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At Business of Apps London 2026, AA’s Head of Mobile, David Thomson, and User Research Lead, Anna Sarrou, detailed how a 120‑year‑old UK breakdown service turned its app into a year‑round motoring companion. As of March 2025, the results are clear: 6.2 million digital users, 10% higher usage frequency, and a 4.8 App Store rating. Here’s how they cracked the low‑frequency problem that plagues many service apps.
The AA enjoys brand recognition above 80% and handles more than half of the roughly 2,000 daily UK breakdowns. But the average driver calls for help less than once a year. That leaves the app with little natural reason to be opened between renewals.
“The reason people buy our product is breakdowns, which luckily happen less than once a year,” Thomson said. “That means we don’t get very high engagement.”
Low frequency directly threatens retention at the 12‑month renewal mark. An app that sits untouched does little to reinforce the customer relationship.
Sarrou’s team consolidated existing research across the full driving lifecycle: learning to drive, buying a first car, managing running costs. They also mapped unmet needs at each stage, then layered in competitive analysis of direct rivals (RAC, Green Flag), adjacent tools (Zap‑Map), and high‑engagement consumer apps (Strava) as habit‑formation benchmarks.
That insight fed a cross‑discipline ideation session that produced 27 propositions and 40 hypotheses. Validation came via a seven‑day asynchronous study with 24 target users. Daily check‑ins surfaced both confirmed pain points and previously
