p–ISSN: 2723 – 6609 e-ISSN: 2745-5254
Vol. 5, No. 12, December 2024 http://jist.publikasiindonesia.id/

Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 12, December 2024 6192

The Development of Customer Self-Service Prototype for
Readymix Concrete After Sales Service Using Design

Thinking Method

Agung Hardiyanto1*, Erma Suryani2
Institut Teknologi Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Indonesia

Email: [email protected]*, [email protected]

*Correspondence
ABSTRACT

Keywords: design
thinking, self service
technology, readymix
concrete, customer
journey.

In the rapidly evolving digital era, companies face
challenges in improving customer service. This research
focuses on the development of a web-based Customer Self-
Service (CSS) prototype for PT. Adhimix RMC Indonesia
uses the Design Thinking method. The main goal is to
identify customer needs, solve service problems, and create
an effective communication system. The method used
includes five stages of Design Thinking: Empathize, Define,
Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Data was collected through
surveys, interviews, and prototype testing. The results
showed that the prototype developed was able to improve
service efficiency and customer satisfaction with key
features such as shipment tracking and cast schedules.
However, further integration with internal systems and user
training is still needed for optimal deployment. In
conclusion, web-based CSS development can be an
innovative solution in improving after-sales service,
strengthening customer relationships, and improving the
competitiveness of companies in the construction industry.

Introduction

In today's rapidly evolving digital era, companies in various business sectors are
facing increasing pressure to improve the quality of their customer service (Kraus et al.,
2021). Customers who are increasingly savvy and highly knowledgeable about the
products and services they use have changed the competitive dynamics in business
(Åkesson, Edvardsson, & Tronvoll, 2014). Likewise, the speed of technological
development is changing human lifestyles from traditional to modern patterns, one of
which is utilizing information technology, telecommunications and the internet (Hassan
& Wood, 2020). Therefore, improving the quality of customer service has become one of
the key factors for retaining and attracting customers.

The company that became the research case study was PT. Adhimix RMC
Indonesia, as one of the main players in the readymix construction material supplier
industry, is not exempt from this challenge. PT. Adhimix RMC Indonesia is one of the

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Service Using Design Thinking Method

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subsidiaries of PT. Adhimix Group which is engaged in construction and has several
subsidiaries such as contractors, property development, precast concrete manufacturers,
construction support heavy equipment, transportation, manufacturing and entities that
focus on readymix concrete production are PT (Hsu, Nguyen, & Huang, 2021).

Adhimix RMC Indonesia. To meet the needs of the market and customers of PT.
Adhimix RMC Indonesia carries out digital transformation in all aspects of its business
processes. Starting from the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, connectivity
with vendors, HRD system (WEB-based KPI and attendance), dashboard and most
recently online sales for the retail segment with the Adhimix Retail application. Digital
transformation is stated to be necessary for companies to meet growth targets and
efficiency needs in terms of the increasing number of transactions handled. Companies
have identified the quality of customer service as a key element in their market share
growth and maintenance strategies (Bharmawan & Hanif, 2022). Therefore, the company
has committed to continuously improving the quality of their customer service in order to
meet customer expectations and achieve competitive advantage.

Readymix Concrete's after-sales service plays a crucial role in ensuring customer
satisfaction and building long-term relationships with clients (Murali, Pugazhendhi, &
Muralidharan, 2015). Therefore, the development of an optimal technology-based service
will not only increase efficiency in the after-sales process, but will also provide added
value in terms of customer satisfaction (Masruroh, Sari, Novitasari, & Rini, 2024). In this
context, the Design Thinking method is a very relevant approach, namely a human-
customer-centric approach that can solve the case of limited communication systems
between companies and customers (Darzentas & Darzentas, 2014) and design thinking is
one of the ways companies create a lack of innovation to design their services (Panwar &
Khan, 2021). This approach not only considers the technical aspects, but also focuses on
a deep understanding of the customer's needs and expectations. Thus, the author hopes to
create a solution that is not only technically effective, but also in accordance with the
customer's wishes.
The main objectives of this study are:
1. To identify the main customers of PT. Adhimix RMC
2. To find needs and identify service problems that occur between customers and the

company.
3. Creating an effective communication flow between customers and the company

through the design thinking method.
4. To design a WEB-based Customer Self Service prototype to serve their customers so

that there is positive connectivity between the company and the customer.

