CLIENT
INDUSTRY
Hospitality
Consumer markets
FEATURING
Adobe
1-2%
projected increase in order conversion as a result of personalization at scale
1-2%
projected increase in average order value as a result of personalization at scale
1-1.5%
projected increase in incremental rewards enrollments as a result of personalization at scale
Personalizing digital experiences builds trust with customers and helps earn their loyalty
Serving up personalization
Chipotle, known for its personalized dining experience, aims to extend that personalization to its expanding digital audience. Recognizing the importance of providing enhanced, targeted digital experiences, Chipotle collaborated with PwC to help bring this concept to fruition. The objective is twofold: to fortify relationships with existing customers and entice new ones, eventually transforming them into loyal advocates.
Having a personal touch
Chipotle was committed to offer its expanding digital audience the same level of personalization online as it does in person.
Focusing on execution
Working with PwC and Adobe, Chipotle prioritized a handful of initial use cases to target specific customer profiles, aiming to help deliver a truly personalized customer experience for its digital audience.
Enabling technical design
Leveraging Adobe RT-CDP, customer profiles were matched to an individualized experience, helping drive the right digital interaction to the right people at the right time.
Being outcomes obsessed
PwC and Chipotle developed a process to measure how each personalized experience can impact conversion, as well as forecast the expected value of each future personalized interaction at scale.
Working differently
Understanding the financial implications of each tailored customer experience allowed Chipotle to make smarter, faster business decisions and drive confidently toward its desired business outcomes.
Recipe for real success
Chipotle's new Adobe-based platform offers an enhanced digital experience, helping deliver unparalleled personalization, improving loyalty and attracting new customers. This transformative move not only helps drive revenue growth, but also establishes Chipotle as one of the digital leaders, paving the way for further advancements in AI technology.
Serving up personalization
Chipotle, known for its personalized dining experience, aims to extend that personalization to its expanding digital audience. Recognizing the importance of providing enhanced, targeted digital experiences, Chipotle collaborated with PwC to help bring this concept to fruition. The objective is twofold: to fortify relationships with existing customers and entice new ones, eventually transforming them into loyal advocates.
Having a personal touch
Chipotle was committed to offer its expanding digital audience the same level of personalization online as it does in person.
Focusing on execution
Working with PwC and Adobe, Chipotle prioritized a handful of initial use cases to target specific customer profiles, aiming to help deliver a truly personalized customer experience for its digital audience.
Enabling technical design
Leveraging Adobe RT-CDP, customer profiles were matched to an individualized experience, helping drive the right digital interaction to the right people at the right time.
Being outcomes obsessed
PwC and Chipotle developed a process to measure how each personalized experience can impact conversion, as well as forecast the expected value of each future personalized interaction at scale.
Working differently
Understanding the financial implications of each tailored customer experience allowed Chipotle to make smarter, faster business decisions and drive confidently toward its desired business outcomes.
Recipe for real success
Chipotle's new Adobe-based platform offers an enhanced digital experience, helping deliver unparalleled personalization, improving loyalty and attracting new customers. This transformative move not only helps drive revenue growth, but also establishes Chipotle as one of the digital leaders, paving the way for further advancements in AI technology.
SITUATION
Digital evolution: this time it’s personal
If you’ve ever dined at Chipotle, then you understand how the personal touch of building your own meal adds a layer of enjoyment to the experience. Tailoring your order to your individual needs and preferences means you get everything you want and nothing you don’t — a recipe for success. But can the satisfaction of a personalized experience extend beyond physical restaurant locations? Chipotle believes so.
Under the visionary leadership of its VP of Digital Experiences, Chipotle considered how to offer its expanding digital audience — which currently captures more than 35% of orders with over 38 million Chipotle Rewards members — the same level of personalization online as it does in person. During the pandemic, Chipotle experienced a major shift in favor of online ordering and designed its future business strategy to capture additional digital growth. Amid an industry-wide push to drive digital growth with personalized experiences based on consumer data, Chipotle knew that providing enhanced, targeted digital experiences could help create meaningful first impressions for new guests and enhance its overall customer attraction strategy. As the next phase of its digital journey, following the release of a world-class mobile app for digital ordering, dedicated Digital Kitchens and Chipotle Rewards, digital personalization was a natural evolution.
Recreating loyalty success
Chipotle approached PwC for help taking its industry-leading digital customer experiences to the next level. Several years earlier, PwC had helped Chipotle design and launch its loyalty program, Chipotle Rewards, which went on to become one of the fastest-growing loyalty programs by enrolled members in the industry. It was such a positive working experience that Chipotle sought to recreate the success. The company requested the same team members that helped launch the original loyalty program and tasked them with helping to execute a complex, ambitious vision for digital personalization at scale.
