Grapefruit

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re the Romanian affiliate of a large international tobacco producer. I’m a digital coordinator at the company and in charge of the loyalty program for the reduced-risk products in our portfolio.

What challenge were you trying to address with Grapefruit?

We’re working with them on everything to do with our digital loyalty platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Grapefruit developed our loyalty platform in its entirety, and they’re hosting and managing it. Their team makes integrations and extra functionalities as well as handles everything else about the platform. Grapefruit was also responsible for the UI/UX design of about half of the components. The platform is integrated with some of our global systems. People engage with it to get points, extra benefits, and so on.

The points are used to order products and services from our e-commerce catalog. They can pay partially or entirely using points. Grapefruit built this functionality based on loyalty best practices from our industry and others. They identified the best ways to interact with consumers and offer them the best UX.

Another major add-on we made is the progressive web app extension. We couldn’t make a native mobile app, so Grapefruit came up with a progressive web app that would offer users the same experience as a native one. It involved rewriting website code, and it was all on them.

Users do different activities to earn points, which are counted through some tiering mechanisms. This was implemented from the beginning. We’re not allowed to do advertising on social media and other digital channels, so we haven’t done this for the app.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with 10 people from Grapefruit, including front- and backend programmers, strategy people, and account managers.

How did you come to work with Grapefruit?

We had multiple agencies pitch to us, and then we selected Grapefruit based on cost, business needs, etc.

What is the status of this engagement?

Grapefruit started developing the basics of the loyalty program in January 2018, and the official launch was in June of that year. Our engagement is still ongoing. It’s evolved into a lot of different assets since then, including more personalized activities and integration with our official e-commerce. We have ambitious plans for the platform, so there’s still a lot of work to do. Our team wants to integrate it with even more channels and make more functionality enhancements. We’ll continue working with Grapefruit.

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

The majority of our platform and campaigns were implemented by Grapefruit. Our user base has increased by 500% since the launch. The load time of the website is half of what it was in the beginning. Our net promoter score has increased each year over the last two years.

How did Grapefruit perform from a project management standpoint?

We have two account managers for this project, and they’re hands-on with everything. If we have an agreed deadline and something occurs on our side or theirs that’d delay it, we’ll have a discussion in due time.

We’ll analyze the goals and solutions to understand what the alternatives are, in order to make the project successful with or without meeting the deadline. They’re proactive in coming up with new ideas on top of what we’re asking them to do. We’re really happy with Grapefruit.

We’re using all types of communication, from WhatsApp and one-on-one messaging to phone calls. Email is the official channel, and we also have video calls. Grapefruit uses project management systems like Jira to track everything. We’re also using Google Sheets. We will use different channels depending on the urgency and importance of the task. We have phone calls for urgent things, and we have video calls for more strategic matters.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed, proactivity, organization, and great project management skills are what make Grapefruit stand out from the competition.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t see any at this point. The communication, speed, and quality of service are great.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

The strongest advice I could give someone is to explain their business to Grapefruit. In order for them to perform, they need to be given as much context as possible behind the business decisions. This way, they can also help improve the general idea and come up with new ones.