Small businesses play an important role in the Turkish economy. With a large number of these businesses, they employ a huge portion of the workforce.
Since its first release, the FIAT Doblo has been the primary choice of Turkish small businesses. It has a strong price-performance ratio and an unrivaled service coverage (which is vital for small businesses).
Understanding Small Businesses and Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) Owners
Turkish small businesses share a few key characteristics. They are dynamic, mobile, and tend to prefer DIY projects, rather than paying hundreds of dollars to have someone else do the work for them.
Doblo owners enjoy customizing their cars however they wish, and most of them do all of the work themselves. The vans are always seen in traffic during the weekdays, running various errands for their business. But during the weekend the vans become family cars, carrying loved ones out of the city for weekend getaways.
Because so much time is spent in the FIAT Doblo by its owners, we wanted to know what it was like for the drivers. What problems did they struggle with? What things did they love?
We immersed ourselves into the daily lives of 30 LCV drivers, rode along with them, and collected audio and visual evidence about how they ‘lived’ with their cars.
What solutions they had used to solve common problems.
How they communicated with each other
What stories they had about their best and worst moments. In business and life.
A New Service Experience
After the research phase had finished, we met with FIAT for a series of workshops. Using our visual research, the FIAT teams were able to get into the mind of their customers in a completely unique way.
At the end of the year, FIAT launched a new LCV service program. This new program addressed the most common problems found in the discovery phase, such as cargo assistance, midnight service, special offers, and job postings. Without the preliminary research, the new program may have missed the most common problems and only frustrated LCV owners.
Make Your Own Persona
Following their first field research, Akbank designed their first persona cards using Ethnogram’s Persona Creator.
These cards allowed them to analyze the various customer journeys and develop new ideas to solve the problems their customers were experiencing.
For the final step, we introduced Akbank to our Lean Canvas method. This method allowed them to communicate their new service and business ideas to the rest of the company in a professional and inspiring way.