My Framer Site

Problem

Dan Murphys is the biggest and most successful alcohol retailer in Australia. Customers love Dan Murphy's due to its cheap prices, but it has its problems such as:

Time-Consuming Store Experience

The Drive-Thru allows customers to stay in their cars, bypassing the need to park or walk into the store.

Customer retention problem

Inefficient in-store experiences, like long wait times, discourage customers from returning. Most people only return for promo deals only.

COVID Restrictions at the time

During COVID, customers prefer contactless shopping options for safety and convenience, avoiding crowded, in-store environments.

Inefficiency During Peak Hours

During busy times, customers face long wait times and overcrowded stores, leading to a frustrating shopping experience and deterring purchases.

Overcrowded In-Store Experience

High in-store traffic creates congestion, long waits, and frustration for customers, especially those looking for a quick pickup.

Why Drive Thru Pickup?

Within the In-store technology department we were looking to innovate and improve the way people shop alcohol in-store by potentially embedding potential store technology such as Kiosks, Mobile self checkout, or a drive thru. But a drive thru seems to have the best potential to improve customer experience and increase our revenue because:

Convenience

The Drive-Thru Pickup offers customers a fast, easy, and contactless shopping experience, saving time by eliminating in-store browsing, parking, and checkout lines.

Increased repeat customers

The convenience of the drive-thru encourages repeat visits, boosting customer loyalty and frequency of purchases, leading to higher retention and lifetime value.

Solution to COVID Restrictions

The drive-thru aligns with the post-Covid trend for safer, contactless shopping, catering to customers who prefer minimal in-store interaction.

Utilizing peak hour sales

The drive-thru allows Dan Murphy's to efficiently serve more customers during peak times, reducing wait times and maximizing sales.

In-store customer volume

The store reduces in-store congestion, allowing customers who prefer quick pickups to streamline the process and improve store flow.

Potential new customer market segment

Potentially the service attracts new customer segments, including busy professionals and older individuals who prefer quick, easy, and contactless shopping.

UX Research Activities

Preparation

Initial stakeholder interviews

I interviewed the key stakeholders at the time who were ex BWS store managers to get an understanding of how stores work and what are the staff member pain points.

Research plan codesign

Sharing research plan with the team, getting feedback on the interview questions for field study and customer interviews.

Research execution

Field study to Dan Murphy stores

(to understand “Staff Member” behavior)

I visited the Dan Murphy shops in Manly Vale, Alexandria, Rouse Hill. I interviewed 3 staff members each to get a median sample to understand staff member behavior, pain points, workarounds, etc.

Customer interviews

(to understand “Customer” behaviour)

Invited 6 Dan murphy MyDan’s membership customers who often shop in stores. To understand their buying behaviour within

the stores.

Drive thru research

Looking at how KFC, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Starbucks benefit from the drive thru, looking for evidence what are the positive impact it brought before and after.

Challenges

Designing an entire drive thru without prior experience has its own challenges:

Estimating how many bays

It is difficult to estimate how many bays we need. We estimated a number between 2-4.

NPR Camera ghost events

The first model of the Number Plate Recognition cameras that we have had 70%-79% accuracy which sometimes capture ghost events where it detects something even though nothing is there.

Mitigating accidents

It doesn’t matter how much safety instructions we provide, as there are many ways unforeseen things might happen. There was a situation where a customer almost ran over our staff member and we could have get sued.

Getting customers to give number plate

Legally we cannot have the number plate field as a compulsory, it has to be optional as we must give the user freedom to keep their sensitive data private.

Customers not parking properly

Some customers are bad drivers and can’t park properly thus the camera cannot scan the number plate due to bad angles.

Delivery driver & staff member habits

Delivery drivers sometimes mistaken the drive thru pickup bay as parking spots. Staff members have bad habits of parking forklifts and often did not change their behavior despite us telling them not to.