A New Generation App for KFC

Orders: Quick and User-conscious

Making a user-friendly app takes thorough analysis of the UX, especially its navigation: it has to be intuitive and the main user scenarios have to take as little as two to three taps. Thus, it’s crucial for a food tech to optimize its checkout flow.

We’ve addressed all the possible use cases in the app: e.g., you can quickly and easily modify the ingredients of any meal and add extra ingredients. This saves users time and keeps them focused on the order.

Users can quickly browse through the menu and add items to the cart, but that’s not it. Here’s what users can do thanks to the extra features we’ve implemented:

• change the order in the cart,
• get comprehensive information on each meal: ingredients, fats, carbs, proteins, and calories,
• adjust the ingredients: you can remove the ingredients you don’t eat (e.g., mayo) or add an extra helping of something,
• enter promo codes,
• choose between delivery and pickup,
• change the delivery address,
• repeat the previous order.

And here’s another example of the app taking care of the user. This one has to do with special offers. Whenever users add a special offer to the cart, the app makes suggestions on how to save more money or get more items for the same amount of money, or applies the discount to the order automatically.

CJM and User Scenarios

When users order the food they are hungry and not ready to wait long. In this case, any negative experience makes them overreact. Therefore, it’s important to identify all the negative scenarios possible in a food delivery app. In order to do so, we drew up a CJM while we were planning the development process. This involves analyzing all of the user scenarios, including the negative ones.

Negative Scenarios

We’ve analyzed all the errors that could lead to a negative experience for a KFC user. It turned out this can be caused by a restaurant, delivery service, or the interface of the app.

Restaurant errors. For example, a typical error a restaurant can make is deliver something you didn’t order. The best troubleshooting scenario in this case is as follows: customer support reaches out to the client before the order is delivered and offers compensation. Meanwhile, in the context of the app, it’s important to give clients a tool to quickly contact customer support.

Delivery error. A common delivery error is a delay in delivery. In this case, it’s important to provide users with comprehensive information on the current status of their delivery. This makes users feel in control of the situation and allows them to react whenever something goes wrong. Thus, we are showing delivery details on the home screen of the KFC app.

Application errors. One of the possible app errors goes like this: a client makes an order and forgets to check the delivery address. As a result, the order is delivered to the wrong destination. In this case, we suggested that the app checks if the delivery address coincides with the actual geoposition of the user.

Another common case that may occur while ordering goes like this: a user adds items to the cart, proceeds to payment and the app says that part of the order cannot be delivered. The user gets upset and cancels the order. We added a filter users can apply to pick the restaurant where all the meals they want are available to avoid that.

All the Useful Information Shown on the Home Screen

Users don’t want to waste time switching between the screens. Therefore, it’s important to show as much useful information as possible on the main screen of the mobile app.

The main screen of this app shows a catalogue with pretty pictures of delicious meals. And since we needed to show all of the useful information there, we suggested a hybrid solution.

Users can find all the available discounts, offers, and new meals in stories and add coupons and offers they find in stories right into their order. In addition to that, this block shows users their personal discount. The upper part of the page shows the card with an active order. Users can look there to find detailed information on the delivery status of their order.

Personal Approach to Users

Paying attention to the needs of every customer not only helps a brand earn customer loyalty, but also increases the average purchase size. In order for the KFC app to have a personal approach to customers, we suggested using a system of cross-selling recommendations. This system analyzes user preferences and suggests what meals they might like.

The system can also keep track of user preferences. For example, if you regularly remove the onion from the list of ingredients, the app suggests removing the onion from all meals. 

Another case of a personal approach in the KFC app is suggesting offers a user might find interesting.

Features that Trigger Emotional Response and Drive Sales

KFC flypages are colorful and aim to strike the eye. However, sometimes it’s not enough. Some users want to take a close look at the meal they’re about to order, especially if it’s a new one.

That’s why we proposed a killer feature — the augmented reality mode (AR). To make the experience truly vivid we used 3D scans of real products. A three-dimensional burger you can look at and see all the ingredients in triggers a way stronger emotional response and makes you much more eager to make an order.

Loyalty Program Focused on Brand Identity

Brands can integrate their mobile apps with a flexible loyalty program that takes note of the brand specifics providing their users with extraordinary creative solutions. This way users become loyal to an app or a specific brand and get motivated to order again and again.

Here’s how we added the personal touch to the loyalty program in the KFC app.

• You can get bonus points for your purchases. KFC has its own currency — KFC coins. These can be used to partially cover the cost of your order.
• You can also unlock achievements and statuses. For example, if you buy 5 spicy meals, you unlock the Sergeant Pepper status, and if you buy 3 large boxes, you become a Party Master.

Mobile App as an Embodiment of Brand Identity

Strong brand awareness is what makes large companies stand out and makes up the major part of their success. Consumers would rather buy something from a well-known company. This is absolutely true for KFC.

Brands need to show their identity to their clients. Aggregators have the same design for all brands which makes it impossible for any of them to stand out. However, it’s easy to do that in your own mobile app.

We applied the corporate design to as many details of the KFC app, used vivid colors and brand identity specified in the brand book.

And there’s one more unique feature we added to the app — a voice assistant visualized as Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders is crucial to the brand identity. He is what makes people around the world recognize the brand. In this app, the voice of Colonel Sanders helps you make your order. The assistant can help you switch to a particular category in the menu or open the current offers. He can also suggest you try a new meal based on your preferences.

Operationally, it doesn’t require an AI as sophisticated as the Google Assistant — it’s quite enough for Sanders to successfully cover all use cases associated with orders and make small talk.