Client
Cadillac
(General Motors)
CX Leadership Dealership Ops
Tools
Methods
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10+ EV Customer interviews
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10+ Stakeholder interviews (dealers, partners)
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Service blueprinting + system journey mapping
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2 Field-based delivery prototyping + simulations
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Secret shopping (Cadillac + competitive set)
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Failure mode and escalation analysis
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3 Stakeholder and Executive Workshops
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Experience standards and strategic roadmap
14 Weeks
Time
Delivery Lead - Experience Strategy
Role
Figma
Dovetail
Miro
Airtable
Adobe Creative Suite
Cadillac LYRIQ EV Delivery Service Design
Bridging the gap between an all-electric future and legacy dealership realities
Cadillac partnered with us to design a more consistent, premium delivery experience for their first EV, the LYRIQ, helping customers and dealerships navigate the shift into electric ownership with greater clarity.
6 Strategists
4 Senior Leaders
TEAM SIZE
The launch of the LYRIQ marked a major shift for Cadillac. It was not just a new vehicle in their portfolio. It was the brand’s first step into an electric ownership model and a commitment to an all-electric future by 2030.
That shift changed what customers needed from the delivery experience.
A traditional vehicle delivery could focus on paperwork, feature walkthroughs, and a handoff of the keys. But EV delivery carried more weight. Customers needed to understand home charging, public charging, mobile apps, account setup, vehicle controls, range, and how the car would fit into their daily routines.
At the same time, dealerships were still working within habits built around gas vehicles. Many teams were adapting in real time. Some roles were unclear. Some steps depended on individual salespeople. Some partner handoffs happened outside the dealership’s direct control.
Cadillac needed a delivery experience that felt premium, but the system behind it was not yet aligned enough to deliver that consistently.
Project
CONTEXT
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Customers felt overwhelmed and struggled to retain key information.
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Dealers faced long, unpredictable delivery times that were difficult to manage.
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Cadillac lost control over delivery consistency and overall experience quality.
Delivery Day ↔
Ownership Journey
Charging, app onboarding, paperwork, and education were compressed into a single visit instead of being distributed across the journey.
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Customers experienced uneven delivery quality depending on the dealership.
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Dealers operated with inconsistent expectations and relied on individual approaches.
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Cadillac struggled to deliver a consistent luxury standard at scale.
Premium Promise ↔
Inconsistent Execution
Cadillac aimed for a consistent luxury experience but delivery execution varied across dealerships due to differences in roles, processes, and EV familiarity.
Customer Excitement ↔
EV Readiness
Customers arrived ready to take the car home, but many had not completed app setup, understood charging, or made key ownership decisions.
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Customers leave unsure how to charge or use key features in daily life.
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Dealers have to cover setup, education, and troubleshooting within a single visit.
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Cadillac will see more pressure on service systems and slower adoption of EV behaviors.
THE PROBLEM
CORE TENSIONS ACROSS THE SERVICE ECOSYSTEM
IMPACT TO FRONT-STAGE + BACK-STAGE
How might we redesign delivery as an end-to-end system that prepares customers for EV ownership while enabling consistent execution across dealerships and partners within real operational constraints?
PROCESS + APPROACH
I led the experience strategy and service design work across the LYRIQ delivery journey, making sense of how the system worked in practice, where it was breaking down, and what needed to change so customers could arrive more prepared and leave more confident.
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The work started by reframing delivery as a service system, not a single dealership moment.
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We looked across what happened before the customer arrived, during pickup, and after they left. This made it clear where preparation was happening too late, where handoffs were unclear, and where too much was being pushed into one visit.
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From there, the work focused on a set of connected activities:
Mapped the end-to-end delivery journey
We looked across pre-delivery, delivery day, and early ownership to understand what customers needed at each stage.
Studied dealership workflows
We examined how sales teams, finance teams, EV specialists, and service staff each contributed to the delivery experience.
Reviewed charging and digital setup steps
We looked at home charging setup, public charging access, mobile app onboarding, account activation, and connected services.
Analyzed partner handoffs
We considered how external partners, including charging and installation partners, shaped the customer’s sense of readiness.
Ran delivery simulations and walkthroughs
We used simulations to observe how the experience unfolded in real time with dealers and customers in a delivery day scenario.
Defined a future-state service model
We translated what we learned into a clearer delivery structure, with defined roles, timing, principles, and support moments.
