One Sheetz
Designing a new service that attracts fuel-only customers to buy c-store items.
ROLE - UX Researcher & Designer
● Conduct 20+ user interviews
● Create customer journey map
TEAM
Yicheng Jiang, Guodong Zhao
TIMELINE
September - December 2019
Our client is Emily Sheetz, the AVP of Sheetz, an American chain of convenience stores. The requirement for our team is to innovate Sheetz by servitization, grow Sheetz’s customer base, and help Sheetz make more profits.
The Problem
Sheetz sells a mix of fast food, convenience store items and gasoline.
However, there are many fuel-only customers who pull in, gas up and drive off without an incremental visit to the convenience store, where higher-margin products are and where operators can collect more data on customers.
a design challenge emerged…
How might we design a solution that motivates fuel-only customers to buy food and c-store items?
How Sheetz differentiates itself?
“We have developed a food program that rivals any quick-serve restaurant you’ve ever visited. Our menu is made to order (MTO). We use only the highest quality ingredients and prepare your food especially for you, while you wait. ” ——Sheetz
What are people’s feelings towards Sheetz?
Field Trip & Interviews
In order to gain a more thorough picture of Sheetz, we went to several Sheetz convenience stores to observe customer behaviors and services offered. We conducted 7 contextual inquiries in c-stores and at the gas station. We also interviewed 8 people who went to Sheetz before to get to know about their own unique and diverse experiences.
We identified three kinds of customers…
Wait...there’s a Gap!
We identified a gap between customers and Sheetz’s current strategy through synthesizing our first-step research findings using SWOT model.
Should we start thinking how to fill in the gap?
Not yet…
Before we started our second round of research, I decided to evaluate the market first. After the evaluation, we selected our focus to be Fuel-Only Customers based on two factors: business impact and feasibility.
So, why fuel-only customers don’t step into the c-store?
Interviews
We interviewed two kinds of customers: one are the fuel-only customers and the other is the fuel-up customer who also stops inside the store for their morning cup of coffee, mid-afternoon pick-me-up snack or on-the-go lunch. We tried to understand what are key pain points for both of them and why fuel-only customers don’t step into the c-store.
When to intervene?
Current Customer Journey Map
I drew a customer journey map to help us understand fuel-only customers’ current journey in Sheetz. Within this journey map, we identified a design opportunity: the Idle Time while pumping.
After the research, we established ideation questions for what we wanted to achieve with our new service. Some of these questions include:
How might we give fuel-only customers a motivation to step into the c-store?
How might we bring a frictionless ordering and paying process?
—— To be Continued…
I’m still working on this page, feel free to check other projects!