unwavering 100% focus on achieving the specified business goals. The team structure was as listed below -
- Technical Project Manager
- UI/UX Designer
- Mobile App Developers (iOS and Android)
- Frontend Developers
- Backend Developers
- Quality Assurance Engineers
- Business Analyst
Technology Stack
Our Development Process
We follow Agile, Lean, & DevOps best practices to create a superior prototype that brings your users’ ideas to fruition through collaboration & rapid execution. Our top priority is quick reaction time & accessibility.
We really want to be your extended team, so apart from the regular meetings, you can be sure that each of our team members is one phone call, email, or message away.
