How to put the “amazing” in amazing takeaway experience: Meet our Customer Experience team

Our mission is to create an amazing takeaway experience – but what exactly does amazing mean and how can we get there? Finding answers to these questions is the goal of our central Customer Experience team: Sebastian McClintock, Elif Semerci and Ricky Shah.

“Our objective is to identify customer’s feelings and emotions during their journey with Delivery Hero, and eventually to understand why customers are (not) likely to order again or to refer the brand to their friends”, says Sebastian, Director of Customer Experience at Delivery Hero.

Collaboration with our local teams is very important. Food is local and culturally driven; the same is true for customer expectations.

 

Our method: Unveil all facets of the customer journey

Whether or not a customer is satisfied with the takeaway experience will determine how likely he or she is to order again and to recommend the brand. That’s why our central CX team designed a process to work with our brands around the globe on understanding and improving customer experience. One main part of this process is analysing the drivers of customer loyalty, measured by NPS (Net Promoter Score), which reflects why customers order food from our brands.

Sebastian explains: “Before designing a standardized process to fully understand the NPS, we only knew whether customers were satisfied or not. Now, we are able to unveil all facets at each step of the customer journey.” For example, although a customer is fully satisfied with the quality and taste of their meal, his or her overall experience might still be negative because the order process was too complex, or the preferred payment method was not working, or the confirmation mail did not include expected information.

Our challenge: Meet customer expectations in more than 40 countries

Sebastian, Elif and Ricky are working closely with our local teams to take on the challenge of adapting the framework to markets that differ a lot in size and culture. Sebastian explains: “Collaboration with our local teams is very important. Food is local and culturally driven; the same is true for customer expectations. Therefore, our local teams know market specifics and understand customer comments better in their context”.

Customer Loyalty at Delivery Hero is measured by the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS can range between -100 and +100, where a maximum score stands for the ultimate customer experience. While no brand is ever about to reach this optimum, our central CX team is working hard with the local teams to get as close as possible. “Almost all of our brands have a positive NPS, which is outstanding taking into consideration cultural differences and expectations”, says Sebastian.

Our team is focused on the goal of embedding the customer-centric thought of ‘Will that improve our customer’s experience such that they return to the platform more and for longer?’ into every business decision.

 

Our process: Measure, understand, communicate.

Together with his team, Sebastian has been developing and constantly improving a complex framework at Delivery Hero for almost 1,5 years to dive deep into the customer journey, exploit potentials and reveal distractions. Let’s take a closer look at this framework that enables our CX team to analyze and enhance the customer journey.

1. Building the CX approach

Our CX team is kicking off the process by implementing a customer experience project in two main phases.

Phase 1 reflects the initial project set-up and also measures customer experience at all touchpoints during the customer lifecycle. The main objectives for this phase are…

• Building the journey governance structure
• Understanding our customers by conducting face-to-face interviews
• Mapping the customers’ lifecycle journey
• Developing a questionnaire based on the different journey touchpoints, designing a loyalty driver tree, and identifying significant delights as well as pain points

Phase 2 focuses more on building an action plan for how the customer journey can be improved. In this phase, our CX team will…

• Arrange a CX workshop to discuss findings with a cross functional team
• Build a CX road map with actions that need to be taken in a specific time frame
• Leverage company target processes to ensure that the changes can be implemented

2. Measuring ongoing journey performance

Everytime a customer interacts with one of our brands (for example by placing an order or communicating with customer care), our CX team measures the quality of this experience. Usually, the feedback process combines the power of email, app, and CRM to trigger surveys automatically and immediately after the interaction. Sebastian explains: “When the experience is still fresh, customers are more likely to express their true thoughts. And their immediate feedback gives us the opportunity to directly improve our service”.

3. Communicating Journey Performance within the Organization

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

“We know that CX success can only be achieved with a complete CX engagement within the organization – through proactive and consistent communication,” says Elif. For that purpose, our central CX Team is setting up regular meetings with the CX journey leaders in our brands. The goals of these meetings are…

• Creating awareness and ownership on journey performance tracking
• Reviewing the overall journey performance and journey stages
• Discussing the customer priority areas and progress of CX actions, as well as reviewing the CX road map
• Keeping the teams focused on delivering CX excellence

We know that CX success can only be achieved with a complete CX engagement within the organization – through proactive and consistent communication.

 

Our goal: Constantly improve the customer journey

Our CX team is doing a great job in defining what an ‘amazing takeaway experience’ really is, and in helping our brands to understand their customers even better. Ricky explains: “Our team is focused on the goal of embedding the customer-centric thought of ‘Will that improve our customer’s experience such that they return to the platform more and for longer?’ into every business decision. Thus it’s a gratifying subject to push forward since it is concerned with the long-term success of our brands.”