FLUKE

Role: Product manager

Tools: structured interviews, focus groups, prototyping, journey maps, personas, usability testing, ethnography, site visits, voc, technical writing, product lifecycle analysis

contribution: developed two $20 million products, an iot powered fuse replacement service, and an ecommerce point of sale for the purchase of warranties

Challenge

I was hired as a Product Manager at the Fluke Corporation to tell the story of industrial electricians, as relevant to the creation of digital services. The two biggest products to be supported by these service-creation initiatives were digital multi-meters (diagnostic tools used to fix problems with heavy machinery) and process calibrators (calibration tools for the precise measurement of liquids).

The products to be served under this initiative ranged from $100 Digital Multi-Meters to $10,000 Documenting Process Calibrators, tools with an incredibly diverse group of users.

Team

I led research for the project, and collaborated at different times with designers, developers, and business unit managers – in particular Luis Silva, my business unit manager.

Process

To understand the services that would be of value, I began by evaluating the Industrial Group’s only existing service revenue, a line of warranty products known as CarePlans.  In the Industrial Group, revenue was in the tank. Less than $10,000 worth of CarePlans had been sold for 2018, but there were rumors that our Fluke Networks division sold $40 million worth of the same product.

To figure out why that might be, we conducted a usability test to determine if users could find the CarePlan that applied to their tool, from an array of over 100 different options presented on the Fluke Accessories page. Needless to say, they could not.

A different CarePlan option was given for every product, but the only way to sort them was by price.

 The process also uncovered another valuable insight.

We discovered that users were willing to fight the impossible user experience of clicking individual tiles for products at the upper end of the price range – even if it meant combing through an absurd number of options.

Even if there weren’t users in our test who were willing to click on each tile, one at a time, to see if their device was covered, this confirmed that warrantees were extremely valuable to someone, the trouble was that because of our distributor-dependent model, we didn’t know whom.  

At this point, there were a few hypotheses floating around about how to solve to problem beyond the functional issues with the website.  CarePlans were, after all, also delivered as verbal sales pitches by distributors, and in retail stores.  

The first hypothesis was to include free accessories with a CarePlan, to lessen the sting of a product that didn’t go “boom” under warranty.

The second plan was to create a something new entirely, in response to market research we conducted, which indicated warrantee sales for consumer electronics were on the decline.

To evaluate these hypotheses, I cracked into our product registration data and started cold-emailing customers for the next round of research – a structured phone interview.

After about a week, I had calls lined up with close to twenty participants, I’m sure mostly thanks to a $150 incentive I could provide each user to the Fluke accessory store.

To be sure to create products of value to the complete range of tool users, I picked twenty or so participants using a range of different priced tools they registered with Fluke to get in touch – individually, by email then phone, and in a few cases also at the user’s place of business.

For $100- $1000 digital multi-meter users – users told us warrantees were of little value. If these tools went offline for even a day, users said they would replace them rather than worry about a warranty claim. Without a tool, you were without a paycheck, and if you took care of your multi-meter, it last some users upward of 30 years!

What was valuable to them were the accessories – test leads and fuses in particular.  

These items users could never seem to get enough of, but their failure and replacement interval was hard to predict, and often resulted in dangerous “convenience hacking” where conductive material (gum wrappers, pieces of cigarette boxes, etc.) was used instead of a replacement fuse (an extremely important safety device (that keeps user’s from being electrocuted, dismembered, or even killed) to avoid leaving a job site.  

Many told stories from oil and gas extraction, or other remote industries like fishing, where Amazon doesn’t currently have a plan to get one-day delivery. It sounded to us like these customers needed a delivery before they’d ever conceived to order the part. Which made us wonder about IoT.

Process calibrator users felt entirely differently about the value of accessories. Their tools were expensive, and had comparatively short lifespans. Warrantees were valuable to them as a cost control, or for enterprise customers to avoid having to get their purchases approved twice.

However, almost everyone we talked to was still unwilling to tolerate the downtime customers assume warranty claims require. Process calibrators mostly sat on the shelf, until one day you needed six of them, and three were all dead.

With this information in hand, we set out to create a solution!

For digital multi-meter users, we assembled a subscription service that discounted our most popular consumables as a subscription bundle, to address the issue of unpredictable accessory failure and convenience hacking to build direct relationships with Fluke customers.

In prototype evaluations, it turned out a lot of fellas were averse to the idea of bundled subscriptions. They really only wanted the item they needed, when they needed it – so we proposed a second solution: connected IoT sensors to detect when a toolbox was running low on replacement fuses – and we found someone to make it for us!

Digital Multi-meter IoT Fuse Replacement System

We were inspired by Henri Lacoste, who agreed to build us an IoT enabled sensor, to place an order for a replacement fuse, before it was ever needed by the user.

The box would send the order to predetermined addresses two or three fuses before the end of the user’s supply.  

That way, instead of blowing their last fuse and resorting to convenience hacking – the customer had a replacement in their toolbox at the time the needed it most. 

Process Calibrator Customer Journey  

We also extended the offer post sale to enterprise customers, to combine entire tool libraries under a single plan. Google, Anheiseur Busch, and AECOM all participated in the experiment.

All registered process calibrator owners receive an email call-to-action. Since we already know what kind of device they registered, the only remaining step is to choose coverage and pay.

CarePlan Purchase Interface

We also built a general purpose CarePlan purchase interface, that provided an  immediate model-specific, or tool bench specific quote (for entire collections of tools).

Just search or scroll through the models by sales volume, and tick the boxes relevant to you!