Designing a self-serve loyalty experience for 200K+ customers
Tags: Supply chain · Loyalty design · UX research · Personas · Iterative design
CONTEXT
Digitizing a loyalty system that existed in contracts and people’s heads
Customer Incentives had been on the roadmap for months — explored, partially designed, and then shelved. The contracts were complex, the rules were written for sellers not customers, and no one had a clear picture of what the digital experience should actually be. When the project was reactivated in 2025, I was brought in to ship it. There were 19 incentive programs to untangle, zero customer-facing visibility to build from, and a company-wide goal to hit: use incentives to increase customer spend and drive the E-commerce adoption.
MY ROLE
Product Designer — e-commerce loyalty feature lead
Focus
Lead UX Designer · Facilitator
Team
Sales Excellence, Incentives Architect, Seller Manager, Marketing, PO, PM, CX Lead, Researcher and Developers.
Platform
Responsive (desktop & mobile devices)
Timeline
April 2025
THE GOAL
Turning rebates into a growth engine
Leadership was clear about the objective from the start:
“We need a medium and long-term incentives experience that shows customers the value they get from us, and helps them spend more.”
PROBLEM
A Puzzle With Missing Pieces
When I took ownership of the project, about 20 incentive programs existed. Customers were enrolled through physical contracts written in sales jargon. Sellers manually tracked progress and called customers to push purchases, and none of that process had ever been formally documented. Three compounding problems made this hard to solve:
- Limited customer visibility: Customers had no way to track their own progress without calling their sales rep.
- Rules difficult to explain: Contracts were designed for internal use, dense with legal and sales terminology.
- No design foundation: Research and/or UX to build from
TIMELINE
How a stalled project got shipped in six phases
- 2024 Dormant phase Initial design exploration across the team stalled on contract complexity. Project goes on hold.
- Early 2025 Reactivation Business pressure to launch. I was assigned to own the full experience with no prior research documentation.
- Mid 2025 Discovery Mapped the incentives ecosystem, interviewed sellers, created personas, and used AI to synthesize fragmented information.
- Mid–Late 2025 Iterative design 8 rounds of internal alignment across PO, PM, Sales Excellence, Architect, CX, and Directors. Clickable prototypes built.
- Late 2025 Validation Researcher ran 5 moderated 1:1 sessions. Validated the most complex incentive — Partner with Us.
- Late 2025 Implementation All four incentive types shipped. Foundation set for “Value of US Foods” reporting.
DISCOVERY
Everything lived in people’s heads
With no research to inherit and a project that had been dormant for months, I started by mapping the problem myself, before any researcher was involved.
First I needed to understand the ecosystem. Savings were being migrated from the legacy platform. Deals already existed in the new one. Incentives were net new. Before any screen could be justified, I needed to understand how these three things related to each other; what the hub needed to contain, where customers would enter, and what touchpoints existed before and after a rebate. This map became the foundation for the Deals Hub decision.
Then I needed to understand how incentives actually worked in practice, between the conversations of sellers and customers. I sat down with a seller manager and the incentives architect to map the offline process from scratch. What surfaced shaped every decision that followed:
Enrollment relied on hands-on seller guidance. Sellers walked customers through contracts by hand and entered everything into internal systems themselves.
“I can’t hand the incentive sheet to a customer — it’s written like a legal document. I have to interpret it for them.”
Customers couldn’t track their own progress. Without visibility, motivation dropped and sellers became the only source of updates.
“I get calls questioning: ‘Where am I at?’ ‘Am I close?’ ‘Did I hit it?’ They literally can’t see their own progress.”
The language only worked internally. Incentives were called “TODs”, a term no customer had ever heard. Sellers translated jargon on every call.
“Internally we call them TODs, but no customer uses that term. I just say ‘your rebate.’”
My north star became: Give customers clarity, and the behavior we want will follow.
PROCESS
Building the design foundation
With no existing research and a project that had been dormant for months, I had to build the design foundation from scratch before a single screen could be justified.
