Gomez y Guzman - A case study in Experience Modelling

Abstract

Senior executives often tend to underestimate the influence a great in-store customer experience has on sales. Instead they typically tend to focus more on product and service offers, marketing and brand issues and store locations to drive additional revenue. With little or no capital outlay, we demonstrate that by simply providing a great in store customer experience, we can increase revenue by 400%.

Methods

Context research, competitor analysis, behavioural analysis, experience modelling, experience prototyping and testing.

The Challenge

Guzman y Gomez (GyG) provides an authentic Mexican culinary experience to Australians through their Taquerias (fast food) outlets. While the food is great, GyG was aware that the menu was complex and confused customers. This led to extremely long order lines and fewer customers being served during peak periods, which translated to dissatisfied customers and less revenue for Guzman Y Gomez.

The owners were planning to open a new outlet in one of Sydney’s busiest food courts. The design of the new food outlet needed to take into account that the target audience in the CBD are typically time conscious office workers, who expect fast turnaround, demand value and seek a great experience. It is a case of grab and go.

Guzman Y Gomez approached Different to improve the in-store customer experience. They needed to improve customer flow through each outlet, increase the revenue per outlet without losing the unique appeal and attributes of the GyG brand.

The Solution

To understand the Guzman Y Gomez experience we needed to understand it from the customers’ point of view. We worked collaboratively with Guzman Y Gomez to define personas and customers brand perception. We then conducted

• 1. Field studies to analyse GYG’s competitiors;
• 2. In store observations and contextual inquiries to understand the current customer experience;
• 3. Attitudinal research with customers before and after their ordering experience;
• 4. Spatio-temporal analyses to understand bottlenecks in the store layout.

The analyses and findings from the research enabled us to come up with an experience model to achieve a smooth and quick ordering/eating experience.

Our better thinking and better experiences will always deliver you better results, whatever your specific business objectives may be—increased site usage, increased revenue, increased market share, improved efficiencies, improved information delivery, increased customer loyalty or fewer calls to the customer service centre. But the most important result of all is a positive experience for the people who matter most—your audience.