A NEW PRODUCT

Overview

Based on data collected, we saw a rise in unpaid damage invoices by guests (roughly 45 million dollars in 2021). Of that, Turo was successfully getting back around 5.85 million dollars (~13% of the total debt) - which left 39.2 million dollars unrecovered.

Turo Invoice Payment Plans enable guests the flexibility to pay for their damage invoices in segments over a variety of different monthly plans directly to Turo- instead of to a debt Collections agency.

I was 1 of 2 designers working on this new feature which was launched in Fall of 2024. As a main designer for this company-wide initiative, I led the research, product strategy, ideation, design, and ultimately oversaw the shipping of this new guest feature.

Impact since launch

In 2 weeks since launching invoice payment plans, the total amount that Turo had recovered and is in the process of recovering was $388,038.40. That number is projected to be higher currently.

The Business Problem

Problem #1: The increase of unpaid damage invoices by guests owed to Turo.

Based on data collected, we saw a rise in unpaid damage invoices by guests (roughly 45 million dollars in 2021). Of that, Turo was successfully getting back around 5.85 million dollars (~13% of the total debt) - which left 39.2 million dollars unrecovered.

This was made a high business priority for the company due to the impact this debt had on company revenue.

Problem #2: Cost in maintaining an ineffective system.

In order to collect the debt owed by guests, Turo was using a debt Collection agency’s services. This cost around $132,000 in 2021 to collect just 5.85 million dollars (~13% of the total debt).

Turo (Business):
Increase the amount we are able to recover from the debt owed by guests.

Have the autonomy to manage this debt internally instead of depending on the Collection agency’s services.

Opportunity to create better branding for the business instead of having negative associations with a collections agency.

Guest (End-user):
Flexbility to pay for damage invoices that are often unexpected and thus unplanned. And, having minimized financial impact such as to credit scores.

Flexport Product:
Making sure that these payment plans work seamlessly with the rest of our invoice system.

Designs

Setting up a payment plan

Our main focus for the set up flow was to create a seamless flow from discovery of the invoice itself to an introduction of the different ways to pay the invoice.

Research showed that top questions and concerns a guest might have included questioning impact to credit scores and financial planning - which were the prioritized user values for our education and notifications experience.

We also wanted to elevate the discovery experience for guests who may not have realized they owed Turo for a damage invoice incurred in a past trip. To do this, we invested into the entry flows for when guests logged in to the app and attempted to book a new trip.

Notifications

Managing a payment plan

Internal Team Admin

The process behind the designs:

Multiple phases of evangelization, research, generating feedback, and reviews went into the process of creating our final MVP product.

Service Blueprint

Once we completed months of exploratory research led by our UX researcher, we had identified some themes of pain points. The method for this early research initiative were interviews of both internal admin members and guests who had gone through the Collections process with Turo.

I advocated the value of doing a service blueprint to bring awareness of how these opportunities mapped out relative to each other.

The blueprint would uncover areas of opportunity through visualization of the relationships between internal organization and the user’s journey.

The blueprint was also an opportunity to evangelize and gain alignment from stakeholders earlier on that this was the right direction to invest into.

Some snapshots of identified opportunities

This brought us to the question: How might we increase the percentage of guests paying their invoices so that Turo can reduce operational costs and bad debt?

Based on the pain points as identified by guests, their sentiment was generally very negative. For this project to reach our target adoption and engagement rates, we believed that fundamental design principles needed to be prioritized at every stage of ideation and feedback. We organized and evangelized the following design principles:

Build trust

Improve education

Provide guidance

Positive reinforcement

User Research

3 Rounds of Guerrilla Research

Methodology

Research was done in 3 rounds. Phase 1 was completed by concept testing with guests who had gone through an invoice process at Turo. The goal of this concept test was user validation of the design.

Through unmoderated testing, we had our research participants complete tasks and answer some scripted questions. The tasks were centered around specific features we prioritized in getting feedback on such as starting the plan and managing the plan.

For our final phase of testing, we also conducted usability testing and evaluated more finalized designs. The prototypes were again geared towards starting the plan and managing the plan.

Results

This guests found this Invoice Payment Plan concept very appealing. Most could imagine using this solution to pay back the invoice while also staying on top of other financial needs such as paying rent, insurance, and paying for living expenses. Guests were especially excited to see the flexibility of payment plans since paying for a lump sum of the invoice was a big pain point.

More clarity was needed around who would be managing these plans, what would happen if they couldn’t finish paying for the installments, and if there was any interest applied. These were focus areas we prioritized in the education experience- and continued to iterate on.

Through usability testing, we also discovered the importance of providing the flexibility to edit installment dates. Some common cases we heard were so guests could time the installment dates with their pay dates or around when big expenses happened- such as rent or insurance payments.

Final Thoughts and Next Steps

True empathy for guests: Through this project, I was given the opportunity to design for a user flow that was often very negative for our guests. For example, in our early user interviews, many guests were very angry and felt that their experience was unfair. As we continued to iterate after each research phase, we could see the clear difference in the guest response for each version we brought back. Evangelizing this to our stakeholders also fueled the appetite to launch this project from our early phases of research.

Stakeholders: This project involved working with numerous stakeholders. Managing and leading the design, while also constantly receiving a high volume of feedback from a large number of stakeholders was a big priority in order to successfully launch this initiative eventually.

Current Turo Ecosystem: How this project fit and worked with some of the currently existing Turo invoicing products was a caveat of this project that I will be continuing to focus in the next steps I take. As of now, invoice payment plans is only available for physical damage invoices, but we can also see the opportunities presented in mechanical damage invoices and incidental invoices that are also unpaid- and contributing to debt.

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