Why Ask Uncle Dan?
Ask Uncle Dan is a store operation app used by staff within Dan Murphy stores. It is designed to cater to all team member needs to perform efficiently and effectively making recommendations, inventory management, locating products, training new team members frictionless and seamless.
Problems
This is what we’ve known so far before implementing the LED light technology into Ask Uncle Dan. These insights has been gathered through Expert stakeholder interviews / Subject matter experts, field study within Dan Murphy stores, interviews from previous initiatives I’ve worked on. All these insights I’ve gathered form previous projects played a massive role for this project.
Team/Staff Problems
Access to product knowledge to give recommendations
As a team member I want to be able to make product recommendations that the customer would love.
Product availability / Out of stock
Sometimes we don’t have enough items when the customers want them. Stocking and preparation can be pain too.
Product location
As we have a vast range of products it is sometimes challenging to find products that are less common, especially for new team/staff members.
Business Problems
Time/cost for training new members
New team members need training and it can take time for them to get a grip on performing at our expected standard of performance.
Customer serving time / Low VOC satisfaction
Team members wasted a lot of time serving customers, this often led to other customers waiting unattended for too long.
Wage costs
The longer it takes to locate has a direct impact on costs.
Varied Store structures
Each store is set up differently and locating an item or navigating to an item is a common issue for our customers and team members.
The tribe lead of the in-store technology was contacted by an external vendor supplying store technology. During the meeting the whole in-store tribe has been invited. I myself as a product designer is there in the meeting to determine which technology will improve the user’s experience. They showed us some digital banners which are cool, a robot that can scan for empty bottles as it walk through and isle, but these looked a bit unnecessary.
Feasibility discussion with developers
The first thing that came to my mind after the showcase we were all excited and we had a discussion about incorporating the factory app into our app. The tech lead at the time told us it is possible and after reviewing the backend code it has been confirmed that it is feasible to do.
What happens next
Within 1 month since the showcase I mentioned earlier, the formats team has tested it on one Dan Murphy store and rolled it out on two more stores, since the technology worked well.
Since we know that it’s feasible to incorporate the factory backend code into the AUD app, we wanted to know how people use it. We decided to do customer interviews to find out how to improve the app when we incorporate it to AUD. Thus I need to do some customer interviews.
The point of this customer interview is to discover how to improve the usability of the LED light feature when incorporated into the AUD app.
Research Objectives
1.
Confirm the scenarios when team need to locate products on the shelf.
2.
Identify the perceived difficulty of this task and the time to complete.
3.
Discover how team are currently locating products and what information and apps they're using.
4.
Understand what product location information is most helpful and why.
5.
Identify the perceived difficulty of this task and the time to complete.
6.
Determine the initial desirability of this functionality and the likelihood to adopt.
Methodology
Testing design prototypes with store members, and the FTL factory app.
Method
9 participants
1:1 interviews in person 45 mins each
Format
Contextual interview style questions that are open and not leading
Participant summary
We’ve recruited store team members from:
Dan Murphy’s Alexandria 3 people
Dan Murphy’s Leichhardt 3 people
Dan Murphy’s Kirrawee 3 people
Research Outcomes
1.
Multiple team members lighting Electronic shelf labels was not seen as a problem and some expected to be assigned a colour.
2.
3.
4.
Preferred to turn on/off over tap and hold.
5.
Article locations are not incorporated within the factory app, they went back and use AUD instead for this.
6.
7.
New team members very likely to use FTL.
8.
Ask Uncle Dan provided the user of the capability to turn a shelf label light on so that they can locate the product very easily. Dan Murphy is a huge store after all, this function enables the team member to quickly find a product
8825
Access to the PDP that has Find to Light button
3805
Turned the light on, which means we have 43% button conversion rate
Customer serving time reduced significantly
Since team members were able to find items very quickly due to the Find to Light feature they don’t need to go back, ask people or even spend time to search.
Easier training for new team members
New team members are able to locate products without asking for help, the app helps them train memory. Generally once they know where it is they don’t really use Find to Light again.
Increased successful recommendation
Due to most of the features in PDP such as Reviews, check nearby stores, get directions, filters, the team/staff can recommend better.
Retrospective
After finishing the Find to light project, I was happy because the contribution I made has brought great positive impact towards Dan Murphy staff members in-store. I never had much empathy about people working in stores before as I myself have never done a retail job in my life. Moving forward I would like to dedicate myself on making people’s life easier by solving user problems
This app is designed to be the ultimate app to improve the customer’s shopping experience via recommendation. In the homepage we’ve put all the categories the business tried to push.
Quick access to best offers/recommendation
Ask uncle Dan has a better and clear navigation compared to the Dan murphys app for recommendation purposes.
Inventory/Stock check for restocking
The Product details page has the most updated stock an is able to see which other stores has that particular product and how to get there.
View customer’s past purchase history
By using the customer’s existing details within our system we can view their history and recommend something better.
Access to Team member & Wine merchant reviews
Team/Staff can write reviews and see each other’s reviews regarding a product.
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