Spend X, get Y.

That's the loyalty program that you tend to see in most fast casual restaurants. At CAVA, we wanted to launch a loyalty program that would create a 1:1 communications channel to our customers and that would provide meaningful, personal, rewards. It was clear as we started the project that we couldn't just replace the existing loyalty system without taking into account opportunities to improve user experience throughout the app.

discovery

The most important part of my process is definitely research. Whenever I start a new feature, I try to absorb as much information as I can about the process, historical successes and failures, industry standouts, and scholarly research. I think it's important to understand both how the market is responding to new features, but also the user's mental model based on the context. For our loyalty program I culled through case studies as well as consumer behavior research on goal attainment and status perception. As a team, we reviewed and summarized the findings of the research and used that as a base point for creating a hypothesis map on which we based our user interviews. I like this approach because it allows us to understand users on the whole, create hypotheses based off of the research that already exists, and understand how our customers specifically behave. 

In addition to scholarly research and customer interviews, we conducted a comparative analysis of loyalty programs across a variety of industries to understand which features and functionality tend to show up in different program types and identify opportunities for our own product. Finally, we held internal stakeholder interviews to gather KPIs and understand the business requirements across the organization.

HYPOTHESIS MAPPING

As a team, we reviewed and summarized the findings of the research and used that as a base point for creating a hypothesis map on which we based our user interviews. I like this approach because it allows us to understand users on the whole, create hypotheses based off of the research that already exists, and understand how our customers specifically behave. 

PERSONAS

The output of our customer interviews were three distinct types of loyalty customers, each with their own set of goals and level of involvement with loyalty programs. Understanding these customer archetypes enables us to prioritize the functionality that best meets our primary customers' needs.

USER JOURNEYS

Using our customer personas, I mapped potential customer journeys for our new loyalty program. These incorporated digital and physical touchpoints, marketing levers, and potential peaks and valleys of the customer experience. The user journeys also help our team to identify potential edge cases before getting into detailed design and development.

SCREENFLOWS

As we continue to define our program design, I am working with our product manager and engineers to map screen flows and understand the technology ecosystem. Our goal is to understand all of the possible ways that a customer may interact with our loyalty program within their lifetime, whether they're checking their reward status, redeeming a free item, or receiving a marketing communication.