The Mobile App at the Service of a Loyalty Program

Transport

Multiplatform App
B2C

Overview

The client

Owning many service stations, our client is also the biggest independent dealer and vendor for fuel and petroleum products in North America and the Caribbean. The company is one of the fastest growing in America.

The rewards program is deployed in participating service stations throughout Canada.

The Mandate

This app enables users to win and exchange points in different service stations in Canada by presenting or scanning their loyalty card in the app. Also, nventive added a complete module to allow electric vehicle drivers to easily find charging stations, to control their vehicle’s charging, as well as to pay and collect reward points, all through to the mobile app.

Our Realizations

Strategic and technological discovery
Design
Development
Deployment
Add-ons

Technologies

Development: Xamarin / Uno Platform (cross-platform for iOS and Android)

Collaborate to Create

Through the years, this mobile app required the expertise of every team at nventive: from the discovery phase to deployment, and obviously for the design and development phases, the process has been comprehensive. Like any efficient digital solution, this one has undergone many updates and feature add-ons throughout the years in an effort to better meet the users’ needs.

The Digital Solution Developed

The loyalty mobile app was thought-out and developed to support and give life to the loyalty program. These two goals merged to create a truly symbiotic relationship throughout the years.

The app enables its users to:

get customized discounts;
get rewards such as freebies;
easily find service points;
accumulate charging points for electric vehicles;
refer the app to a friend to get mutual discounts.

This allows the brand to:

strengthen its client relations;
give life to the loyalty program through the app;
continuously reinforce its loyalty program;
base its decisions on data analytics.

The Main Challenges We Overcame

Supporting a Loyalty Program Through a Mobile App

The goal of the app was to create and strengthen the relationship between the brand and its clients. The app became the vehicle for this relationship: it had to create a real experience by engaging its users and by providing them with tangible benefits.

To guarantee its success, we quickly positioned gamification at the heart of the user experience. Indeed, when adequately used, game mechanisms foster loyalty, because they increase the users’ affinity with the program, behavioural repetitions, as well as their understanding of the program benefits.

Gamification can be found in the action-reaction mechanism: each consumer movement triggers a reward, illustrated by the home screen gauge.

David A. Hamel, Strategy, CX and design VP, tells us more: “This app is a great gamification example. What works so well with games is giving people access to their status data at all times. Also, it has the right amount of difficulty: it’s what we call the ‘flow zone’. Goals can be reached, without being too simplistic. Globally, the mechanics are easy to understand and visually pleasing.“

Constantly Improve the Mobile App and the Loyalty Program

In the last several years, the app was subject to continuous improvements to perfectly meet the consumers’ evolving needs.

One of the most critical aspects for this was to build a solid monitoring plan. Indeed, continuous data analysis allowed us to better understand the users, their needs, and the way they use the app to take informed decisions.

Among notable improvements, there was offer customization.

The client wished to update and customize its offers without having to re-deploy the app every time in the app marketplace. Thus, our development teams created templates with dynamic content, ensuring these were structured with an application programming interface (API).

A Complete Module to Manage the Charging of Electric Vehicles

The last major add-on was a system to manage electric vehicle charging directly in theapp. Thanks to research, and then developing the user pathway and interface, our teams now offer electric vehicle drivers the possibility to look for a charging station, to select an available station, and to activate and deactivate charging; all through the app.

Harry Beejan, UX UI designer, explains: “This initial design task seemed simple – add a few screens and functionality to theapp to support EV charging. When looking at the big picture, however, we saw a lot more than having to design an app that simply required features, layouts and interface elements. The service design allowed us to look at everything in that big picture. It had a great influence on how the design was approached, surfaced some important shortcomings, and ensured the experience met the needs of all types of users, from all ‘roads’ of life.”

A One-Of-A-Kind User Experience

To design the most powerful app possible, user needs had to be placed at the heart of our process. Therefore, we not only had to think about the consumers, but actual humans in movement, often urged or impatient to stop at a service station during their travels.

Thus, the user experience and interface needed to be easy to understand, complete, and customized to each person’s habits. These designs were tested many times during user tests before deployment to ensure they were optimal.

Success in Figures