THE OUTPUTS
EV DELIVERY SERVICE BLUEPRINT
We create a role-based service blueprint that mapped the delivery experience across customer actions, dealer actions, corporate support, partner handoffs, and backstage activities.
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The blueprint clarified:
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What should happen before the customer arrives
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Which team member owns each step
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Where charging setup should be addressed
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Where app onboarding fits
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How handoffs should happen between roles
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What support customers need after delivery
This helped turn delivery from an improvised handoff into a more coordinated service experience.
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Customer Journey Framework & PLAYBOOK
We reframed delivery as part of a broader ownership journey. Instead of treating pickup as the main event, the framework organized the experience across Pre-delivery preparation, delivery-day handoff and LYRIQ walkthrough, and post-delivery, early ownership support.
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This made it easier to see which moments should happen earlier, which needed to happen in person, and which should continue after the customer left.
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We also defined clearer responsibilities across the dealership team in a EV Delivery Playbook that included guidance for how dealers, finance, EV specialists, and service teams could coordinate around the customer without duplicating effort or leaving gaps.
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The goal was to reduce confusion backstage so the frontstage experience felt smoother.
In addition to blueprints and journeys, we translated the insights into clear, actionable recommendations across short-, mid-, and long-term priorities.
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The recommendations focused on:
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What could be implemented immediately using existing dealership workflows
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What required coordination across dealer, corporate, and partner teams
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What needed longer-term system and platform integration
This gave Cadillac a practical path forward, not just a vision.
Future-State Service Concepts, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND ROADMAP
Delivery Simulation TOOLKIT & DELIVERY SCRIPTS
We used simulations and walkthroughs to test how delivery would unfold in real conditions.
These sessions surfaced where the sequence stretched too long, where customers needed more support, and where dealer teams lacked clear prompts, tools, or ownership. They also made the work tangible, showing how the strategy actually behaved in the hands of real teams.
From these sessions, we translated what we learned into a form of simulation-based learning that could extend beyond the workshop setting. We developed a simulation toolkit and role-based experience scripts to help dealerships rehearse the delivery experience in a structured, repeatable way.
The toolkit included guided scenarios, timing benchmarks, and checkpoints aligned to key moments across pre-delivery, handoff, and early ownership. The scripts clarified how each role should lead their part of the experience, what needed to be covered, and how transitions should happen without overwhelming the customer.
Together, these tools turned simulation from a one-time exercise into an ongoing practice. They gave teams a way to test, refine, and build confidence in how delivery should unfold, making the experience more consistent and easier to execute at scale.
CONCLUSION & IMPACT
The work helped Cadillac see EV delivery as a service system, not just a dealership moment, clarifying how customers, dealers, corporate teams, and partners needed to work together to support ownership.
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↑ Customer Readiness — preparation moved upstream so customers arrived more informed on charging, apps, and ownership
↑ Role Clarity — clearer ownership across sales, finance, EV specialists, service, corporate, and partners
↑ Delivery Consistency — shared frameworks and tools reduced variation across dealerships
↓ Delivery-Day Pressure — less setup and decision-making compressed into pickup
↓ Customer Confusion — clearer sequencing across charging, onboarding, and walkthrough
↓ Post-Delivery Friction — support extended into early ownership
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The LYRIQ experience showed how much service design matters when introducing a new ownership model. This work helped Cadillac move EV delivery from a one-day handoff to a system that actually prepares customers. By shifting key steps earlier and clarifying how teams work together, delivery became faster, more consistent, and easier to run across dealerships. Customers showed up more ready, needed less help on-site, and left with a better grasp of charging and core features. That reduced delivery time, lowered early support needs, and improved overall experience quality. It matters because EV ownership asks more from customers than traditional vehicles. Without a clear system behind it, the experience breaks down fast. This work made that system visible and usable, helping Cadillac deliver a more reliable and confident first impression at scale.
ðŸŒ
SEE HOW THE SAUSAGE WAS MADE
(PROJECT DETAILS)
PRE-DELIVERY: CHARGING, ONBOARDING, AND EDUCATION
Now they’ve reserved their LYRIQ, how are customers preparing for EV ownership?
We examined how customers prepare before arriving at the dealership, focusing on charging setup, digital onboarding, and the coordination required across partners.