Method
This research is a case study study of a readymix company that has problems and

needs to optimize the service process between customers and the company. The research
taken is the after-sales process of PT. Adhimix which has the characteristics of after-sales

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service that still has a lot to be provided by the company after the sales process is
completed, then there is a customer service condition and a marketing team that needs to
be improved, then an innovation system in the form of self service technology is needed
as conveyed in Chapter 2. The review process and literature review in Chapter 2 provides
the selection of the design thinking method as a model method for research and
development of the system with the application of customer self service in the after-sales
system section at PT. Adhimix. The design thinking method is a customer-centric method
or prioritizing customers / users through several stages of the process: Theoretical study,
Research, Analysis of needs or the most critical solution and Prototype design then
Testing which each stage starts from Research or in design thinking called (Empathize –
Online Questionnaire, and Interview), Analysis (Define – User Personal, User Scenario,
Critical Items), Design (Ideate – Customer Journey Map, User Flow) then proceed to the
Prototype creation stage (Prototype – Wireframe Lo-Fi, Prototype – Hi-Fi), the Testing
stage (Test – User Testing and Web Customer Self Service Implementation), the analysis
stage and finally the conclusion stage. These stages will use several help sheets (form
tools) in the process of implementing data search in the form of customer personas,
customer needs, company needs, company visions and missions, research critical
mindset, critical items, potential solutions and risks, idea collection, customer journey
formation, prototype creation and prototype testing process to the final prototype
iteration/improvement process. Each stage has its own form following instructions
(Lewrick, 2022).

Place and Time of Research

The location of the research was carried out in the company PT. Adhimix RMC
Indonesia in the system development and customer service division. It will take place
from December 2023 - March 2024 to collect customer persona data. For the prototype
test process, it was carried out in May-July 2024 on 80 customers, CS employees and
marketing personnel of PT. Adhimix RMC Indonesia.

Research and Analysis

The stage of design thinking which is included in the Research stage is Empathize
where at this stage research is carried out in the form of a questionnaire and to find after-
sales needs and understand the problems that exist in PT. Adhimix RMC Indonesia.

System Design and Manufacturing

Design or design is needed so that the creation of an information system can meet
the expectations of the construction or creation of the information system. System design
is carried out to produce a simple system that can later be developed according to needs
when it will be integrated into the actual system or to a pre-existing system.

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Results and Discussion

Survey results and problem statements

At the survey stage, the stakeholders of PT. Adhimix RMC has 3 correspondents,
namely customers, marketing teams and customer service staff. This is in accordance with
the company's Business flow which has been described in figure 4.2. These three parts
are the most advanced parts that are directly related to the after-sales process, starting
from the process of ordering delivery, product delivery, to the project site and so on until
the repeated request process until the order contract is completed. The process of
repetitive communication and with many customers with various types of products occurs
many interactions, it is possible to make considerable communication errors if the service
mechanism still uses conventional methods (Lee & Lee, 2020). The survey conducted
with 80 customer respondents collected information on customer needs and several
problem statements. This problem statement is an empathize process in the design
thinking method and will be analyzed in the next define process by using the main service
points or critical points of the company so that they become several service features that
can be developed.

From the results of the survey, as many as 80 customer respondents, there were 67
who answered deep questions with specific needs and problems for PT. Adhimix RMC,
others did not specifically answer. Furthermore, from the answer data, similar answers
are grouped into 10 categories, which are contained in the table below:

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Table 1
Types of customer needs and problemsConclusion

From the problem table, the process of problem statement or HMW (How Might

We) question will be continued, this allows the problem to be formulated concisely in one
sentence which is then used as the starting and ending point of the problem space in the
design way of thinking. At first, various WH (why, who, when) questions can be asked
about the issue. Then based on these answers, the formulation of the problems is
developed iteratively so as to create a statement of how we redesign a communication
system for customers / users so that their needs are satisfied. The problem table and in-
depth needs of the survey results with each user persona in accordance with the design
thinking canvas in figure 1 are listed in table 2. To fill in the how column on the table by
thinking in a design "how to solve" the 10 problems and customer needs. Questions such
as "how should we" complete the schedule service are answered by providing some
problem solving with a form of communication system for the cast schedule feature that
will be developed and of course must provide convenience for customers. Each problem
must be answered by one or more solutions that meet the elements of customer needs.