Personas
I built two personas using knowledge from previous field research, seller interviews, and AI-assisted synthesis — Sage, an independent restaurant owner who needed simplicity and transparency, and Mateo, a franchise manager juggling 8+ locations who needed aggregate visibility. These two profiles became the lens for every design decision that followed.
User journey map
I mapped the ideal customer experience end-to-end, not what we could ship immediately, but what the full ecosystem could look like. This helped identify where incentives fit within the e-commerce and where customers naturally expected guidance, visibility, and motivation.
Design jam
I ran a Figma design jam to explore scenarios and edge cases quickly, I collaborated directly with other designers, CX lead and sales. This step was essential to align on direction for the first two incentives before committing to detailed UI.
ALIGNMENT
Building consensus before testing in the field
Because this project touched Sales Excellence, the Incentives Architect, Marketing, Product, CX, and Field Leadership, the internal alignment process was where the experience got built. Each round resolved a specific open question and pulled the design closer to something we could confidently validate. By the end we had established:
A Deals Hub. To contain all incentives and related deals in one place, so customers wouldn’t need to hunt across the e-commerce for their incentives.
A shared entry point. One component on the homepage, consistent across all incentive types. Whether a customer was enrolled in one program or several, the path in was always the same; enrolled in multiple programs showed a generic message directing to the incentives hub with average earnings. In both cases, surfacing a dollar amount (potential earnings) proved the most effective way to drive engagement.
A unified naming structure. “US Foods Incentives” replaced internal terminology like “TODs” across every touchpoint.
A consistent tier visualization system. One progress bar pattern that adapted to each incentive’s rules, so customers only had to learn it once.
Pacing indicator. “You’re on pace to earn” became the standard language across all four programs.
Iconography and badge system. To signal progress and reward milestones across the longer-term incentives.
RESEARCH
What customers actually thought when they saw it
With the internal hypothesis validated, the researcher ran five moderated 1:1 sessions and one unmoderated click test with customers, testing A/B versions of the most complex incentive, Partner with Us. The sessions focused on three questions:
- Do customers understand what they can earn?
- Does visibility motivate them to spend more?
- Does the experience build trust or confusion?
A
Partner with us Incentive
B
Partner with us Incentive (Selected version)
The first reactions were blunt:
“I don’t think this brings me much value… what am I supposed to do with it?”, “I would spend more, if the prices were lower.”
But as the sessions progressed and clarity improved, something shifted:
“If this helps me see what I can earn, then yeah, I’d use it.”
“Oh, I see, so if I spend more my chances to get some cash back are better”
Three things became clear from the findings:
- Customers needed to see potential earnings
- Progress visibility drove motivation more than reward size.
- And trust came from transparency.
SOLUTION
Shipped Incentives
Get to Know Us
New customers · 6% weekly rebate · 13 weeks.
The simplest incentive by design no tiers, no minimum spend, just a straightforward weekly rebate for trying US Foods.
Onboarding
A lightweight three-step intro explained what the incentive was and what to expect, shown once only.
Zero spend state
Instead of an empty screen, I surfaced their product lists and other available deals, turning a blank state into a productive starting point.
Weekly tracking
Spend and earnings shown as large scannable numbers above the fold. The goal is the rebate to earn.
Partner With Us
Current customers · Up to 8% rebate · 13 weeks · Tiered
The most complex incentive was a tiered program rewarding high-volume customers who hit spend milestones over 13 weeks.
Tier visualization: I placed milestone markers directly above a single progress bar. Customers could see their current spend, distance to the next tier, and the maximum rebate available at a glance.
The predictive tool: “On pace to earn” showed a projected rebate in dollars. If a customer had already hit the minimum spend, it projected based on accrued orders. If they hadn’t, it showed what they’d earn at the minimum threshold, a nudge without pressure.
Agreement details: A dedicated section explained the calculation logic for customers who wanted to verify the math.
What we removed: Weekly spend was deliberately hidden. The incentive rewarded total spend over 13 weeks, not weekly consistency.