Research & Discovery
To understand how the delivery experience performs across the full ownership journey, we conducted a series of market scanning, simulations, field observations, interviews, and heuristic evaluations across the LYRIQ delivery experience.
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Simulated charging consultation and digital onboarding through a virtual delivery session to understand how EV concepts are introduced before arrival and whether customers are set up with the right expectations
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Evaluated the home charger installation journey through 10+ partner interview and sign-up flow review to identify how responsibilities are distributed and where coordination breaks down across systems
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Tested public charging setup, sign-up flow, and first-time charging processes to assess how a new EV owner navigates enrollment and initial use outside the dealership
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Conducted mystery shopping across dealerships and luxury EV competitors to observe how EV readiness is communicated in practice and how preparation varies across the market
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Mapped pre-delivery workflows in a service blueprint across dealership and partner touchpoints to identify gaps in ownership, visibility, and coordination
INSIGHTS
IMPLICATIONS
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There is a total lack of delineation in roles across ecosystem partners; customers are receiving conflicting information about installation timelines and requirements.
When the pre-delivery experience is fragmented, the customer acts as their own project manager. To maintain a luxury concierge feel, the service model must shift from "internal dealer tasks" to ecosystem orchestration, with the dealer acting as a lead conductor.
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Charging, digital onboarding, and EV education were introduced as separate tasks across different platforms and channels that required multiple hand-offs resulting in a fragmented experience.
Pre-delivery must be better prioritized as a "readiness phase" to offload technical onboarding from the physical delivery day, protecting the emotional high of the vehicle handoff.
DELIVERY DAY: Execution, Sequencing, and Experience
The customer arrives at the dealership, what actually happens during delivery?
Customers arrive at the dealership with a sense of anticipation. This is the moment they have been waiting patiently for and the first time they're seeing their LYRIQ. We examined how the delivery experience unfolds in real time, focusing on how teams coordinate, how tasks are sequenced, and how the experience adapts under this tension between excitement and education.
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Conducted a simulation preparation session with dealership staff to understand how delivery is currently approached and to align on how the experience should be tested
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Conducted a LYRIQ vehicle walkthrough with Quality Assurance at the proving grounds to understand how the product is intended to be presented and where that intent may break down in delivery from dealership demonstrations
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Ran a two-day mock delivery simulation with the LYRIQ, dealers, and customers at a dealership in Detroit with structured debrief sessions to observe how teams coordinate, how tasks are sequenced, and where gaps emerge in execution
INSIGHTS
IMPLICATIONS
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Dealers are actively resisting execution of some outlined processes (eg. pre-delivery F&) due to established orthodoxies and unoptimized digital.
Cultural "orthodoxies" create physical bottlenecks. If administrative chokepoints aren't shifted 48 hours upstream, the delivery day becomes a 4-hour paperwork marathon that contradicts Cadillac's luxury positioning.
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Handoffs between roles (sales, EV specialists, service) were inconsistent and inefficient, leading to duplication or missed steps.
A disorganized "backstage" inevitably bleeds into the "frontstage." Without a defined Role-Based Service Blueprint, internal confusion translates to customer anxiety, signaling that the dealership is unequipped for the EV future.
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Dealership culture traditionally rewards "salesman flair" and improvisation, yet this autonomy introduced extreme variability in delivery sequencing and technical misinformation.
To protect a unified premium brand, orchestration must replace improvisation. National consistency, especially in a high-stakes EV transition, demands a "performance-ready" staff, making live, simulation-based training a mechanical necessity rather than a cultural option.
POST-DELIVERY: Support, RESOLUTIONS, and Continuity
They’ve driven off the lot, what happens when customers begin their EV journey?
We examined how the system supports customers after delivery, focusing on how issues emerge and how they are resolved.
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Conducted interviews with EV customers who experienced no-start issues to understand how problems are encountered and navigated after delivery
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Analyzed customer feedback data from other General Motors EV programs to identify recurring patterns in early ownership challenges and prepare materials to support
INSIGHTS
IMPLICATIONS
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Customers lacked clear support pathways, requiring coordination across dealership, corporate, and 3rd party teams.
Unclear ownership in service recovery leads to a "ping-pong" effect between corporate and 3rd parties, causing rapid brand erosion during the critical first 30 days of ownership
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Cadillac lacked visibility into recurring problems in post-delivery (e.g., no-start events), limiting its ability to learn and improve support systems over time.
