Service Design - Digital Loyalty

Problem Statement

Snack brand restaurants tend to have a lower visit frequency than quick service restaurants. Auntie Anne’s current loyalty data shows a customers average number of visits per year is 2. How can we improve our loyalty program to increase visits and spend? 

Current Loyalty Customers

As Auntie Anne’s has a loyalty program already in place, my first step was to find out how the current platform works and learn about the current loyalty members. I chose to pull the top 100 in spending for the last year from the loyalty database and distribute a survey. I chose a survey as a first step to learn more general information. 

When conducting field studies at a location, we noticed a large number of mall employees visiting Auntie Anne’s. We decided to include a question in our survey asking participants if they currently worked in a mall. The survey also asked questions about their favorite loyalty programs, which ones they use the most, and their experience with the Auntie Anne’s loyalty program, and how often they visit Auntie Anne’s. 

A New Understanding

The results of the survey were astounding. 64% of the respondents were mall employees and many of them visit Auntie Anne’s every day that they work, sometimes more than once. With this major finding, the next step was to learn more about mall employees behavior and preferences. 

Diary Study

Given time and budgetary constraints, I was able to run a 10-day diary study with 6 participants with no attrition. The participants were pulled from the previous survey we distributed to ensure they were mall employees that frequented Auntie Anne’s. 

In planning how to run the study, I had to get creative. We proposed using DScout but funding would not be available beyond the amount approved to pay the 6 participants. I participated in a diary study ran by YouTube to see how one works and learn what to improve on the participant’s side. The YouTube study used a regular Google Form distributed to participants and I adopted this model for mine as it was no extra cost. 

Participants would be given a total of 5 surveys to complete over 10 days and would finish with a 30-minute phone interview with me. This would give me an opportunity to ask follow up questions on things reported in the surveys. As I was the only researcher on this study, I had to recruit, schedule and keep up with participants over the 10 day period. Using my learnings from participating in the YouTube study, I designed my diary study to be as simple as possible. Participants received an email outlining each step of the process, what would be required of them and that they could contact me with any questions or concerns. 

Every two days, participants would receive a link to the survey to complete their diary entry. Each survey was the same, with the exception of the last survey that included demographic questions. It was a short, quick survey that asked them to talk about a loyalty experience from the past two days, a space for notes and a space to upload photos or screenshots of things the encountered. 

Analyzing the Data

I used Mind Mapping to analyze the data from the study. This helped me get a view of all the information collected and look for major themes. Since I collected data in survey form, I also had access to the graphs created from the responses. For some questions, I aggregated the data from all 5 surveys. One interesting finding was that of the 23 transactions that were reported in the study, 65% were paid for with cash. This helped guide the suggestion to switch to a digital wallet solution. 

MindNode Analysis

Storyboarding

Another activity required for this project was finding a way to tell the stories of the user’s as well as visualize potential flows. You can see my MindNode document for planning here. I created a total of five storyboards. One highlights the current experience with the mobile app, seen below. The other four show possible flows with SMS, APP, Digital Wallet, and Email. I’ve included one other below to view. 

A New Persona

A new persona for the mall employee was created to add to current personas for Auntie Anne’s as well as a profile persona that tells the story of a diary study participant. 

Final Presentation

Findings were presented to the brand. Slide deck is viewable below.