DB ServiceStore: Turning commuters into loyal customers

DB ServiceStore is a convenience franchise that can be found at over 190 stations throughout Germany. The ServiceStore offers snacks, drinks, train tickets, magazines and other items for commuters.Increasing infrastructure efforts from rural areas towards big cities lead to a big growth in commuters in the next years. A big opportunity for DB Station & Service to build a loyal customer base for their convenience franchise.

This project focused on building a web-app that allows:commuters to find deals and collect loyalty points for free drinks and snacksfranchisers to share promotions and build customer retention through loyalty programmes.

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The challenge

One of the main requirements of our client was to design a digital loyalty app where commuters could collect points every time they bought a coffee at the ServiceStore kiosk at a German trainstation. However, user research showed us that there was little interest or need in their customer segment to have a digital loyalty card. Our user research showed us that:

• Commuters are more focused on a getting a good deal fast rather than building loyalty.
• Commuters don’t use loyalty cards often and if they do, they use paper cards.

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In addition to that, there was little to no interest in the customers we interviewed to have a dedicated native app just to collect loyalty points. Customers are hesitant to downloading apps if it's not strictly necessary and are already confused by the breadth of Deutsche Bahn apps available today.

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The opportunities

Instead of only focusing on a digital loyalty card, we focused on one of the biggest pains for commuters: getting a snack or drink for a good price as fast as possible. By adding promotions of nearest ServiceStores, we could help commuters secure good deals and help ServiceStore franchisers increase customer loyalty.

We also successfully convinced our client to instead focus on a web-app.  This has multiple benefits for our client and their customers:

• Customers did not need to install another app.
• The web-app could be saved on the homescreen of your mobile OS, making it look like an app and providing a quick entrypoint.
• The services we offered did not need local storage and there was no need for a native app.

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My contributions

• User Research
• Information architecture
• User Flows
• Value Proposition Canvas
• Workshop Facilitation
• Wireframing
• High-fidelity prototyping

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Please reach out to me to view my full portfolio, including details about this project.

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