Research, Workflow mapping & Design
Designing a Self-Serve Inspection Booking Experience For New Car Sales Agents
COMPANY
CARSOME
DURATION
Feb 2025 – Apr 2025
TEAM
3 Product Designers, Product Manager, Business Support Team, Engineering
TL;DR
When customers wanted to sell or trade in their vehicle as part of purchasing a new one, new car sales agents had to rely on the Business Support Team to coordinate inspection appointments manually.
The process involved Google Sheets, WhatsApp, DingTalk, Google Maps, CMS, and CARInspect, making it slow, difficult to track, and dependent on manual follow-ups.
Together with two other designers, we explored how appointment booking could be digitised across three connected products:
CARAgent: a mobile app for new car sales agents to request inspection appointments
CARInspect: an internal app for inspectors to view assigned appointments
Command Center: a web dashboard for operations to manage pre-booked and on-demand appointments
I led the CARAgent experience, enabling sales agents to request outbound inspections directly through the app. An outbound inspection refers to an inspection where the inspector travels to the customer’s preferred location.
Although the feature was deprioritised before launch, the POC explored how CARSOME could reduce manual coordination, improve appointment visibility, and make CARAgent more useful during a critical part of the sales process.
CONTEXT
CARAgent was not widely adopted by new car sales agents at the time. The app had not yet been strongly embedded into their daily workflow.
At the same time, trade-in inspection booking was still highly manual. Agents could not schedule outbound inspections directly and had to depend on the Business Support Team, an operations team responsible for scheduling inspections, coordinating inspectors, and managing appointment completion.
The opportunity was to turn appointment booking into a practical reason for agents to use CARAgent, while reducing operational workload and helping more trade-in opportunities move from price estimate to inspection.
MY ROLE
My primary scope was the CARAgent booking experience.
I was responsible for appointment booking entry point, Car information and price check flow, appointment details form, customer location entry for outbound inspections, appointment submission and status states & later-phase appointment visibility concepts.
I also aligned with the designers working on CARInspect and Command Center to ensure the agent-facing flow supported downstream operational needs.
RESEARCH
Designing Across 3 Products
The booking experience could not be designed in isolation because every appointment request created in CARAgent had downstream impact.
CARAgent allowed sales agents to create and track appointment requests.
CARInspect allowed inspectors to view assigned inspections.
Command Center gave operations a central dashboard to manage pre-booked and on-demand appointments.
This shaped the CARAgent flow: the experience needed to feel simple for agents while capturing enough information for operations and inspectors to act on the request without additional follow-ups.
INSIGHTS
We conducted 5 user interviews and 2 shadowing sessions with the Business Support Team to understand how outbound inspection appointments were handled.
01.
Fragmented workflow
BST had to move between Google Sheets, CMS, Google Maps, CARInspect, WhatsApp, and DingTalk to complete a single appointment booking.
02.
Poor appointment visibility
Appointment changes, cancellations, inspector availability, and slot allocation were often managed through chat groups instead of a centralised system.
03.
Heavy operational dependency
Sales agents depended entirely on BST to coordinate appointments, creating delays, extra follow-ups, and scaling issues as appointment demand grew.
KEY PRODUCT DECISONS
1. Make Booking a Primary Agent Action
Appointment booking was introduced as a prominent homepage action, giving agents a direct path from customer enquiry to inspection request.
Agents could start a new booking quickly and choose between requesting the earliest available slot or selecting a preferred date and time.
2. Capturing Accurate Inspection Locations
The booking flow collected the information BST previously had to gather manually, including vehicle details, estimated value, car registration number, customer contact, person in charge, asking price, and inspection location.
For outbound inspections, I designed a dedicated “Your Location” flow where agents could use current location or manually enter the customer’s preferred inspection address.
3. Setting Expectations After Submission
On-demand inspection requests could not always be confirmed instantly because inspector availability depended on location, schedule, regional coverage, and appointment capacity.
Instead of overpromising, the flow introduced clear appointment states so agents could track inspection progress directly.
4. Explore live appointment visibility for later phases
For later phases, we explored surfacing appointment status directly on the CARAgent homepage.
Agents could see whether an appointment was being processed, confirmed, or blocked by inspector availability, then take the next best action.
IMPACT
Adoption
% of appointments booked through CARAgent
Operational Efficiency
Reduction in BST coordination workload
Conversion
Increase in completed trade-in inspection appointments
Since the feature was deprioritised before launch, success was framed through intended validation metrics.
REFLECTION
The feature was deprioritised before launch due to a change in business direction and limited engineering bandwidth.
However, the POC helped clarify how CARSOME could move from manual appointment coordination to a more scalable self-serve booking model across CARAgent, CARInspect, and Command Center.
This project reinforced the real challenge was understanding the operational logic behind the process: who needs control, what information is required, where exceptions happen, and how different teams depend on each other.
Although the feature did not launch, the exploration gave me valuable experience designing across a multi-product ecosystem and turning a fragmented operational process into a clearer, more scalable workflow.