By Novema Pte Ltd
Getting customers to break from entrenched habits is one of the biggest challenges facing brands.
The pandemic had forced change on consumers, for example getting more to shop online or to use remote servicing channels. ‘Forcing’ people to change is an option if there are no other choices, but as markets and consumer choices return to normality customers need more encouragement to adopt change.
In 2022, McDonalds Singapore introduced a new “Mobile Order & Pay” (MOP) facility that allows customers to order on their mobiles for instore dine-in, takeaway or drive thru. The challenge to McDonald’s was that 80% of customers were using the convenient Self-Ordering Kiosk (SOK), itself introduced to McDonald’s stores a few years earlier to encourage more customers to use self-serve ordering within the stores.
Kiosks have their limits, e.g. the number that can be accommodated in any one store, whereas MOP would vastly increase the ordering channels available to a single store, allowing customers to save their favourite orders on their own app for convenience, and for McDonald’s to tailor promotions to individual guests.
McDonald’s wanted to understand how best to drive widespread adoption of their MOP app – this included research into both the user experience (UX) and how to sharpen the marketing message for the associated campaigns at launch.
McDonald’s engaged Novema, to undertake an extensive research program. This involved recruiting a range of McDonald’s customers to try out the self-ordering app that would highlight any glitches or ‘frictions’ in the user interface with the app. Self-ethnographies also recorded the interactions within the customer journey with McDonald’s staff and other members in the dining party. In parallel, nearly 3,000 MOP users were surveyed from the app itself to identify the key benefits of the app, the usage pattern, any barriers to further usage, and to segment the market into different user personas. Qualitative research via depth interviews expanded the understanding of the user journey and to find the inspiration for the marketing.
The research uncovered some of the micro-stresses of kiosk usage that could be alleviated via the app. One of the main benefits of the app is not having to queue to use the kiosk, but customers sometimes get stressed when there are people queuing behind them. Hence, one of the main benefits to customers of the app is their ability to order in their own time, and to take as much time as they need to search, select, and customise their orders.
BVA Nudge Unit applied their behavioural science analysis framework ‘The Drivers of Influence’ to identify what would be the optimal ‘nudges’ that McDonald’s could use in their product optimisation and campaigns. The behaviour model shows that three elements must converge for an action to occur for the initial adoption being:
- Motivation to use (a psychological drive to want to do something)
- Trigger, e.g. a cue or prompt from the environment the consumer is in, and,
- Ability for a consumer to complete the action, e.g. making it easy for them to do so.
Thereafter, the app must also provide benefit, rewards, or stimulations to encourage repeat usage and ultimately to create the ‘habit loop’.
Novema convened a workshop or ‘Nudge Lab’ to identify how and where the app needed to be refined to remove any usability issues, and to leverage insights from the research for the constructs of the campaign. These included targeted positionings and ‘reasons-to-believe’ catering to relevant customer need states at the various touchpoints with the MOP and customer journey.
A key finding from the research is that customers liked the functionality of the kiosk and wanted to have this replicated as much as possible in the MOP such that they would already have a level of familiarity with the MOP app prior to first using it. “A kiosk on your phone” was a phrase used by one respondent in the study and became a very simple message that could be used in campaigns that would resonate with consumers. To encourage stickiness to the MOP, some of the McDonald’s promotions were made exclusive to MOP users, i.e. a ‘reward’ to encourage the habit loop.
McDonald’s developed a series of energetic advertisements that communicated the key benefits and added excitement around the new app.
The outcome was that the new McDonalds MOP was the number one in MOP within 4 months of launch and was about three times higher than average adoption across other markets per store per day.
Behavioural science is increasingly used in user experience research as it provides a framework for understanding the consumer psychology in service interactions and customer journeys, often missed in more traditional customer research