Without established feedback loops to aggregate field data, the brand remains in a perpetual state of reactive troubleshooting rather than proactive service engineering
Experience & Service Design
Rather than adding more to delivery day, the focus was on shifting the right actions upstream, structuring execution in the moment, and reinforcing ownership after handoff.
This resulted in a set of experience frameworks, service blueprints, and operational tools designed to support execution at scale.
PRE-DELIVERY: CHARGING, ONBOARDING, AND EDUCATION
If customers arrive unprepared, delivery becomes a checklist.
If they arrive ready, it becomes a moment.
Pre-delivery was redefined as the foundation of the experience where customers build confidence, complete critical setup, and develop a clear understanding of what ownership entails. By shifting complexity upstream, delivery day can focus on what it should be: the excitement and celebration of receiving your new LYRIQ.
BASED ON OUR INSIGHTS, WE...
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Introduced a guided charging consultation framework that helps customers choose between home and public charging based on lifestyle, supported by decision prompts and comparison criteria
Designed a pre-delivery onboarding flow that shifts critical setup steps upstream, including app activation, account creation, and initial vehicle configuration
Developed an ecosystem service blueprint mapping the end-to-end journey across dealership, corporate, and partner touchpoints, clarifying roles, ownership, and handoffs
Created pre-delivery readiness checklists and sequencing guidelines to ensure consistent preparation across dealerships
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EV service DELIVERY blueprint mapping
DELIVERY DAY: Execution, Sequencing, and Experience
LYRIQ Delivery Day should feel orchestrated and intentional, not improvised.
We redesigned delivery as a structured but flexible experience, aligning sequencing, clarifying roles, and supporting teams with the tools needed to deliver the LYRIQ with confidence and enthusiasm.
BASED ON OUR INSIGHTS, WE...
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Defined a standardized delivery journey framework that sequences F&I, onboarding, and vehicle education into a coherent, repeatable flow
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Mapped role-based service responsibilities across sales, EV specialists, and service teams to eliminate duplication and clarify handoffs
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Designed delivery playbooks and guided scripts to support consistent communication of EV concepts during key moments
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Developed a delivery simulation toolkit enabling dealerships to rehearse the experience and identify breakdowns before customer-facing execution
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EV DELIVERY
JOURNEY
FRAMEWORK
EV DELIVERY
PLAYBOOK
POST-DELIVERY: Support, RESOLUTIONS, and Continuity
Where learning is tested and support defines the experience.
We extended the experience beyond delivery to bridge the gap between handoff and real-world ownership.
BASED ON OUR INSIGHTS, WE...
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Designed a post-delivery engagement framework with structured follow-ups at key moments (Day 1, Week 2, Month 6) to reinforce learning and address emerging needs
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Worked with dealership ops to establish feedback loops and issue tracking recommendations to surface recurring challenges and inform continuous improvement to end-to-end LYRIQ experience
Results & Impact
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Reduced Delivery Variability
Shifted Complexity Upstream
Improved Customer Confidence
↓ Less variability in delivery execution through structured sequencing and clearer role ownership
↓ Eliminated operational bottlenecks caused by last-minute task stacking and inconsistent workflows
↑ Increased reliability of delivery outcomes, reducing dependence on individual dealer practices
↑ Higher completion of high-friction tasks (charging decisions, app setup, account creation) prior to arrival
↓ Decreased customer cognitive load during delivery by separating technical onboarding from the emotional handoff moment
↑ Improved quality of in-person interactions, shifting from task completion to guided education and experience
↑ Improved readiness and clarified mental models of EV ownership (charging pathways, daily use)
↓ Decreased reliance on multi-source information that previously led to confusion and misinformation
↑ Increased customer confidence in using core systems (charging, app ecosystem) immediately after delivery
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Streamlined Ecosystem Handoffs
↓ Fewer onboarding-related support needs by resolving ambiguity earlier in the journey
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↑ Stronger clarity in support pathways, improving how and where customers seek help
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Strengthened Early
Ownership Experience
↑ Improved likelihood of successful first-use moments (e.g., first charge, initial app engagement)
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↑ Improved continuity between delivery and early ownership through structured follow-ups and support touchpoints
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Differentiated Luxury Standard
↑ Stronger alignment across roles (sales, EV specialists, service) through defined responsibilities and shared playbooks
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↑ More consistent, premium standard of experience at scale across a distributed network