LS ONE… More Than Just a Loyalty Program

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward technology – not the other way around” – Steve Jobs
There was a reason why the late Steve Jobs, co founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc  was so successful and revolutionary. He knew the importance of the customer experience first when developing his technology.    With the introduction of social media platforms in the last 10 years, companies have the opportunity to reach out to their target markets for comments and feedback in the development of their products.

LS ONE is a company that has adopted the same philosophy of Steve Jobs in their development of their product.  Recently launched, LS ONE is a Rewards Program which is downloaded to your smart phone.  Through the application you can collect “tokens” using beacon technology.  These tokens are earned and exchanged for rewards provided by the participating businesses. The user also has access to digital coupons, exclusive promotions and is kept informed of any special deals through the applications push notification function.   A business geo-directory is also provided for all participating businesses. The following video illustrates the application in more detail.

In an interview with James, Business Manager at LS ONE, in the development of their application he recruited users and invited them to a closed Facebook group in the testing phase of the product.  “We wanted to make the app as user friendly as possible and what better way to do this but through feedback from the actual users”. Following the Scrum method, we need user feedback in order to launch an MVP (minimal viable product) and an MMP  (Minimal Marketable Product) quickly and efficiently”.  He described an example of how users of their Facebook group improved the notification feature of application.  Originally, the users noticed that when notifications were sent to their mobile device, the message would disappear and fade away, sometimes without clicking.  Through this feedback, LS ONE decided to make the Promotion Notification Section as a main feature, where notifications can be saved and viewed at a later date.  Other feedback received was that the business directory was not user friendly.  It was difficult to navigate through the businesses.  Through this feedback the developers created different business categories which made searching easier.

When asked about how has social media played a role in product development and business performance James commented “It saved us time and money! I can communicate to multiple users directly at one time rather than by each individually.  I also did not need to hire a a third party to test my product, which saved my bottom line and made it cost effective”.

From this success, LS ONE plans to continue to communicate through social media in order improve their product and to listen to the feedback of their users.

Lessons for Others

Using Social Media to engage its users in the product development and in the testing phase results in a what product users actually need and want. The closed group provided a fresh pair of eyes and unbiased feedback that assisted the development and design team tremendously. Using feedback directly from the users, saves time and resources resulting a shorter turnaround of the product and launch into the market.

 

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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