Grow With Us (Drop Size)
Current customers · Up to 3% rebate · 2 years · Tiered
A long-term incentive rewarding customers who consolidate their orders into larger, less frequent deliveries. The design challenge was sustaining motivation over 8 quarters.
Progress bar
The same visual system as Partner With Us, current average spend per drop against the target for the next level. Familiarity reduced the learning curve across incentives.
Dynamic messaging
Below the progress bar, a contextual message updated based on behavior: “Keep going!” when on track, “Don’t fall behind” when average spend dropped. Each state included a specific recovery calculation so customers always knew exactly what to do next.
Clawback explained
Explained through an info modal accessible via an icon next to the current level, not surfaced aggressively, but always one tap away for customers who needed to understand the rules.
Badge system
One badge earned per quarter a customer qualified for a rebate; up to 8 total. For a 2-year incentive, badges turned a long commitment into a series of visible, achievable milestones.
Grow With Us (Volume)
Current customers · Up to 3% rebate · 2 years · Tiered
Where Drop Size rewarded order consolidation, Volume rewarded consistency; spending regularly, week over week, across the full 2-year program.
Shared visual system. I intentionally reused the progress bar, level indicators, and dynamic messaging from Drop Size. Customers enrolled in both programs wouldn’t have to relearn the interface, and developers could build from shared components.
Weekly average tracking. The progress bar reflected weekly average spend rather than drop size. A “week X of Y weeks remaining” pill below the bar kept customers oriented in the long-term timeline.
Reusable components. Same clawback logic and badge system.
STRETCH GOALS
What we scoped out but didn’t walk away from
These weren’t nice-to-haves; they were features with clear demand that didn’t fit the launch timeline. They’re documented as the next logical layer of the incentives experience:
- Digitize offline enrollment – removing the last manual step in the customer journey
- Automated alerts and goal projections – push notifications for mobile, email for desktop, so customers don’t have to check in to stay motivated
- Qualifying order history – giving customers a retroactive view of what contributed to their progress
- Simplified incentive rules – surfacing the contract logic in plain language so sellers spend less time explaining
COLLABORATION
In their own words
When the first designs were shared internally, one of the Sales Excellence managers posted this publicly across the company:
“The Digital and Sales Ops Teams have been collaborating to bring visibility to our company incentives… This has been a long-time ask from our Sales Leaders, and the recent feedback around the current concepts has been overwhelmingly positive. Chio has led the design work, always comes prepared, and has been a pleasure to work with. We would not have come this far without her.”
Daniel V. Ziegler – Local Sales Excellence Sr. Manager @ US Foods
OUTCOME
Business Impact
Leadership defined the success metrics from the start: increase customer spend, drive e-commerce adoption, and reduce seller dependency. Every design decision (the progress visibility, the pacing indicators, the plain language) was made with those targets in mind.
The results came from the validation phase and early adoption signals post-launch:
- 9% increase in weekly average spend during incentive windows
- 14% increase in MOXe adoption among incentive-enrolled customers
- 30% reduction in seller intervention
- 75% preference for the new incentive entry point
- 85% of independent customers said they would enroll
These outcomes fed directly into KPIs across case growth, exclusive brands, e-commerce percentage, market share, and EBITDA.
REFLECTION
Finding the right path through ambiguity
Leading this project meant designing the process and the product at the same time. There was no research to inherit, no existing UX to reference, and no clear north star when I started. What moved the project forward wasn’t having answers, it was knowing which questions to ask next, and who to ask them to.
I learned that internal alignment is design work. The eight rounds of iteration before any customer saw the product were part of the process. Getting Sales Excellence, the Incentives Architect, Marketing, and Product to agree on what the experience should be was as important as the screens themselves.
I learned that customers look for transparency and clarity. The validation sessions proved that customers could handle complexity as long as the information was honest, predictable, and in their language. Replacing percentages with dollars, jargon with plain descriptions, and empty states with actionable next steps made more difference than any visual decision.
And I learned that AI can help navigating ambiguity. Using it to synthesize fragmented information, generate persona profiles, and visualize early concepts cut the documenting time significantly.
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