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Leading coffee chain

AI-powered personalization

Doubling the size of a loyalty program with better customer engagement

A customer at a café counter smiles as they receive a takeaway coffee cup from a barista. The customer, dressed in a light green button-up shirt, stands on the other side of the counter. The café background features shelves with various items, such as mugs and coffee bags. The atmosphere is warm and inviting.

Facts

Industry

  • Retail & Consumer Goods

Offering

  • Commerce Acceleration

Technology

  • Databricks
  • Microsoft

Rejuvenating customer loyalty

Leading coffee chain

In the highly competitive retail coffee market, a leading international coffee chain recognized the need to rejuvenate its customer loyalty program.

Despite engaging over 15 million customers weekly, the program's growth was hampered by an outdated and rigid platform. The vendor's platform lacked the necessary flexibility for optimization, rapid deployment and effective measurement of marketing campaigns.

This stagnation threatened the program's future growth and put the coffee chain at a crossroads with an impending multi-year contract renewal — which would impose significant financial and operational constraints.

A strategic, multifaceted approach

Leading coffee chain

Initially, we focused on improving leadership's visibility into the program's performance. Through the development of advanced visualization tools and analytics, we provided actionable insights that were previously difficult to see. Our team crafted flexible, in-house models that significantly improved the efficiency of discount allocation and product recommendation processes. These models ensured a seamless operational transition from the existing vendor platform to our more agile solution.

The journey didn't stop there. Recognizing the need for a robust platform that could adapt to rapidly changing market conditions, we carefully evaluated potential vendors, ensuring the chosen platform could not only match but exceed the functionalities of the legacy system.

This included integrating cutting-edge technologies such as Azure, Databricks, and sophisticated AI and machine learning algorithms to enhance customer engagement and personalization.

A pivotal component of our delivery was the formation of an experimental scrum team. This cross-functional unit was tasked with exploiting the new platform's capabilities, conducting controlled experiments that informed a comprehensive roadmap for ongoing improvements and innovations.

The moment the old vendor systems were finally gone and we were 100% on the in-house version was really cool as the culmination of years of work. What is even more impressive is that the customer experience remained intact the whole time — if you used the app, you likely never knew the entire backend had been changed

— Team member

Results

Leading coffee chain

  • Added revenue. Thanks to the revamped personalized marketing program, the client saw a $5.5 million rise in weekly revenue.

  • Enhanced program autonomy. This has unlocked rapid innovation and responsiveness, which proved critical during the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • 200%. We doubled the loyalty program’s size with innovative customer engagement strategies and experiences.

The ‘experimental scrum’ is one of the coolest things I’ve been involved in and a really fresh way of working within a large enterprise, which is typically very slow to experiment and innovate. More organizations need programs like this!

— Team member

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Let's reinvent the future