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Brakes

Innovations to make customers' lives easier

Case Study

Harnessing digital optimisation to capitalise on CX improvements

Our Digital Acceleration Programme (DAP) was created to benchmark a brand against its competitors and the best of the breed within the retail space and offer advice on what initiatives to focus on in their online offering. The DAP is an extensive and deep-dive report highlighting where a business is winning or losing and finding the best opportunities for improving customer experience and, ultimately, revenue. 

In 2021, Brakes, a leading wholesale foodservice supplier in the UK, completed the DAP process for a second time with our KPS Consultancy team. Having already made strides to improve its offering in phase one, Brakes commented that the second iteration of the DAP had “further consolidated and reinforced the previous work done.”

 

A valuable tool to engage with a wide range of business stakeholders, the DAP has been vital in assisting this traditionally B2B supplier in developing a customer experience that echoes the very best features of B2C e-commerce websites. 

Brakes: Groceries

Reshaping the customer journey

Brakes have two key requirements for any project or initiative to move forward: will it improve customer experience, and will it be commercially viable? Using the DAP as a guide, the last 18 months has seen Brakes launch three headline initiatives that have reshaped the customer journey at crucial touchpoints: 

1. Two-step checkout

For most retailers, the idea of interrupting a customer’s purchase is unimaginable. However, evidence in the DAP showed it could be a helpful step in the checkout process, with some retailers adding up to five interruptions at checkout. Brakes took this theory and used a two-step process to remind customers of something useful and relevant – something they had previously bought, or a product linked to an existing basket item. This simple change has resulted in a 1% uplift in the number of boxes (consolidated and packed orders) sold through the website each week.  
Online checkout page

1. Page depth increase

At just 12 products per page, the DAP revealed Brakes’ page depths were much shorter than its competitors. By increasing the number of products per page to 60, Brakes customers no longer click through multiple pages to find the product they want. This was a simple but critical move for Brakes, as with less than 60 products in most specific categories, many category searches display every product available on a single page. Removing the need to click through multiple pages gives customers a much easier buying journey – crucial in the B2B market where buyers are generally not browsers and strapped for time. Customers have doubled the number of products added to basket as a result. 
online page depth increase

1. Seach user interaction

Search functionality always offers lots of opportunities for improvement. The DAP inspired Brakes to improve search interaction by adding previous search terms when users click search, creating new drop-down menus that include category filters and product suggestions that appear as you type. Additional customer experience tweaks include bolding the typed text in the results preview and having the search menu (filters and category list) appear in the search results screen to allow users to see what they have selected immediately. Early indications already show an improvement to Net Promoter score before vs after these improvements. Crucially, adding a level of intuitive behaviour and signalling allows Brakes to get the right products displayed to the right customers at the right time – and, as a result, impact revenue?
Online search user interaction

1. Two-step checkout

For most retailers, the idea of interrupting a customer’s purchase is unimaginable. However, evidence in the DAP showed it could be a helpful step in the checkout process, with some retailers adding up to five interruptions at checkout. Brakes took this theory and used a two-step process to remind customers of something useful and relevant – something they had previously bought, or a product linked to an existing basket item. This simple change has resulted in a 1% uplift in the number of boxes (consolidated and packed orders) sold through the website each week.  
Online checkout page

1. Page depth increase

At just 12 products per page, the DAP revealed Brakes’ page depths were much shorter than its competitors. By increasing the number of products per page to 60, Brakes customers no longer click through multiple pages to find the product they want. This was a simple but critical move for Brakes, as with less than 60 products in most specific categories, many category searches display every product available on a single page. Removing the need to click through multiple pages gives customers a much easier buying journey – crucial in the B2B market where buyers are generally not browsers and strapped for time. Customers have doubled the number of products added to basket as a result. 
online page depth increase

1. Seach user interaction

Search functionality always offers lots of opportunities for improvement. The DAP inspired Brakes to improve search interaction by adding previous search terms when users click search, creating new drop-down menus that include category filters and product suggestions that appear as you type. Additional customer experience tweaks include bolding the typed text in the results preview and having the search menu (filters and category list) appear in the search results screen to allow users to see what they have selected immediately. Early indications already show an improvement to Net Promoter score before vs after these improvements. Crucially, adding a level of intuitive behaviour and signalling allows Brakes to get the right products displayed to the right customers at the right time – and, as a result, impact revenue?
Online search user interaction
DAP is an effective tool to have in your arsenal. Our business conditions are regularly changing, and DAP gives us a deep set of benchmarking data that we can reach into as and when we face change or disruption. The team at KPS and the comprehensive DAP they provided, have been a key enabler for our business. There’s no way these changes to our customer experience would have been possible without them.

Facts

We have also run our Digital Acceleration Programme for Dreams

Contact

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Barnaby Moffat, Commercial Director of KPS UK

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  • Email:
    uk-info@kps.com



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Get in touch to find more about how we can help your business.

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