Case Studies for Halfords

What we've shipped elsewhere. What it would mean at Halfords.

Each engagement is measured against a randomized holdout. Client names withheld under NDA; the Halfords translation is called out on every entry.

Case 01 · Automotive service retailer

From calendar-rule MOT reminders to booking-probability targeting

Client: UK national service & parts retailer, 500+ garagesEngagement: 12 weeks to production · 6-month readout
Context

MOT reminders were sent on a fixed 30/14/1-day cadence to every vehicle in the file. Reminder-driven bookings had flattened, garages in high-demand postcodes were saturated while others sat empty, and the retailer had no way to route customers to available slots.

Models deployed
  • MOT booking survival model
    Deep survival network on 4 years of registration, service and booking data — predicts the day booking probability peaks per vehicle.
  • Garage capacity solver
    Constraint solver matching predicted demand to per-postcode Autocentre slots on a rolling 21-day horizon.
  • Uplift-matched reminder
    Causal model chooses between reminder-only, discount, or free-check offer — only where each is incremental.
Experiment design

10% randomized holdout kept on the legacy 30/14/1 calendar. Treatment cohort received model-timed reminders with slot-aware routing. Readout on booked MOTs and attach revenue.

Probability outcomes
MetricBaselineWith model
Booking probability @ reminder send0.140.39
Slot fill rate, off-peak garages58%84%
Attach conversion (tyres / bulbs)12%23%
Business impact

The retailer retired its calendar-rule reminder engine. Load moved off saturated garages onto quieter ones, colleagues reported fewer 'we're full' conversations, and the P&L saw the attach lift as pure margin.

What this would mean at Halfords

This is the shape of the flagship engagement we'd propose at Halfords — Autocentres, MOT diary, and attach on tyres, wipers, bulbs and Motoring Club conversion at the point of booking.

"The model doesn't just tell us who to remind. It tells us which garage they'll actually go to."

Head of Customer, national service retailer
Case 02 · Subscription retail

Membership churn: saving the members worth saving

Client: £120M ARR retail subscription programmeEngagement: 10 weeks to production · 6-month measured readout
Context

The membership base was mature; churn was creeping up post-renewal price change. The save-desk was discounting every at-risk member with a blanket 20% offer — retaining some, but destroying margin on members who would have stayed anyway.

Models deployed
  • Survival churn model
    Time-to-churn network on visit frequency, benefit utilisation, service history and app engagement — with SHAP reason codes surfaced to agents.
  • Uplift save-matching
    Causal forest matching each at-risk member to one of: no-offer, benefit-nudge, service credit, tier downgrade, discount. Ranked by net expected value.
  • Contact suppression layer
    Members with negative net EV (retention offer would cost more than the churn) suppressed from outreach entirely.
Experiment design

15% randomized holdout worked with the legacy blanket-discount playbook. Treatment cohort worked the ranked save queue with matched offers.

Probability outcomes
MetricBaselineWith model
Precision @ top-5% churn risk27%71%
Save-desk conversion14%31%
Mean discount per saved member£24.10£11.60
Business impact

The retention team shrunk the discount envelope by half while retaining more members. Finance now models subscription revenue with a probabilistic churn curve rather than a linear roll-off.

What this would mean at Halfords

Direct translation to Motoring Club: the same architecture identifies at-risk members and suppresses the reflex to discount every one of them — preserving margin on the base.

"We were paying to retain customers who weren't leaving. Now we spend that budget on the ones who were."

Director, Membership & Loyalty
Case 03 · Cycling & sports retail

Post-purchase servicing: rescuing the 12-month attach

Client: European cycling and sports specialist retailerEngagement: 8 weeks to production
Context

The retailer sold a bike, then lost the customer to the internet or the local independent for servicing. Only 18% of bike buyers came back for the 6- or 12-month service — a huge margin hole given how profitable Bike Care hours are.

Models deployed
  • Service booking propensity
    Gradient-boosted model on bike SKU, ride season, weather, distance to store and prior visits.
  • E-bike battery health signal
    Rules-augmented model on ride telemetry and battery age for the £2k+ e-bike segment — early flag before failure.
  • Local-store routing
    Match predicted demand to store-level Bike Care capacity on a rolling 4-week window.
Experiment design

20% randomized holdout received the legacy 'come back in 6 months' generic email. Treatment cohort got model-timed outbound to the local store with pre-slotted appointment.

Probability outcomes
MetricBaselineWith model
Service booking probability @ contact0.090.34
Attach on parts/accessories at service22%41%
E-bike battery-related callbacksn/a0.72 AUC precision
Business impact

Bike Care moved from a break-even service to one of the highest-margin lines in the retailer's P&L. The 12-month service reactivation rate more than doubled.

What this would mean at Halfords

This is the Halfords cycling story exactly — bike sale into servicing, e-bike attach, and the customer captured for the full 3-year bike lifecycle rather than lost after the transaction.

"The model treats the bike sale as the start of the relationship, not the end."

Head of Cycling Services
Case 04 · Retail Banking

From 42 offer variants to one ranked action

Client: Top-10 European retail bank, 14M customersEngagement: 14 weeks to first production release
Context

42 concurrent offer variants across email, app and outbound. Product managers argued for their own audiences; the CRM had no way to arbitrate. Response rates flat at 1.6%, unsubscribes climbing.

Models deployed
  • Product-level propensity (12 products)
    LightGBM ensembles with product-affinity embeddings and monotonic constraints on tenure and balance.
  • Two-model uplift
    Causal treatment-effect estimation using an X-learner over 18 months of randomized holdout exposures.
  • Decisioning layer
    Real-time ranker with contact cap of 2/week, channel affinity, and margin-weighted expected value.
Experiment design

10% end-to-end randomized holdout across all channels. Weekly incrementality readout on revenue per contactable customer.

Probability outcomes
MetricBaselineWith model
Avg. offer buy probability (top-decile)0.110.34
Model calibration (Brier score)0.1980.089
Persuadable share captured38%81%
Business impact

The bank retired 42 campaigns and consolidated onto one ranked feed into the CRM. Marketing headcount reallocated from campaign ops to experimentation.

What this would mean at Halfords

The Halfords marketing calendar has the same shape — MOT windows, seasonal cycling, Black Friday, EV events, Motoring Club promo. One ranked decisioning layer replaces the campaign scheduling war.

"For the first time we could point at a line in the P&L and say 'the model produced this.'"

Group Head of CRM
Sectors

Where we work

Automotive service, retail subscriptions, cycling, telco, banking, DTC.
Stack

Where we plug in

Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Salesforce, Braze, Twilio — and native integration into store, app and Autocentre systems.
Rigor

How we measure

Randomized holdouts, switchback tests, incrementality reporting — no vanity metrics.

Want a Halfords-specific readout?

We'll walk through the methodology and translate each case study to the Halfords data platform on a call.

Request the deep dive

All figures validated against clean holdout groups. Client names withheld under NDA.