As OEMs invest heavily in connected services and software-defined vehicles, customer engagement is rising. Yet subscription revenue and renewal rates often remain stubbornly flat.

The industry has largely assumed that higher engagement should lead to stronger monetisation. But engagement measures activity, not whether customers perceive enough ongoing value to keep paying.

This distinction matters. A customer may repeatedly use remote climate control, vehicle status or charging functions while seeing them not as premium digital services, but simply as part of the car they already own. Another customer may browse a subscription store frequently because they are evaluating whether anything justifies the price. Both generate engagement. Neither behaviour necessarily signals willingness to pay.

Three behavioural modes, one interface

To understand this gap, consider a behavioural framework based on three customer modes: discover, execute and commit.

In ‘discover mode’, customers browse, explore and evaluate what is available. This is highly visible in product analytics, but discovery is not commitment. The customer is asking whether anything is worth paying for.

In ‘execute mode’, the customer has a specific task: start the climate control, check vehicle status or find a charging point. The interaction is efficient and purposeful. Yet when a service becomes a reliable utility, customers may begin to perceive it as part of the vehicle rather than an additional digital service.

In ‘commit mode’, the customer recognises ongoing value and chooses to continue paying. This requires the service to feel distinct from the vehicle itself: something that would genuinely be missed if it disappeared.

The structural problem is that many connected ecosystems are optimised for discover and execute while paying too little attention to the conditions that create commit.

The decision compressor

The renewal period reveals another important dynamic. Customer behaviour in the broader period before renewal does not necessarily look the same as behaviour in the final days before payment.

In the final week, latent intent, friction and value perception are compressed into a single commercial decision. This can be called the ‘decision compressor’.

Customers who have spent weeks using features without consciously evaluating their value are suddenly forced to answer a question the product experience may never have helped them ask: is this service worth continuing to pay for?

The three modes don’t just compete across the interface; they shift in weight as the renewal deadline approaches. This makes the final renewal period more than another stage in the customer journey. It is a behavioural stress test, and potentially a distinct intervention window. The product experience may have spent weeks encouraging discovery. The renewal decision requires commitment.

The missing layer: perceived value

The three behavioural modes explain how customers interact with a connected service. But they do not fully explain how customers classify the service in the first place. A recurring observation among automotive and mobility leaders is that customers increasingly see functions such as remote control not as digital services but part of the car.

If a customer categorises a service as a standard vehicle utility, heavy usage may actually reinforce the belief that it should already be included. The problem is no longer conversion. The customer is questioning whether this should have been a paid service in the first place. This suggests a layer beneath engagement: perceived value.

Before a customer can discover, execute or commit, they form an underlying judgement: is this part of the car, or is it a distinct service that creates ongoing value? If the answer is the former, increasing engagement alone is unlikely to solve the monetisation problem.

What OEMs should measure instead

First, design for commitment, not just engagement. Connected experiences should make the distinct value of a service visible, rather than simply increasing the number of interactions.

Second, measure behavioural signals differently. Not all usage carries the same commercial meaning. Feature frequency should not automatically be treated as evidence of willingness to pay.

Third, treat connected services as an ongoing relationship rather than a feature catalogue. The objective is not maximum interaction but rather sustained recognition of value.

The next generation of connected mobility monetisation will not be won simply by adding more features. The industry already knows how to build connected software. The more difficult challenge is designing experiences that customers continue to perceive as worth paying for.

Zheng Xu is Senior Connected Services App Product Owner at Nissan Motor Corporation

Over the past six years he has worked on connected vehicle products across BMW and Nissan, focusing on digital commerce, subscription products and customer behaviour.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Nissan.