Measuring consumer mobility experience for the first time

A rapid shift is underway in the way consumers think about their automotive and mobility experiences – from evaluating functional product attributes to consumer-centric mobility experiences. A shift from RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) to EPM (Experiences Per Mile). Current research methodologies fall short of measuring the holistic mobility experience, and the EPM Council is calling for industry collaboration to formalise a new metric that will work for all: OEMs, suppliers, technology partners and consumers, alike.

A new form of measurement will enable better decision making for end customers, while proving actionable insights and feedback for OEMs and mobility providers. The experience-led metric will also need to measure journey-based satisfaction as well as the overall ownership or service experience, aligning it with expectations set by smartphones and software that experience gets better over time, and will make consumers’ lives more seamless.

Published with the insight of 34 different stakeholders from 23 global automotive and technology companies, the latest EPM report outlines what constitutes a good measurement, the ways a metric could be developed and the qualities needed to meet the needs of the discerning consumer and the industry at large.

Key drivers of this successful industry metric will be:

• Simplicity – Must be understood by all including consumers (users) and executives/engineers (providers).
• Intelligent – Ideally, over time the metric will have the ability to learn about how the experience ‘taught’ and informed future customer experiences.
• Transparent – Unlike a dating site or music app driven by a proprietary algorithm, the EPM metric must show its calculation method to all.
• Holistic – Measurement must capture the beginning, middle and end of a journey, and all significant points in between.
• Contextual – Every journey is made up of a series of moments often driven by the context surrounding the driver or a consumer’s state of being. Outside influences such as traffic, weather conditions, time of day, uncertain areas and more all impact the context to which the mobility experience can be evaluated.
• Scalable – Must scale to cover experiences from all automakers and eventually various modes of transportation.
• Flexible – Any metric must be flexible enough to accommodate the high degree of change that will take place in the coming years due to the advancement of features and technology.
• Actionable – Before developing an experience ‘cure’, ‘diagnosing’ the root cause of a failed or inferior journey is necessary.
• Credible – Must further become the ‘gold standard’ that consumers and providers can fully trust and rely on to help them make immediate or long-term decisions on vehicle purchases, leases and more.
• Established – A successful metric will receive recognition as the go-to source and achieve broad distribution of its ratings and data.