Logistics at Cox Automotive
The majority of my time with Cox Automotive has been spent redesigning and redefining one of their largest core offerings, the Central Dispatch (CD) service.
Central Dispatch is the market leading load board for automotive and vehicle transport nationwide. Customers of various types subscribe to CD in order to gain access to the largest and most diverse collection of shipping and vehicle carrying companies across the country. They can post vehicles for transport, peruse listings, and track details about their vehicle as it is moved.
I was hired to redesign the vehicle search experience, which is a keystone of the experience for customers. As the project progressed, the scope widened and I led a team of designers as we redesigned numerous aspects of the broader CD experience across user types. Examples of those efforts can be seen below.
Search
Search was the first piece of the experience that was redesigned.
It is the most utilized part of the entire service. It was important we improved it in tangible ways.
We made it quicker to get results, made it easier to switch between common or favorited search queries, and revamped the results display.
Dispatch
Once a business agreement is reached, vehicles must be dispatched to the requisite parties.
We took heavy inspiration from the Search experience to redefine how customers manage their dispatches.
Load Details
Dispatch affords customers a singular space where they can assign vehicles to drivers, or look up the details of the load they are dispatching.
Bulk Actions
To help make the management of dispatches easier, we introduced the ability to perform specific actions in bulk.
This includes the ability to assign a driver to more than one load at once.
This helps cut down on the time required to execute common functions and speed up the dispatch process.
Company Ratings
One major pain point for CD customers has been the Rating experience.
I helped spearhead a complete overhaul of the ratings experience from end to end.
The first step was creating a ratings profile for customers where they could track their performance across the factors we would be gathering feedback for.
Rating Procedure
I led the effort to redefine the breadth of categories we collect feedback on.
We created a singular ratings page to quickly collect information. We began collecting written feedback, an oft-requested feature from customers.
We also introduced the idea of transaction-based feedback, to help build a broader, more accurate vision of customer performance. (The original system collected a single, non-editable review, which caused many longform problems for customers.)
