Competitor and Market Research

To kick off the project, I wanted to get a good understanding about consumer referral strategies in the market and also take close look at Contacts direct competitors to see what their propositions were.

Indirect Competitor Share Mechanics
Here looked into a number of in app referral mechanics from the likes of Uber Eats (food delivery app), Ola (ride share app, and Sharesies (NZ Share Trading Platform) looking into their UI, language and share flows.

What I found was simplicity, visibility of code, sharing ability, and the use of minimal clicks were used across the board, and all of the sharing capability was based in app but they gave the user the option to copy the code or share the URL  elsewhere. More findings on the visuals below.

Direct Competitor Analysis
Nearly all of Contact's direct competitors had some form of referral scheme. This came with varying benefits (money or credits) and what was interesting was the size of the credit didn't have too much impact on the success (i.e. power shop and Mercury both offered $50). But the presentation of the message and the communication and simplicity of the mechanics was integral to their success. Powershop, for example, built their business with this model, and Genesis, Mercury and Electric Kiwi had this built into their app as the first port of call with the website a secondary message. Their website banners and some ads were also reinforcing this message. Digital ads and associated communications were integrated into a successful end product.

Findings
The main features from direct and indirect competitor revealed a range of features that would be great to test and bring into the end product:

Indirect Share Analysis

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Direct Competitor Analysis

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User Research

Survey - Quantitative
After the market research, I wanted to get a good idea of consumer experience with common referral schemes so I started with a survey. This was built to find out about motivations, demotivators, pain points and good experiences consumers have had with referring or recommending a product. The survey was Google Form which was circulated in multiple forums, and sent direct to people based on demographic requirements. The results can be seen further below.

This survey dove into people's experience with recommending a product or any experience with referral schemes. It asked them about why they'd stand by a brand, their motivations around why the refer and the tech and mechanics that they used to do so.

Interviews - Qualitative
‍‍For a more in depth look into our audience I moved into qualitative research. As well as an initial interview with the client to understand deeper business requirements, I spoke to a number of users around their experience with referral schemes - digital or otherwise. This provided some more insight based on their feelings, past experiences, motivations and methods of referring or recommending a product.

Client interview
I chance to have an  interview with the client which provided context around the where the current friend get friend (FGF) product sat in the business' priorities. Prior to this brief, the end to end journey for FGF was refined from a EX point of view, and the business was now in a position to develop and promote this polished referral mechanic to their customer base. The offer of $200 for the new and existing customers was one of the best in market and the the cost to acquire was very reasonable.

The client touched on the technical limitations of website and app, key considerations around design and developing resource and talked about what a ideal end state was for this digital product.

One on One interviews
For the interviews I chose a mix of demographics and audience types to fit the assumed proto-personas of the end users of the product. Ranging from 29-60, Male and Female and Contact and non Contact customers, these conversations guided thinking around the values motivations, technical capabilities or limitations while also touching on experiences with other brands and referral schemes.
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As well as formal one on one interviews, I had many guerilla interviews and informal conversations around users experiences with in app and website referral schemes. This fed into an growing understanding around  a range of customer journeys, and what worked or didn't work within them and what I needed to bring into my end solution. Two of these interviews can be seen below.

Interview Results

Research findings

Affinity Map
Through the marketing research, quantitative survey and qualitative interviews a lot of common themes started to surface and a feature set to bring into the user testing stage began to form.
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The interviews and long answer questions in the survey gave good insight into what motivates a user to refer a product or brand. There was a mix of motivations, but there were two that stood out - these being brand advocacy and those who are after the monetary benefit. The brand advocates referred based on their relationship with the products and recommended 'products they stand by'  by word of mouth. They also recommend to people they have an existing relationship and wouldn't put this conversation too far removed from their circle of influence as to not come off as "cheap"

These advocates are types of customers that will be flagged as high NPS (net promoter score) customers in Contact's system. This group can be targeted with in-app personalisation in the final solution - a feature build into Contacts digital platforms. This is also the group to promote or push the referral schemes to in their "positive moments" of interactions with Contact. This will explored more in the customer journey.

The other group and common motivation was the value driven customers who are in the transaction solely for the monetary benefit for themselves and the other party. These customers are motivated by the dollar signs and benefits and this will drive more action. The notifications, accumulative benefits and transparency of this benefit year on year will be important to communicate.

The questions around bad, okay and great referral scheme experiences  highlighted a range of functions and features to include in the prototype as as summarised in the affinity map and bullet pointed below.

Research highlights and survey metrics

Customer Journey

After exploring the personas, I chose two of these to focus on for the building of the customer journey -   Sally the Deal hunter and Sam the techy renter.
These chosen personas fit the two main motivations that I came across in my research, these being the monetary benefit seeker and passive brand advocate.
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Customer Journey Story
First interactions and mention of the FGF with the customers are based around the type of customer they are. Sam being a passive advocate has this delivered to him a) after positive customer service interactions b) personalised targeting in app and website. Sally on the other hand was delivered an email with the current broadband deal which she signed up to online and was sent out a follow up NPS survey as a result which featured the referral scheme.

