Overview:

Customers not only demand convenience but also desire to have a seamless experience through rewards and savings on their daily purchases at convenience stores. Customers today demand even more considering safety measures that surround a global pandemic. This 25-year-old legacy convenience store was in dire need to increase customer engagement and retention. The Ksquare Group tapped in with its Design Thinking methodology and deployed a team of UX professionals and architects to strategically achieve the ultimate goal of increasing customer awareness, engagement, and retention.

Challenge:

To keep loyalty to a brand is no easy task. When you are one of the biggest convenience store brands in North America, it is really complex to keep the tracking of coupons, tickets, systems, etc., especially when everything is done in an analog way. The loyalty experience currently wasn’t offering any value to their customer. Not only did the lack of a compelling customer loyalty program affect the customer, but the store and vendors as well. This resulted in lower trips & sales from the customer, higher program costs, and less net profit. A team comprised of lead architects & designers was strategically recruited for the project with the ultimate goal of increasing customer awareness, engagement, and retention.

Solution:

1. Customers show interest in seeing progress.
2. Customers want to be empowered to reach the next tier of the program in multiple ways.
3. Customers are motivated by different patterns to engage in member tiers.

Analysis:

1. Use the reward program for branding – come up with meaningful names of different reward levels, and use a new layer of color and imagery to bring excitement to a member’s life.
2. Points that expire are frustrating for the customer and a major undertaking for the company to communicate effectively. Also, if you have levels, long-time customers are entitled to benefits, contrary to only using points.
3. By attaching services like free delivery or extended returns to certain tier levels, people will be inclined to choose you over the competition, as they are granted additional benefits to their purchase.
4. By reviewing the activity and aspirations of members, companies can understand them better. The icing on the cake is that customers trust and feel that the brand looks after them.

Design:

It was a pivotal moment for the convenience store to migrate its entire system to dynamic platforms that use cloud technology. The need was to create optimal customer experiences where the store could seamlessly keep track of coupons, tickets, systems, etc. The foremost step to address the problem was to understand how customers respond and show interest in loyalty programs. Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we found that they are encouraged to climb the ‘loyalty ladder’ because of the perks associated with it.

Conclusion:

Metrics do speak volumes, yet the success is always beyond numbers at The Ksquare Group. Our UX experts have positively influenced the company culture and saved tremendous amounts of production time and cost by facilitating user-centric design best practices. We are very proud to have had the opportunity to play a role in history for this company’s digital transformation. As we continue to strive for excellence, our goal is to form partnerships that elevate us all to create best-in-class solutions for customers and overall user experience.

Result: