Creating a meaningful and data-informed loyalty program
This case study describes the approach to creating a product focused on customer retention through creating experiences that foster relationships and collecting data.
My role
My responsibilities included identifying and prioritising business opportunities through research and orchestrating seamless collaboration between designers and developers to turn the concept into reality.
Impact
Since its implementation, the loyalty program resulted in a 58% increase in customer lifetime value, going from R$ 201 to R$ 318.
Context
About the challenge
In food delivery, each purchase generates valuable data, including customer details, purchased items and others. By combining these inputs and finding patterns, powerful strategies can be created. This is the startup Devoro's mission: to assist restaurants in using this data to maximize profits and enhance the customer experience.
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A data analysis on customer behavior found two key insights: some customer segments are more valuable, and restaurants struggle to track customer purchases. These insights will be explored in an upcoming case study.
How could we increase the number of trackable purchases?
Having more trackable purchases would increase the reliability of our analysis, enabling us to better understand who our customers are and predict when they are likely to stop returning.
How to shift customer behavior to a different cluster?
Considering the most valuable clients are those who return often, by predicting when they might stop visiting the restaurants, we can design experiences to reengage them, shape their behaviour, and increase retention.
Process
1. Qualitative Research
Deep dive in the restaurants' context
2. Market Research
Identifying the services available
3. Design Sprint
A workshop with a diverse team to explore possibilities
4. Proof of Concept
Investigating perception of value and desirability
5. Secondary Research
Mapping behaviour change techniques
6. Service Mapping
Designing the customer journey
7. Analysing viability
Deep dive in the restaurants' context
8. Designing the interface
Identifying the services available
9. Usability testing
A workshop with a diverse team to explore possibilities
Step 01
Qualitative Research
To ensure that we were not making assumptions that would not benefit our customers, we first decided to interview other restaurants to validate our hypothesis on how they use their data and build relationships with their customers. To avoid bias, we asked open-ended questions about various topics to gather their perspectives on the most important aspects of restaurant management. By analysing these interviews, we were able to gain a better understanding of their operations.
Remote interview
Learnings consolidation
Step 02
Market Research
After verifying our initial hypotheses, we compared the features of various services available in the market by creating a table in Miro. We found that most solutions in this field use data in silos and have simple, unengaging loyalty programs.
Competitor analysis
Step 03 & 04
Design Sprint & Proof of Concept (POC)
Our previous learnings made us confident that we were on the right track. It was time to begin building a new service. To generate a wide range of ideas, we held a Design Sprint workshop with a multidisciplinary team, focused on finding ways to encourage restaurant customers to return more frequently. We invited a specialist to present on cluster segmentation and behavior shaping, and conducted benchmarking exercises and ideation to decide which experiment to test. After deciding on the types of rewards to explore, we created an interactive prototype in Figma and tested it with 5 potential users.
Sharing sketches during the workshop
Testing a medium fidelity prototype
Step 05, 06 & 07
Secondary Research, Service mapping and Analysing viability
Our proof-of-concept allowed us to determine which mechanisms of a loyalty program are most promising for strengthening the connection between restaurants and their customers. In addition, we conducted secondary research on designing products for behavior change and learned about the importance of creating stories between brands and their customers to strengthen their connection from the book "How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the Art and Science of Persuasion and Motivation."
We then worked with restaurants' managers and developers to ideate possible rewards and selected the most suitable ones for a minimum viable product. Using the "Service Blueprint" framework, we visualized all the necessary requirements to deliver our value proposition.
Prioritising ideas with stakeholders and the team
Service blueprint mapping
Step 08 & 09
Designing the interface & Usability testing
During the phase of designing the interaction for claiming a reward, we invited developers to provide feedback on the user flow we had mapped and identify any blind spots. With a well-defined scope, we moved from Miro to Figma to start building the loyalty program experiences.
Our design system made this process easier by allowing us to reuse many necessary components (to read about how we created the DS, see this project here). We used a prototype to conduct a moderated usability test with five potential users, making adjustments based on the results. After these adjustments, we were ready to share our learnings with the team and begin developing the loyalty program for our customers to use.
Handoff to developers after a few adjustments