I tried improving Lieferando app!
Just East Takeaway is a food delivery service that organizes the ordering and delivering of meals offered by partner restaurants via it’s app. It operates internationally under various names. In Germany and Austria, it operates under Lieferando brand and dominates the German market.
I have lived and travelled in Germany for last three and half years and used Lieferando in different cities and towns. At home(a Tier 2 German city), I use the app on weekly basis. In some parts of my city and smaller towns, Lieferando is the sole food delivery service with multiple restaurants’ offering to deliver.
I have had both great and poor experience with their app and the delivery experience. Therefore, I decided to utilize my time by picking one of the most used app by me and analyze it.
My analysis is inspired by the Design Thinking which revolves around solving problems with a human-centric techniques.
Step 1: My Research Method
As Lieferando is mostly used as a mobile app, I decided to utilize the ample of user reviews available on Google play store from 28th September to 24 October 2023. When multiple problems were stated in a review, I split it and counted it as an individual pain point.
Step 2: Choosing the right metric
I used AARRR metric framework. AARRR is an acronym encompassing user-behavior metrics and it stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue.
Lieferando is a widely used app with deep penetration in German food delivery market and it’s parent company Just East Takeaway had reported profits in past. I was unable to find any referral program on Lieferando’s mobile app. Therefore I decided not to focus on Acquisition, Activation, Referral and Revenue.
Instead, I decided to focus on Retention. Considering Lieferando is in growth stage and is profitable, by choosing retention metrics I will analyze the users who are coming back and using the services. I will explore their motivations and their engagement with the product. With Uber eats entering German market and growing competition in the market, Lieferando would benefit by analyzing it’s customers’ loyalty.
Step 3: Personas
As my research source Google Play only provides reviews, my personas are based on the reviews, anecdotal evidence, my personal experience and feedback I have received from my peers and friends over the years.
Step 4: Customer Journey
To understand the stages of Lieferando application and how the users interact with the product, I have created a Customer Journey Map. It will help me understand customer’s goals and allow me to map their experience at every stage using data from user research. I will choose appropriate KPIs based on the customer goals and organizational activities conducted during the stages which align with retention and referral.
Step 5: POV Statement
Here are some insights I gathered from my user research.
- Majority of customers are dissatisfied with with User Experience. The overall UX has been confusing and inconsistent. For example- users complain about order tracker not updating, menu options disappearing, unable to access shopping cart from the main page, location doesn’t update when one opens the app and so on.
- Another issue is around delivery and subsequent experience with Customer Service. Customers have expressed dissatisfaction with late deliveries and the order tracker feature. They are either unable to contact customer service to obtain updates for their late deliveries or are asked by CS to contact restaurants directly.
- Customers who have not received their orders are frustrated with refund processing requests. Some customers are unable to get their money back and are asked by Lieferando’s CS to contact restaurants for refunds.
POV is a meaningful and action oriented problem statement which will help to ideate for solution.
POV- Jannis is a 30 year old tech employee who uses Liefernado app. He needs great UX because he uses the food delivery app at least once in a week and the current digital and Customer Service experience is confusing and tiresome.
Step 6: Ideate
How might we(HWM) questions to brainstorm the solutions are as follows:
- How might we make the app user friendly?
- How might we improve the app’s customer service?
- How might we help users get their money back for undelivered orders in easiest way possible?
In the reviews some customers have made direct or indirect suggesstions such as following.
“Delivery time calculation should be accurate”
“Shopping cart should be accessible from the main page”
“Items from shopping cart should not disappear when customer explores other restaurants”
“Immediate response on chat customer service”
”faster response on email service.”
Based on the suggestions, I have created a list of tasks which would solve the pain points in discussion and I have plotted them in Impact vs Effort prioritization matrix.
Step 7: Success Metrics/ KPIs
As a PM of a product team, BPIO metrics framework have proven to be useful to get clear team and product goals. BPIO acronym stands for Business, Product, Input and Output metrics. For this project I will focus on Input and Output metrics. Input metrics are metrics that are achieved by the product teams by completing the tasks and projects. Output metric, in this case wold be retention metrics.
In this project, there are three overarching problems to be solved. First one is to improve the User Experience, second is to improve Customer Service and third is to resolve refund requests within the timeframe. Therefore there are three input metrics I would like to track. These metrics will track the impact of the tasks completed by the product teams at Lieferando.
1. UX Metrics
Order placement success rate — how effectively users are able to place order
Order tracker’s Predicted delivery time vs Actual delivery time.
2. Customer Success Metrics
Percentage decrease in delayed delivery complaints
Percentage decrease in undelivered order complaints
Time of response from a CS personnel via chat and email.
3. Refund Request Metrics
Decrease in number of refund requests
Decrease in time spent to resolve the refund requests.
Output metrics will be number of returning users, churned users and CSAT metrics.
What I learned from this project?
Research methods: The research I did using google play reviews, helped me build certain hypothesis. To take it next level, I think a subjective questionnaire for customers would help validate the hypothesis and obtain valuable user information for user personas.
Customer-centric- When I picked Lieferando for analysis, I was expecting UX and UI issues. I was surprised to know that the most of customer dissatisfaction was around the deliveries and refunds.
