(Case Study) UX/CX Redesign: JFDL Hospitality Group


Research & Discovery:

Uncovering the Essentials of a Dynamic Customer Experience


Challenges Faced:

  • Increasing Competition was cutting into past success and threatening future relevance.
  • Decreasing Revenue was contributing to “cutting corners” that harmed the experience.
  • Frustrated Customers were beginning to lose interest in establishments they loved.

What We Learned (Pains & Priorities):

  • Core Experience was Being Lost in a series of promotion efforts and short-term appeals.
  • A Costly & Inconsistent Approach to attracting and retaining customers was being used, leading to confusion and frustration.
  • Lots of Tactics with No Strategy was increasing costs for no worthwhile benefits.

High-Level Goals (OKRs):

  • Re-establish Trust by relentlessly focusing on core customer experience and expanding from there.
  • Increase Engagement to retain existing customers while expanding appeal to new ones through shared experiences.
  • Increase Efficiency for both providing core value to customers, and supporting staff with the resources they needed.
Understanding Value with Customer Experience Mapping & Competitive Analysis - Initial research focused on plotting how customers made decisions, and the touch-points associated with each step. Additionally, taking stock of the quantitative/qualitative value offered by the business, we could also examine those aspects in our competition to drive design value to the most effective areas.

Web & Experience Design:

Achieving a Consistent Experience across Touch Points


What We Learned (Insights & Actions Taken):

  • Core Experience was Getting Lost as customers were being bombarded with inconsistent marketing efforts with no consistent touch points.
  • Touch-points Supporting the Core Experience were needed to reinforce the essential value being provided.
  • Atmosphere & Social Interaction were key intangible values that needed to be maintained across the expanded touch-points.

Value Generated (KPIs):

  • Increased Revenues were the result of a relentless focus on the quality of the in-house experience.
  • Decreased Costs were achieved by cutting any expense that did not support the core experience in a meaningful way.
  • Increased Customer Engagement was achieved by sharing the core experience on web and social media channels in a brand-consistent way.
Leveraging the Holistic Experience with Sitemaps & Multi-Channel Architecture - Each touch-point was mapped out extensively, showing architecture and interactions with other media (i.e. email and social media elements), and how information would flow between those touch-points.
Establishing Critical Content & Functionality with High-Fidelity Wireframes - Used for early usability-testing, and later provided a basis for the website production, these wireframes provided a basis for fast and efficient development.

Testing & Refinement:

Iteratively Improving the Value-Chain One Link at a Time


What We Learned (Feedback & Priorities):

  • Simplicity & Authenticity were key to providing an experience that customers would crave and come back for.
  • Customer Involvement was a social force multiplier when seeking input to improve, as it created emotional investment.

Value Generated (KPIs):

  • Increased Customer Satisfaction was created though simple, iterative changes that were exhaustively tested for critical customer feedback.
  • Increased Customer Engagement was tracked holistically, enabling us to address areas for improvement quickly and effectively.
  • Increased Customer Trust & Positive Sentiment was achieved by soliciting feedback across all business improvement efforts, encouraging ongoing emotional investment and feelings of contribution.
Centralizing Customer Feedback & Business Effectiveness with a Touchpoint Scorecard - Outlining the performance of each touch point in terms of customer-needs and business outcomes, this allowed us to track the results of our design efforts over time, and make refinements as needed.
Optimizing Online Touch-points through Analytics Reporting - We set up custom events in Google Analytics to show the common user-flows through the website, as well as custom tools for social media monitoring, providing a data-driven way to assess the success of ongoing efforts across touch points.