OREANDA-NEWS. Last April, Elena Ford and a team of Ford employees spent three days behind closed doors at a Detroit hotel with some of the best mobile, design and customer experience minds in the world.

Their task had just become a lot tougher. What started as a mission to improve the relationship between consumer and dealer during a four-and-a-half-hour annual interaction had transformed into a greater cause – how to make consumers’ lives easier during those 900-plus hours a year they spend in a vehicle moving between home, work, school and social events.

“It was really competitive, with people moving between rooms trying to determine what owners, ride-sharers and general commuters would want out of a world-class customer experience,” said Ford, the company’s vice president, Global Dealer and Consumer Experience.

The 72-hour marathon yielded what the company considers one of its most significant innovations ever: FordPass.