In addition to surveys to customers, surveys are also conducted to the marketing
and customer service teams. This is to see service needs data from the side of the
company's internal persona involved in communication-services that lead to human-
centric design. The number of internal respondents as many as 12 people consisting of
sales executives, marketing heads, division heads, customer service staff, sales executive
supervisors and marketing managers can be seen in figure 1. These internal respondents
have a lot to do with customers where 5 to more than 10 customers per day as shown in
figure 2. The results of this internal respondent survey recorded the information on
customer service needs presented in figure 3. From the results of the survey with internal
marketing, 66.7% stated that communication with customers must be done quickly and
this is in accordance with one of the survey results with customers, namely customers
need speed of response in the interaction process.

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Figure 2
Respondent experience persona

Figure 3

Communication needs by customers

Critical Needs Identification Process (Define Process)

In this process, there are several stages that are carried out, namely firstly defining
the most critical needs of the main customer into an optimal service, secondly looking for
the important elements that are achieved to achieve service success including the
company's visions and missions, thirdly making an HMW diagram to summarize how we
solve these problems so as to produce a service that satisfies customers. This define
process is an analysis process that produces initial ideas, later it will be used in the ideate
process to find the appropriate form of service and prototype, of course in the first
iteration process. The important elements in the creation of this initial idea are the
discovery of problem solving, customer experience, function and future expectations
(Lewrick, 2022). To get these important elements, a critical diagram is created that
mentions four experiences and four functions, with one of them focusing on new
expectations or the future.

Before entering the critical diagram process, information related to the company's
vision and mission should be conveyed and become part of the forming elements of the

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functions and experiences that must be present in creating service ideas (Daga, Nawir, &
Pratiwi, 2021).

The process of exploring the vision and mission using the questionnaire method to
the management of PT. Adhimix RMC Indonesia. The respondents who took part in this
survey were 9 people ranging from commissioners, directors, managers and division
heads and the results are as follows. In figure 4.8 the question "I use customer input in
building innovation" shows that as many as 5 company management people strongly
agree and 4 other people answered yes, this is according to the management of PT.
Adhimix RMC Indonesia agrees that innovation must be done through the process of
understanding the needs and problems of customer input. In figure 4.9 with the question
"To what extent do you believe that the development of human resources and technology
can help the company achieve its vision to be at the forefront of the readymix industry?"
resulting in the answers of 6 people are very confident and 3 people are confident, this
states that the company's management is confident that the development of human
resources and technology makes the company at the forefront.

Figure 4
Customers as the basis of corporate innovation

Figure 5

The level of confidence in the company's growth through human resource and technology
development

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Figure 6

Company improvement priorities

Figure 4 shows the company's management priorities in improving its business
processes and services and the results are as follows. Three management people stated
the need to prioritize improving the communication system and 3 other people answered
that business processes are a priority for improvement to advance the company. One
person stated that the quality of after-sales service was a priority for improvement and the
other 2 management people answered different priorities, namely improving human
resources and product quality. From these results, it can be concluded that the
management of PT. Adhimix RMC in a question about the company's vision that
innovation and company development are based on customer input with priority
improvement in terms of customer communication and after-sales processes through
human resource and technology development.
Ideate process of developing the Customer Self Service System

The ideate process is the creative phase of working, the brainstorming phase, the
phase where innovative to get a solution to a problem. In the previous chapter, it discusses
several stages of design thinking starting from the process of understanding and observing
the needs of users / customers then the stage of defining critical problems then entering
at this stage, namely formulating ideas and solutions so that they can be implemented in
an initial prototype development. In table 4.6 formulates some HMW results that are the
basis in the process of finding solution ideas, this is made easier from the table by
grouping the functions that have been determined from table 4.7 in the form of marketing
functions, delivery functions, administrative functions and billing functions. These
solution ideas are the initial solution ideas that will be applied into prototypes that will be
tested later as the first iteration to some customers. The form of these ideas and solutions
will be discussed not only in the form of service feature concepts but also prototypes that
are complete with customer experience flows and user interfaces.
Testing Prototype

Prototype testing is the final process in the design thinking stage. In the design
thinking process, a prototype testing process is needed for prospective users, this is to
ensure whether the prototype made is feasible from the side

customer needs, efficient, no errors, user satisfaction and functionally effective.
This prototype is close to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) so it requires good
visualization close to the real application later. Therefore, the prototype system in this

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case study will be made web-based but still using a dummy database or on a pre-
production server and has not yet entered the PT. The real Adhimix RMC. In the case
study of creating a communication system in a readymix company, it is indeed necessary
to introduce potential users who have their own challenges. There are two predetermined
personas of prospective users, namely the head office login and the login for the project
office, so that it is simulated with two different menu conditions.