Both customers are presented with FGF and Sally acts immediately after seeing link in the email and understanding the benefit. She follows the online journey which prompts her to download the app and sends her code to a number of friends and family. One of her friends has been shopping around for a power supplier so takes up the offer and joins contact. After 30 days, both Sally and the new customer receive their credit and have been managing this through the Contacts app and are digitally primed for Contact's services. After a few more weeks, Sally's friend is prompted with a notification to do a referral herself. She brings more family members on board (customers who refer are 4-5 more likely to refer someone themselves).

Sam on the other hand, had a slightly different journey. He is not motivated by the money but is happy to stand by the a product or brand he trusts. He had a good experience with customer service and was flagged as a high NPS customer after a few questions on the phone.

At a later date, Sam helps someone move house and he asks her if she is set up with her utilities. He is reminded Contact and their power, internet and gas all in one. He also remembers the referral scheme, so he opens the app, follows the prompts and flick her his code via messenger. A few days later he receives a notification that his code has been used and his friend is set up. Sam messages his friend with a congratulatory message.

The end solution must be intuitive and visible and be prompted the right places and times for a spectrum of motivations.

Opportunities

Taking into account themes from competitor and market research, highlights and recommendations from interviews and the surveys, and opportunities that surfaced during the customer journey and affinity map exercises, I landed on a range of features that could be included in the end solution.

These features were loaded on the below MVP matrix and ranked in terms of value and difficulty.

Card Sorting Tests

Looking to start building the prototypes for the first round of user testing, I broke down the current app and Online Service (OLS) down into the stage gates and menu items. Here I added in 'refer a friend' and got 3 participants to run through how they would go about referring a friend in the app with the given cards - as seen below.

Taking into account the three varied journeys from the exercise I built refer a friend into the apps current architecture. Two of the testers expected the FGF element to have a strong presence on the front page, while the other expected this  built into the profile section - this meant the referral prompt should be in multiple areas or until tested further.

As well as this sitting alongside the elements in the main menu, the FGF prompts will be trialled in these areas to test effectiveness. The proposed architecture can be seen below.  

User flows
After this exercise, I moved onto user flows. These initially started on paper to get ideas down, but later these were moved onto miro to create a more structured model. Here I looked into a range of ways of referring a friend, the action of sharing a code, checking up on progress, receiving updates and notifications, and new customer onboarding. These were the core actions that a user would have using the app and was critical that these processes are smooth and intuitive.

Sketches and ideation

After exploring the user flows and additional information architecture, I moved onto giving these ideas more shape by sketching out a range of ideas and initial prototypes.

Current App
First I broke the app down into it's current elements to visualise it's  architecture and flow. All of the navigation and movement was based off the main screen, and most of the info or smaller sections were pop ups.

Share Page Ideas
I started to explore the share page as this was going to be a critical element of the end product. I based the ideas loosely off of competitors and prior experience and started building flows and prototypes based off these.

Share link locations
As part of the interface sketch experiments, I wanted to look at locations of the link to the referral page. This was informed by the card sorting tests with the users. These are the areas where a) have editable dynamic content and b) where users highlighted as proposed locations for links.
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Basic Flow
Based on the user flow exercise, I sketched out how this might look in action within the experience. The locations of the FGF prompts and the flows that came from that were storyboarded into a basic paper prototype.

Prototyping and testing

Prototype Development and Refinement

Share Page Trials
Now that the general flow and feature set had been tested and refined, I moved onto creating a hi res prototype and refined UI of my solution. As the main share page or dashboard was the most critical point of interaction for the scheme, I spend time  designing multiple iterations in keeping within Contact’s brand guidelines. These were shown guerilla style to a small test audience and the client for their thoughts and opinions and the first option was chosen.
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Onboarding and notifications
‍From here I tested and designed notifications and onboarding flows with help tools to get new customers accustomed to the experience.

App prototype flow
I built each part of the experience in Adobe XD to create a polished prototype of the final solution. This was tested with a small audience and any pain points or user flow questions were ironed out in further iterations.

Features Inclusions

Dashboard
This dashboard was a client request and a hit with the users too. After an additional conversation and the development of the gamification dashboard (as seen below) we have arrived a a simple and clean soltuion.

Product Push and deal inclusion
Imagining a product special or promotion was another request from the client, I landed on this solution, similar to the personalisation dialogue which fit perfectly within the context of the app.

Gamification and double incentive
This feature was bought in late in the piece as a way to encourage additional referral and convey that the scheme is not a one and done idea. The stars fill up with each successful referral and if the user does 5 referrals within 12 month, they receive additional benefits.
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Tool tips
As a way to communicate tricky decision points and aid in app customer onboarding, I designed this UI for user prompts which the client loved.
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The final flow