Pret-a-Manger

I had global UX ownership of the Subscription product stream as a sole Designer across all markets (US, UK and France), which meant end-to-end product development from concept to completion on all user journeys, across all platforms – iOS/Android Apps and Web. It was both a strategic and hands-on role.

Responsibilities ranged from product strategy, to gathering requirements with the PO and relevant stakeholders across the business (Commercial, Marketing, Legal), to UX (discovery, product mapping, wireframing, prototyping low/high res screens) and UI/Design System core work, to creating and implementing processes and workflows across the whole product development team (Design, BA, QA, Engineering), to creating and maintaining a UX Wiki to organise active documentation and historically annotate work.

When I joined, the business was seriously struggling with a high churn rate for new subscribers within of 3 months of subscribing, plus a retention offer loophole at cancellation stage. This translated in a growing loss of profit that needed to be urgently addressed.

My first step was looking at the data available to gain insight into what was happening and why. Was there an issue within the product’s user journeys? Was it something payment related? Or perhaps a nagging technical issue that users were consistently struggling with? Analytics provided a dire picture while also highlighting a few negative patterns.

Going through all user journeys in the subscription cycle, I started annotating where specific drop points within the digital platforms (Apps and Web) were happening. The subscription conversion rate was high as a result of a first month offer sign-up – usually 50% off the first month or the first month for free. For coffee lovers, Pret’s Coffee subscription was a good deal with an allowance of five Barista-made drinks per day.

However, seeing how easy it was to subscribe, unsubscribe and subscribe again to continuously take advantage of the introductory offers, subscribers weren’t converting into loyal customers but rather engaging in a repetitive, temporary in-and-out subscription dynamic.