Sterling - Roomservice Reimagined

Product Manager, UX Designer

Sterling connects hotel guests with top local restaurants and provides guests with an unparalleled 5 star customer experience.
Led market research, developed and implemented usability testing, managed SCRUM, defined GTM strategy and owned product in its entirety.

Problem
Sterling is located within a two-part problem space: hotels offer room service, but operate at unsustainable $1M losses and hotel guests want high quality, fresh food delivered to their rooms, but room service is pricey, bland and unhealthy.

Strategy
In order to provide an unparalleled offering for hotel guests, we realized that we would have to build strong relationships with restaurants and hotels. Through early market research, I discovered that our primary audience were business travelers between the ages of 35-55. These travelers were fairly accustomed to utilizing technology in their day-to-day, but may not have traditionally used digital services for food delivery. In order for our service to succeed, usability and messaging was of utmost importance. We released V1 of Sterling at the Oakland Marriott City Center and began exclusively with dinner service. I conducted weekly usability tests in hotel lobbies to observe customer behavior and to gather feedback. Through gathering qualitative and quantitative data, using Google Analytics and mySQL, we optimized logistics and introduced features that increased conversion rates over 16% during peak business hours.

Our internal software was our strongest asset that made our business model viable. The core product was our logistics AI, which enabled us to launch a delivery service that exceeded guest expectations for punctuality while operating with a finite team of delivery drivers. We utilized software to enable our small (but mighty!) team to manage a delivery service that extended past 11pm on a daily basis. Through automating numerous processes and systems, we greatly alleviated the need to manually manage every customer transaction.

Restaurant Profile – We set out to create an immerse menu experience that builds a relationship between the customer and the restaurant, even if they are not dining in.