Chipotle understood that the effort had the potential to go beyond strengthening its relationships with existing customers; it could also help attract new ones. The goal was to nurture connections on every level, converting an untapped market into customers, customers into loyalty rewards members and members into advocates.
SOLUTION
Keeping customers hungry for more
To create personalized experiences that would help drive customer attraction and retention, Chipotle needed to hone its digital strategy to harness consumer data in an effective, timely and responsible way. The first step was to understand what mattered most to different kinds of customers. Then, it could tailor its offerings and communications to address individuals’ needs, preferences and patterns within those broader categories. As a guide for PwC in the first phase of its build, Chipotle worked with Adobe professionals to prioritize a handful of use cases for addressing specific customer profiles: Discoverers (first-time, unknown visitors coming from a paid search campaign); Nutritional Seekers (visitors seeking specific nutritional preferences); Habitual Guests (users who repeatedly checkout without enrolling in rewards); and Superfans (frequent diners with rewards accounts).
Give the people what (you know) they want
PwC started by implementing Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform (RT-CDP) and integrating it into Chipotle’s digital platform. Adobe RT-CDP aggregates customer data to create real-time profiles for attracting new customers. Matching these individualized customer profiles against the use cases provided by Chipotle, the team honed its strategy to help drive the right digital experience to the right people at the right time. With these pieces in place, PwC proceeded to build out a process map, including ideating, setting requirements, getting to market, measuring performance and creating a feedback loop.
The team adopted a test-and-learn mindset throughout, grounding decisions in detailed measurement and ROI with a focus on accelerating performance toward better business outcomes. Whenever potential customers used paid media search terms like “Mexican food delivery” or “vegetarian burrito,” the platform redirected them to a landing page with A/B-tested digital branding, including targeted copy and hero images. When known customers returned to order again, it reduced friction by pushing items to the top of their menus based on their past purchase histories. Together, PwC and Chipotle developed a process to measure how each personalized experience impacted conversion, as well as forecast the expected value of each future personalized interaction at scale. Understanding the financial implications of each tailored customer experience allowed Chipotle to make smarter, faster business decisions and drive confidently toward its desired business outcomes.
In conjunction with PwC’s work with Adobe RT-CDP, Adobe Consulting Services (ACS) led a project to incorporate Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) into Chipotle’s new personalization platform. This enables Chipotle to offer more personalized, contextual experiences to existing customers based on real-time data as well as past ordering behaviors. With AJO, for example, Chipotle can use real-time data to identify customers who have started but not completed and order within a specific time period of the day, then send them relevant, personalized messages to re-engage and complete their order.
RESULTS
Delivering excellence with a personal touch
With its new Adobe-based platform, Chipotle can now offer each customer an enhanced, personalized digital experience to rival that of its in-store experience. As the company looks to expand its digital presence and grow the size and diversity of its customer base, the ability to personalize these experiences positions it for success. Data-based insights improve audience targeting, helping Chipotle draw new customers from an untapped market. Relevant content and interactions — including personalized homescreens, menu list reordering for entrees and proteins, and one-tap orders — help return customers feel known. Reduced friction helps prevent decision fatigue and cart abandonment, while targeted menu item suggestions and cart add-ons help make sure hungry customers get the food they want, faster. At every level, digital personalization at scale helps create a sense of magnetism, drawing customers back for more.
The right combo of people and technology
In addition to enriching customer relationships and increasing attraction, loyalty and retention, the new platform also helps enhance the experience for Chipotle employees. With personalized customer insights, employees have the tools to help deliver individual customers the message or experiences they want, building confidence and trust internally. Cross-functional teamwork and collaboration mean all areas of the business benefit from digital personalization in different ways, all in service of a more relevant customer experience. Plus, as the platform evolves to incorporate Adobe CustomerAI, the company is beginning to explore, test and learn how artificial intelligence and automation can help improve team processes and deepen customer experiences even further.
As a result of this transformation, Chipotle unlocks new ways to help drive higher average order value, increased order conversion and incremental rewards enrollments — potentially resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in ROI in the coming years. But these aren’t the only gains. In building the platform, Chipotle also developed a valuable vision for AI, positioning it to stay on the digital leading edge into the future.
Get more on this topic
The power of personalization: Building a strategy that works
“We are uniting people and technology to create meaningful omnichannel experiences at scale in order to establish and deepen customer relationships.”
“The new platform takes our digital offerings to the next level — not just for customers, but employees too. Now our teams have the tools to work better, faster and smarter.”
“Personalization at scale has set us on a remarkable digital growth path, allowing us to reach previously untapped markets and inspire customer loyalty like never before.”
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