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Thanks to process mining, Bidfood discovered unexpected customer paths and blind spots in their platform.
The insights led directly to better hypotheses and targeted improvements within the CRO program.
Online Dialogue worked as an extension of the Bidfood team, allowing insights to land directly on the ground.
How do you know if customers are using your digital product as intended? And beyond standard analytics and funnels, how do you discover where your platform could be better? What opportunities are there that we are not yet aware of? How do you build the right hypotheses if you don't yet know exactly how customers move through your platform? These questions were on the table at online hospitality wholesaler Bidfood. Kirsten van Benthem, Digital CX Manager at Bidfood, plays a key role in this. Together with her team, she has been working data-driven for some time and continuously experimenting through Bidfood's optimization program, in collaboration with Online Dialogue.
To better understand how customers move through the ordering platform, Bidfood engaged Online Dialogue. They chose an innovative approach: process mining, a method that visualizes customer behavior without prior assumptions. The insights formed direct input for new improvements within the optimization program.
You've probably seen them before: Bidfood's recognizable trucks, full of food, drink and kitchen supplies, driving around the country every day. They supply restaurants, sports canteens and hospitals: all customers who count on Bidfood.
As one of the largest catering wholesalers in the Netherlands, Bidfood operates from eighteen local branches. The challenge? Optimizing the digital customer journey, without losing sight of local differences.
Together with Online Dialogue, Bidfood figured out how customers really navigate their ordering platform - where they search for products, place orders and manage their account. Kirsten van Benthem shares her experiences with process mining and explains how this approach helped Bidfood gain insight into customer behavior and make targeted optimizations.
Together, Bidfood and Online Dialogue started a process mining project to gain insight into the routes customers take on the platform. Unlike classic funnels, which show predefined steps, process mining shows all the paths customers actually take. ‘With funnels you see whether customers go through the door you have in mind. Through process mining you discover that sometimes they also come in through the window, and what goes wrong there.’
Process mining makes it possible to discover, without assumptions, how customers really move through your platform. Instead of predetermined paths, it shows which routes users take, including surprising side paths or drop-off points. This makes it an effective method in detecting unexpected behavior patterns and optimization opportunities.
The study mapped customer behavior visually. This revealed where optimizations would be most effective. ‘Normally we look into the data In response to specific problems or issues. This analysis showed us precisely where we could discover new opportunities.’
Many Bidfood customers replenish their stock for their catering establishment, canteen or healthcare facility several times a week. They often use the handy ‘order list’ on Bidfood.com to do so. It was therefore expected that this was the main route to an order.
However, the study revealed something else: customers actually combine multiple routes during their session.
‘We saw that it's not one path that works. It's the clever combinations that increase conversion and sales.’ With this insight, Bidfood can better respond to actual customer behavior and optimize in areas that were previously under-researched. Consider strengthening supporting pages or streamlining the transition between paths.
Process Mining: learn what combinations of paths your customers really take.
The insights immediately sharpened Bidfood's optimization program with new improvement opportunities. In this program, hypotheses are created based on behavioral data and customer surveys, which are then validated through experiments. This creates a continuous optimization process in which every improvement is data-driven. ‘Process mining helps us formulate better hypotheses. This makes the test & learn program (optimization program, ed.) even more effective.’
Kirsten. ‘We were involved every step of the way. As a result, the insights fitted well with our practice and we were able to use them immediately.’ This made it easier to discuss areas for improvement internally and to get teams moving. As a result, the results were not only shared, but also actively used in ongoing projects and optimization processes.
Continuous optimization process in Bidfood's Test & Learn program.
The research was conducted in close collaboration between Online Dialogue and Bidfood. From data cleansing to drafting the right research questions, they worked together at every point to ensure that the results were usable within the organization.
The results have been shared within Bidfood. Several teams are using the report and accompanying slide deck as a starting point for follow-up projects, internal presentations and further analysis. ‘It's nice that we have a comprehensive report as well as a summary slide deck. That way we can easily share the right information per team.’
Combining Online Dialogue's approach with behavioral data, psychological insights and process analysis provides Bidfood with valuable input to continuously improve the digital customer journey. Especially the free, exploratory approach of process mining makes it possible to discover surprising patterns.
‘We already do a lot of data research, but that is often very focused on a specific question. This kind of free analysis helps uncover new insights.’
For Bidfood, this study was also a kind of baseline measurement: a snapshot of customer behavior on which they can build further. The ambition is to do this kind of analysis more often, precisely to be able to monitor and substantiate changes in behavior.
The choice of Online Dialogue was a conscious one. Not only because of the combination of data analysis and psychology, but also because of the culture match. Bidfood was looking for a partner that matched its own way of working: entrepreneurial, informal and substantively strong.
In addition, collaboration on a personal level also played an important role. The Online Dialogue team thought along from the first step, from formulating research questions to interpreting the results, and worked as an extension of the internal team.
“What I think is strong is that we really did it together.’ says Kirsten van Benthem. ‘This made it not a study that disappears in a drawer, but something we can actively move forward with.”
The combination of external expertise and substantive involvement allowed the project to be taken up with considerable momentum and effectiveness. The psychological view of customer behavior also provided deeper customer insights, which could be directly translated into better hypotheses and targeted optimizations.
‘We would definitely recommend this approach to organizations looking to get a handle on customer behavior and optimize in a data-driven way.’ said Kirsten van Benthem
Wondering how we can use process mining to make customer behavior insightful in your organization as well? Please contact us.
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