Adsterra

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a restaurant holding in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, with eight full-service locations.

What challenge were you trying to address with LoyaltyPlant?

We had the idea of making a loyalty program for our guests and so met with LoyaltyPlant.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They have an online platform that they proposed customizing for our guests and goals. We were interested in staying in touch with the guests and driving transactions. Every time a patron visits a location, they will get bonus points representing 10% of the check amount, which can become prizes.

They designed an iOS and Android application for this purpose, with our branding and style. They also created marketing material for the app and advised us on how we should present it to guests. We made it an initial gift as an incentive for the users joining the program.

What is the team dynamic?

We’ve always had a project manager, though the person has changed over time. For different tasks, we also communicate with members of the PR or technical departments.

How did you come to work with LoyaltyPlant?

Their company is popular in our market, and we didn’t know of any other that could provide this kind of service. Our choice was based on their experience, pricing strategy, and the cost-effectiveness of joining an existing platform, rather than developing our own.

How much have you invested with them?

We use the app in a Software-as-a-Service model, with a 9,000₽ RUB, or $150 USD, monthly fee for each restaurant.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with LoyaltyPlant in February 2013. We’ve made some business changes since then, but we still use the app in our restaurants.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but we had a lot of downloads in the first week. After two years, we reached 100,000 downloads. We have a base of loyal guests, and the penetration of application transactions is currently 30%.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s been easy to work with them. They are willing to develop new elements on the platform if clients need it. We mainly communicate over phone and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Nothing in particular, but LoyaltyPlant has been a good choice for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder of a fast-casual restaurant concept. We’re based in Toledo, Ohio. We have multiple units and we’re growing.

What challenge were you trying to address with LoyaltyPlant?

We had a mobile app, but it wasn’t well-branded or directly integrated with our point of sales [POS] solution. The app was mostly convenient for our customers; it wasn’t convenient for us. We weren’t getting any type of actionable data out of it. We had a customer list, but that’s where it stopped.

What was the scope of their involvement?

LoyaltyPlant developed an “order ahead, pay ahead” feature on top of a loyalty platform for our customers. It represented our brand well. We ended up getting an incredible piece of technology that allows us to shape our traffic, promote various items, and do automated marketing campaigns. It’s a powerful system. It’s developed on Android, iOS, and Windows.

There was a lot of back and forth in getting the app from idea to reality. We showed them the solution we currently had, went over what the challenges were, and tried to define what we wanted as the outcome. We described what we wanted the flow, functionality, and UX to be like. They pretty much handled the backend themselves and built a well-functioning loyalty system from there. After that, we went through a traditional wireframe. They took our sketched ideas and gave us screenshot mockups. We went back and forth and they implemented our feedback.

We then came up with a roadmap that had version 1, version 2, and version 3. We set up beta testing groups with our employees and then our customers. We had a round of focused iterations to get to a stable app. We still have a wish list of stuff that we want to do, but that’s great because it’s always nice to have something to continue working on.

I hope our engagement with LoyaltyPlant never stops. The thing about mobile apps is that every concept is going to have something new, and we’re going to draw inspiration from all these different places and emulate what we like. It will be an evolution; we’re hopefully never going to stop innovating with the app. We want to just keep building upon it and making it better and more efficient.

What is the team dynamic?

They have a team of about 30 developers. I don’t know how many are working on our projects specifically. My understanding is that they have various groups and the projects get passed between the groups during different stages. I stick with my dedicated project manager. As long as I’m getting what I contracted for, I don’t want to peek my head into their business.

How did you come to work with LoyaltyPlant?

I ran into them at an industry conference a couple of years ago, but we had this huge language barrier. I ran into them again and they had somebody that I could have a good conversation with. We described what we wanted, agreed to the scope, agreed to a timeline, and started to knock it out.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2016 and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our customers love it. They’re ecstatic about it. On any of our 2017 reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Google, probably half of all the reviews mention our app. It’s popular with our customer base and our employees really like it too. We’ve created some gamification for them to earn loyalty points by promoting the app.

Every project has challenges. The loyalty system was well-built and they were quick and efficient in building out the UX that we wanted. There wasn’t a lot of hiccups with that, but we had to do a direct API integration for our point of sales system, which is not an easy process. It relies on them being truthful about what the capabilities of their API are, which doesn’t always happen. I don’t put a lot of fault on LoyaltyPlant, they always did their best.

How did LoyaltyPlant perform from a project management standpoint?

We were assigned a single project manager, Anna [Lukianenko, Chief Customer Success Officer, LoyaltyPlant]. We got to know her well. She came to the closing meeting where we signed on the deal, which was a great time for us to meet our project manager.

There’s a time zone difference (their developers are based in Russia). This helps control cost, but it also means we’re working across the world from each other. We set up a Slack channel that is super-efficient; everybody who works in our restaurant is on Slack. Our office manager or our systems manager went through and translated issues, and moved them off to LoyaltyPlant’s team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In this business, companies either deliver on what they promise or they don’t. The vast majority of the time, people don’t. It’s refreshing to get somebody who says they are going to do something, and they do it. Time is not always within everyone’s control. The project went over the timeline, but they didn’t go over-budget. They stuck by their word. That’s all I can ask for. I have a lot of friends who’ve had mobile apps developed for them, and it’s always the same story of people who overpromise and underdeliver.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t know their business well enough to know how they could have improved. They delivered on what I asked for.