This prototyping uses the WordPress PHP system by controlling the shortcodes that
are already in the WordPress library. The use of WordPress aims to make it easier for the
process of creating an application next in the coding process by using the PHP Laravel
platform to become an application that is integrated with the database. The pre-built Flow
Figma is used to guide you in creating navigation commands in this prototype. With this
WEB-based platform, users are invited to experience this prototype like a real application
and this prototype is the final prototype that will be used in testing to potential users.
From the testing objectives explained earlier, this prototype must be feasible in terms of
customer satisfaction, effective-efficient, convenient and error-free. The display design
has also been made mobile responsive and has the theme of a company profile with gray,
red, white and black colors. It comes with the company logo and is made in harmony with
the company's existing design as shown in figure 4.12. A view of the final prototype of
the mobile or mobile version is shown in figure 4.25. This final prototype is tested to
potential customers using a questionnaire system connected by a link form in the final
process after each customer conducts an independent trial. The questions from the results
of this test partially use the Likert scale which provides qualitative answers related to the
efficiency, error conditions, satisfaction, functionality and effectiveness of this CSS
application experiment.

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Figure 7

Mobile version of CSS login page and front page display

From the results of the questionnaire, there were a total of 17 respondents where

23.5% were owners, 17.6% implementers, 17.6% site engineering, 11.8% project
managers, the details in figure 4.26 responded to the CSS application prototype
experiment presented in table 4.9. These customers work in project offices as much as
35.3% and in the head office as much as 64.7%.

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Table 3
Results of prototype testing to customers

The results of the test in terms of efficiency criteria with the question of how many

attempts to enter the application resulted in 88.2% of respondents needing one time to
successfully enter the application and as many as 11.8% of respondents answered 2-3
attempts to enter the application and no customer answered more than 4-5 attempts or
even more than 5 attempts. And the results of other efficiency tests with the question of
how many attempts to understand one CSS menu-feature, respondents answered 1 time
as many as 64.7% of respondents, answered 2-3 attempts as many as 35.3% of
respondents and no customer answered that they needed 4-5 attempts even more than 5
attempts. From the level of customer understanding from the results of the questionnaire
as many as 52.9%, customers are very familiar with the CSS function with a score of 5
and those who rate 4 as much as 41.2%, score 3 as much as 5.9%, rate 2 and 1 as much
as 0%. In the question related to the number of errors that occurred that answered never
as many as 41.2% with a value of 1 and answered a value of 2 as much as 17.6%, answered

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The value of 3 is 17.6%, the answer to the value of 4 is 23.5% and the answer is 5 or very
often 0%. This states that there are still error events in this CSS application experiment
both from the navigation system and page controls that need to be evaluated. From the
results of the test of the level of user satisfaction, respondents who answered strongly
liked the display as much as 41.2% with a score of 5, respondents who answered a score
of 4 as much as 41.2%, respondents who answered 3 as much as 17.6% and no customers
who answered a score of 2 and 1 did not like the CSS display. The results of the
questionnaire related to which menu is the best for customers answered the track delivery
menu as much as 58.8% and the cast schedule as much as 17.6%, this will be the flagship
menu or feature of the CSS application. And the results that stated the unimportance of
the menu and features from the questionnaire results were the contract recap menu as
much as 23.8% and as many as 11.3% answered the delivery list. From the question about
the CSS application, it helps to cooperate with 52.9% answered very helpful or a score of
5, answered a score of 4 as much as 35.3%, answered a score of 3 as much as 11.8% and
no one answered a score of 2 and a score of 1 for CSS applications did not help to
cooperate with PT. Adhimix RMC.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this study shows that the development of a Customer Self-

Service prototype for Readymix Concrete after-sales service using the Design Thinking
method has great potential to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Through a structured development process, the author succeeded in creating a solution
that focuses on user needs and experience. The results of the prototype test showed
positive adoption from users, with a level of confidence and comfort in using the new
system. Nevertheless, the study also identified several areas that need further
improvement. One of them is better integration with the company's internal systems to
ensure data consistency and effective information management. Additionally, more
intensive training and socialization strategies for new users could increase the adoption
and usage rate of this system in the future.

The Development of Customer Self-Service Prototype for Readymix Concrete After Sales
Service Using Design Thinking Method

Indonesian Journal of Social Technology, Vol. 5, No. 12, December 2024 6205

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