the future of payments
research
project info
project team
5 ux undergrad students +
1 ux grad student
role
UX Researcher, Team Lead
duration
August 2023 - December 2023
project overview
Great Clips is a national hair salon brand with over 4,400 franchised hair salons throughout the U.S. and Canada. They aim to provide customers a fast, convenient, and comfortable haircut experience. Great Clips asked our team to investigate the current and future payment landscape in order to provide them recommendations and help them stay on trend in the payment space.
Understand the current and future payment landscape in order to provide Great Clips with recommendations for payment experiences within the salon (now and in the near future)
project goal
Current Great Clips customers paying with:
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Cash
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Credit/Debit card
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Digital wallet
user groups
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User interview insights regarding payment experiences within the salon
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A list of recommendations for how Great Clips can incorporate new and emerging trends within their salons
final deliverables
tipping research
After our competitive analysis, we realized that we had not considered the large affect tipping has on the salon payment experience. We investigated how the tipping affects the payment process and customer experience.
Findings
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Requesting a tip too early turns customers off from tipping
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Tip recommendations affect the customer's experience
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Customers tip to avoid feelings of embarrassment or unfairness
competitive analysis
The team and our sponsors compiled a list of direct and indirect competitors in order to understand where Great Clips' stands within the payment landscape. We compiled a list of direct and indirect competitors, along with a specific set of criteria to compare. Both of these can be seen within the chart below.
Findings
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Service based businesses and Great Clips' competitors lag in comparison to retail businesses; they are missing:
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Self-service payment experiences
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Acceptance of NFC payments (tap-to-pay)
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Adopting of early trends within the payment landscape
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competitor observations
Next, the team wanted to gain a comprehensive understanding of people's preferred payment methods, as well as understand how those payment methods impact the overall customer experience. To do so, each team member conducted observations at one or two observations at a direct and/or indirect competitor. Some of the competitors included Target, a boba shop, Sports Clips, and more.
Findings
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Some businesses employ manipulative tipping methods, negatively affecting customers
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Venmo has begun being incorporated as a payment method (Amazon, McDonald's)
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Major retailers actively promote app/phone based payment methods
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Shift in all industries towards digital payment methods
milestone 1
What are current salon and retail payment landscapes like?
journey mapping
After our observations, the team decided to construct a visual representation of the customer journey to identify customer emotions, pain points, and areas of opportunity. This journey map can be seen below.
Findings
Emotions
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Tipping can be awkward for customers when stylist is across the counter during exchange
Pain Points
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Little motivation to download the Great Clips app
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Customer is unaware of percentage value of tips (only $ amount is shown)
Areas of Opportunity
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Preset tipping amounts can be a rate dependent on total cost (they currently do not change)
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Tipping suggestions can display percentage alongside dollar amount
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In-app payments, receipts, and coupons could be incorporated into the Great Clips app
Great Clips salon observations
The team also needed to discover the payment process and how it affected customer experience within Great Clips' specifically. So, we sent two team members to conduct observations at our local Great Clips salon. They took note of the customers payment preferences and the overall experience.
Findings
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Great Clips supports a large age range of customers, most of which are men
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Most popular payment method observed was credit card, specifically tap to pay with card
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The older generation preferred cash over card
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Most customers used the pre-set tipping options
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The entire experience is quick, lasting ~15 min. with the payment process lasting
around 2 min.
milestone 2
How does Great Clips utilize payment methods to support their customers?
1
milestone 1
2
milestone 2
4
final design
3
milestone 3
user interviews
We had found very useful data over the course of the project. However, we wanted to ensure this research was valid. To do so, we conducted interviews using userinterviews.com. The team created a screener survey to find and narrow relevant participants. This screener focused on finding customers of chain salons, but not Great Clips specifically (due to legal reasons). After finding participants, we scheduled each one for a 45 minute zoom call.
Participant Demographics
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We conducted 10 interviews
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9 / 10 participants identified as male
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Ages ranged from 29 - 62
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Located all across the United States
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60% of participants were Great Clips customers
Findings
Payment Preferences
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Credit/debit and digital payment methods preferred
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Users enjoy checkout incentives
Tipping Behaviors
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Prefer to tip stylists directly
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Users may tip more digitally
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Often feel pressured to tip
Customer Experience
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Users want a quick and easy checkout
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They do not want to have to think about the experience
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Users do not like self-service checkout in a salon environment
milestone 3
How can we validate our research?
final recommendations
enhancing the Great Clips app
In-app payment: one click payment done within the Great Clips' app
Evidence: competitive analysis, interviews
In-app coupons: digital coupons integrated within the app for customer convenience
Evidence: interviews
Viewing receipts in-app: ability for customers to review their haircut history and receipts within the Great Clips app
Evidence: observations, competitive analysis
Concerns
Practically, we understand that app changes will take time and funding. However, as apps for retailers and food providers are becoming the norm, we think it's a worthwhile consideration.
utilizing digital landscapes
Digital couponing: coupons that can be used within an application or digital payment (e.g. smart wallet)
Evidence: interviews
Digital receipts: receipts that customers would claim through a digital transaction (e.g. email and texting)
Evidence: interviews
Concerns
Although the majority of interviewees would enjoy these options, not 100% of participants said they would benefit from these additions.
supporting digital tipping methods
Our research helped our team realize that the tipping process could be updated to allow for a more comfortable customer experience. Some recommendations our team proposes Great Clips implement involve the utilization of PayPal or Venmo and an app-integrated experience.
Evidence: interviews
Concerns
Many independent salons use Venmo and PayPal to tip their stylists directly, but with Great Clips being a much larger company and business this may not be as feasible.
clarification prompting for tipping transparency
We recommend including clarifying prompts to communicate tipping transparency with Great Clips customers. We envision such prompts to be shown as pop-ups in the app before tipping decisions. A promise that 100% of the tips will go directly to the stylist:
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“100% of your tip will go directly to your stylist, (insert stylist name).”
Evidence: interviews
Concerns
This recommendation is not feasible on the current payment system Great Clips uses.
other recommendations
Although not directly to the payment experience, our team had a few ideas along the way that we wanted to share with Great Clips.
In-app stylist notes
The ability for customers to view or suggest changes to their stylist notes on their haircuts. This would allow customers the ability to know what type of haircut they got, and be able to convey next time what they enjoyed and what they might change.
Ability for customers to choose a stylist
During interviews, we discovered that many participants wanted consistency with the stylist they had cutting their hair. One interviewee even said he was transitioning away from Great Clips because he wanted a consistent stylist. Due to this, an idea we had was the ability for customers to select a specific stylist when joining the wait list. Stylist profiles and descriptions could also be included within this feature. An extended wait time should be communicated to the customer (if applicable).
Coupon notifications
One of our recommendations was for coupons to be integrated into the Great Clips app. A further idea on this suggestion would be to send push notifications to customers with the app with:
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Ways customers can receive coupons (e.g. survey opportunities)
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Reminders to use claimed coupons
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Notifications of upcoming deals