Case Study
ConnectMe Loyalty
Overview
Design an end-to-end digital check-in and loyalty experience for drive-thru customers, while empowering team members with streamlined POS interactions and personalized guest data.
Impact: Enhanced customer loyalty engagement at the drive-thru and provided team members with contextual customer insights to personalize interactions.
The Challenge
Taco Bell Rewards needed to extend the digital loyalty experience beyond mobile ordering into the in-store and drive-thru touchpoints. While Rewards members were accustomed to unlocking offers and earning points within the app, they lacked a seamless way to identify themselves and redeem benefits when ordering at the drive-thru.
The goal was to design an experience that:
Allowed customers to check in via a unique code, linking their Rewards account to their in-store order.
Surfaced loyalty status, tier, and available rewards directly to team members via the POS.
Created an opportunity for personalized service based on tier level (e.g., “Hot” or “Fire”).
Ensured a frictionless interaction for both customers and team members, all while maintaining operational efficiency during peak times.
Research and Discovery
Partnered with Product, Engineering, and Operations to map the end-to-end loyalty check-in flow, identifying potential failure points and operational constraints.
Conducted service design workshops to align both guest and team member experiences, ensuring the technology fit into the existing order process without disruption.
Audited existing POS workflows to identify opportunities to layer in loyalty interactions with minimal cognitive load for team members.
Experience Strategy
Focused on creating a seamless omnichannel experience, where the digital loyalty identity could extend into the physical order flow without requiring additional apps, downloads, or complex steps.
Applied progressive disclosure principles, ensuring customers only saw the information they needed at each step, while team members were surfaced with just-in-time customer insights.
Prioritized resilient design patterns, enabling easy error handling and recovery if check-in codes failed or customer accounts could not be validated.
Established design parity between the customer-facing DMB (Drive-Thru Menu Board) and team member POS interface, ensuring consistency between what customers expect and what team members see.
Design Execution
Developed wireframes and high-fidelity mockups for:
Customer check-in screen in the app, with clear visual hierarchy for check-in codes, rewards, and tier level.
POS interface enhancements, surfacing customer name, tier, and eligible rewards directly in the order flow.
Fallback and error states, ensuring team members could retry check-ins with minimal friction.
Tiered offer screens, accommodating deep menus for reward redemptions (e.g., when a reward allowed choosing from an entire drink menu, rather than a single pre-selected item).
Created interaction flows to show how check-in status would trigger updates to the DMB, giving customers real-time feedback on their successful check-in and personalized offers.
Introduced flexible navigation patterns for the team member interface, allowing them to easily return to the main POS menu or exit the loyalty flow when needed.
Outcome
Increased customer engagement at the drive-thru by extending the Rewards program into a real-world context, creating a frictionless link between the app and in-store experience.
Enabled personalized service moments, where team members could greet customers by name or highlight their tier-specific offers, enhancing brand connection.
Reduced team member cognitive load by surfacing only essential information at key moments, minimizing training requirements and ensuring faster adoption.
Provided new data opportunities by tying loyalty activity to in-store transactions, helping Taco Bell better understand cross-channel customer behavior.
Takeaways
Seamless digital-to-physical experiences are critical for maintaining loyalty program engagement beyond the app itself.
Designing for team member usability is equally important as designing for customers — both sides of the experience contribute to overall service quality.
Operational realities (speed, accuracy, and order flow) must be balanced with customer delight and personalization when designing in fast-paced environments like quick-service restaurants.
Future Considerations (Currently in Discovery)
AI-driven recommendations: Introduce predictive upsell opportunities based on customer order history.
Iterate for future V5 implementation