Bici Couriers
As part of the validation of my Master's Degree in UX Design, we had to work for a company in Nantes, Bici Couriers, to help them in the acquisition of BtoB customers and the redesign of their processes.
Our master's degree ended with a competition with a real company to help with design problems. We met Florent, Théo, and Gaspard who are three friends and founders of Bici Couriers, a bike courier service in Nantes imported from Milan, Italy. Passionate about bicycles, their company offers a bike courier service for goods delivery in the area of Nantes, France.
We first organized ourselves as a micro-agency to work for 2 weeks and a half on their problems. In addition to their passion for sport and nature, their brief highlighted a number of challenges. As their company is pretty new (a little bit more than a year and a half at the time), the 3 associates were looking to develop their activity.
- Acquisition and retention of a BtoB customer base
- Improve their processes for managing and handling new incoming order requests to reduce the time-to-deliver
The problem space
During the first week, we did the exploration part. First of all, we were able to retrieve a list of Bicicouriers' customers so that we could contact them and meet with them and discuss their experience with the bike courier company.
Therefore, we conducted interviews with Bicicouriers' customers and other companies that are not in their customer databases such as Gaumont, La SAMOA, La Cantine du numérique, ICOM Communication, Biocoop Nantes Bretagne, and Au nom de la Rose (florist). Each of these companies was questioned on the following themes:
- Delivery services currently used
- How do you choose a delivery service as a company?
- How is doing the process from the call to the delivery?
- Good points and pain points on the service
- Technological constraints
We were then able to understand the typical courier client. We created Sandrine, a courier customer managing a little shop and that needs daily delivery for her customers. This persona helped us to focus on Bicicourier's customers' problems.
Sandrine has specific needs in her day-to-day business. Criteria of reliability (particularly on the availability of couriers), cost, and speed in her decision to choose a courier are the key to convert her into a happy customer and to make her loyal to Bicicouriers.
We were also interested in the internal management of the orders coming. We wanted to evaluate the different points of contact customers have to reach their company. We spend a whole afternoon observing the team answering tickets, calls, delivering and we summed-up all those information into a user journey.
The space of solutions
How to identify, acquire and retain potential B2B customers through the Bicicouriers experience while the business expertise is still under construction?
We worked on developing the professional maturity of Bicicouriers by structuring the way they were working and communicating to develop their notoriety and attractiveness towards our target.
Our marketing team has established a communication and resources strategy around this axis that we will not be developed fully here. Do not hesitate to contact me for more information on this topic.
From a user experience point of view, the understanding of the offer by Sandrine of the delivery process was the first problem to solve both for Sandrine, but also for Bicicouriers.
We designed and submitted 3 scenarios to rework the delivery process and the commercial offer. This proposal is based on 2 axes:
- Help Bicicouriers team to be focus on the delivery. As they love to bike and to do sports, the ticket system to take into account new demand was a real pain for them. They didn't realize it was also complicated for their customers and prospects.
- Centralize and automate the handling of order requests, whether for new customers, existing customers or for emergency or non-emergency situations.
Scenario 1: A new customer contacts Bici Couriers
Scenario 2: A current customer reach Bicicouriers for a delivery
Scenario 3: A new or existing customer reach Bicicouriers for an emergency delivery
Our solution is based on the autonomy of the team using services such as Slack and Zapier to create automation and avoid them spending too much time on the phone or writing down the information they receive online.
As we have observed that Sandrine is more willing to make a phone call when she's a loyal customer, the website experience wasn't that good for new customers. Actually, the website is the main way for new customers to discover Bicicourier's offer. We, therefore, reworked the way the offer is displayed and the way new customers can make a delivery request.
As the former price offer was made with ticket, with one ticket for one delivery and two for an emergency delivery, and with the number of tickets raising with the number of kilometers/miles to do, we discovered it was a source of confusion.
Finally, we all agreed on the fact that Bicicourier's biggest need was pedagogy on topics like SEO, IT, and offer. Therefore, we've built 4 guides on those topics so they can use as soon as possible after our presentation tools and solutions. We made an emergency suitcase with those guides + stickers, a document presenting our strategy, a proposal for a new brand identity, and a new WordPress homepage with our content strategy online.
