Digital Strategy

Designing a new customer experience in the world of coffee

Enhancing CX in the world of coffee

The Client

A leader in coffee production

The client is a historic Italian company that ranks among the global leaders in the production of high-quality coffee. The company's vision blends the tradition of Neapolitan espresso with an innovative vocation, experimenting with the taste of coffee in a wide assortment of products and formats. The client's sales network today covers all distribution channels and is strengthened by important partnerships abroad and several alliances in Italy.

The challenge

One of the client's main objectives was to internalize activities and processes in the direct-to-consumer area, in a business context in which internal competencies needed to be expanded and redefined in order to be fit with the new strategic objectives. Therefore, the organizational structure of the Marketing area also had to be able to support the natural changes that the introduction of a new business model on digital channels brings alongside the traditional sales model.

The project

A new management of the B2C channel

The customer was managing the direct relationship with the end consumer through a B2B relationship with an outsourcer. There was a need to take ownership of the direct sales model and the direct relationship with the end consumer, gaining greater awareness and full control of the relationship with the end customer. They chose to partner with Mind-Mercatis relying on the digital team's expertise to identify the application architectures needed to implement a new business model and strategically evaluate the customer experience model best suited to the brand's relationship with its consumers.

The project began in October 2021, where through the application of Mind-Mercatis cooperation methodologies supported the redefinition of the customer's digital model, designing a new digital experience for the B2C channel. The main project moments are divided into:

Context analysis

Business goals map

Touchpoints and Customer experience map As Is

These phases led to the design of a strategic project roadmap, first made possible through an understanding of the context in which the client operates; assessing the status and performance of its customer relationships, in order to stitch a new digital experience in line with manifested business objectives; defining the actors involved and on which touchpoints; and establishing the new architectural model and application platforms to be employed.

The key step in initiating the project was to analyze the context in which the client operates, understanding the status and performance of its relationships with its customers and partners, obtaining a complete picture of the actors involved. Mind-Mercatis in addition to producing a thorough analysis of the target market, conducted multifunctional interviews with senior professionals in the client's Marketing, IT, Sales, and Logistics areas. The declination of the interviews was guided by two focal points:

Understand business strategies and dynamics
Mapping technology infrastructure, processes and data flows

Through this moment, a full understanding of the organization, dynamics and peculiarities of the business, with a focus on e-commerce, was obtained, highlighting strengths and weaknesses in the system and intercepting opportunities for improvement.

Another purpose of the interviews was to understand the end-consumer customer experience and how different business areas of the customer were contributing to its construction.

Next, a co-operative process of identifying the business goals to be pursued through the project was implemented, starting with the enhancement of the company vision. This phase was then substantiated into a business goal map, declined into strategic objectives, stakeholders and impact on consumer experience. The outcome of the business goal mapping was shared with the components of the business areas involved in a series of workshops, aimed at mixing the skills of heterogeneous professionalism, increasing the comparison and exchange of ideas to design new digital strategies. Mind-Mercatis' digital team led the workshops, providing the client with tools (such as personas and working dashboards) and knowledge to identify consumer needs with the client and convert ideas into project proposals. Mind-Mercatis created a customer journey to be omnichannel and based on this selected the proposals that best fit the new strategic objectives. The changes envisaged required a progressive redefinition of the architectural model and application platforms involved. The Mind-Mercatis team then formulated a strategic roadmap capable of declining in detail timing, components and integrations.

The strategy

The methodology adopted combines tools from design thinking and human-centered design, enabling:

Access a better understanding of the end user and their experience along all touchpoints they would have with the company
Always keep the user's point of view at the center when implementing new services
Have clear evidence of issues the user might encounter during the experience and opportunities to improve it, through the use of practical concept visualization tools (e.g., customer journey mapping)
Provide opportunities to prototype, test, and learn from and with users in the development of solutions
Anticipate critical issues in the development phase through collaboration among the different cores of the project and sharing the application perimeter on which to support the user experience (e.g., service blueprint)

In this specific case, in a preparatory phase we assisted the client in operational management and reorganization of processes and redistribution of competencies, building an ad hoc temporary management program based on the use of process management methodologies and an activity monitoring plan in the client's marketing department.

The results

Within a three-month time frame, the client had an overview of the target market, the technologies needed to implement the business evolution, internalizing new know-how with a greater understanding of both the strategic context and the roadmap to be pursued to implement the new business model:

Defining the new omnichannel customer experience model

Identifying the building blocks of innovation: Business + Technology

Defining the operational plan of technological and organizational evolution