Brown Bear Wash Club App
Challenge
Car Wash Enterprises, Inc. has over 60 Brown Bear Car Wash locations in the Pacific Northwest. Their popular Unlimited Wash Club allows customers to get unlimited tunnel washes at any location for a fixed fee. Due to multiple internal systems lacking integration, enrollment in the Unlimited Wash Club had been a cumbersome process involving paper enrollment forms, fax machines, and full-time data entry staff entering customer data by hand into a CRM system. This process was slow and expensive, and with growing popularity, the volume made it unsustainable.
Solution
Car Wash Enterprises, Inc., engaged Flower Press Creative Studio to build an app to replace a paper process that was inefficient and costly. We met with internal stakeholders, including car wash attendants, data entry staff, regional managers, and senior leadership, to examine the issue. Enrollment rates, which had grown steadily over the past several years, were at an all-time high and still growing. The paper-process demanded the attention of four fill-time data entry staff members, and at this sales volume, it was proving unsustainable. The project was complex and needed to be broken into parts. On the one hand, we needed to capture customer data in a more efficient way. On the other hand, we needed to integrate with a third-party CRM with a limited API to automate the data collection process fully. To improve operations in the short term, we focused on the app first. We analyzed the paper form and created an app prototype to simulate customer data capture, including contact information, vehicle information, and club details. We conducted customer interviews at several car wash locations, using the prototype, to determine if the flow was intuitive. We built a working version of the app that took into account customer and stakeholder feedback. The app was created in React Native and integrated with a custom API & Gateway back-end. The app improved customer-facing data collection, and membership processing rates doubled. Following the app's initial launch, we continued to collaborate with Car Wash Enterprise's third-party CRM makers. Our goal was to fully automate transferring enrollments from the Wash Club app to the CRM system with only minimal involvement from data entry staff. Additionally, we wanted to implement customer-facing account management features to upgrade, downgrade, cancel, and suspend memberships. This work required collaboration between our engineering team and CRM company. They added new endpoints and updated permissions within their API to facilitate our development needs. The Brown Bear Wash Club app is now fully automated and integrated with the CRM system. Customer-facing account features and enhancements are ongoing. Each new advancement has lead to increased efficiency and continues to move the customer experience forward.
Results
The Brown Bear Wash Club App is a fully integrated enterprise application, built for iOS using React Native. The system looks up customers by email, identifies the club they are attempting to activate, and collects relevant information within the app. Entries are automatically submitted to a centralized CRM system, which starts the club immediately. The process takes just a few minutes and eliminates previous difficulties such as delays, difficult-to-read handwriting, and human error. The app doubled membership processing and helped to sell more club memberships.
Want fresh marketing stories in your inbox?
Get the weekly email that makes you a marketing genius.
Stay informed and inspired, for free.