When the pandemic hit, Uber Eats faced a crucial challenge: maintaining profitability. By leveraging customer insights and CX strategy, Camilla Ferreira was able to design initiatives that improved user experience, boosted restaurant visibility, and enhanced courier loyalty, ultimately driving better business results.
With a finance background and experience at companies like Groupon and Uber, Camilla didn’t just focus on customer service. She zoomed out. Her approach to customer experience (CX) was strategic, data informed, and deeply business aligned.
In a recent episode of The Insights Frontier, she shared how CX became a lever for real business results, boosting Uber Eats’ margins by two percentage points at a critical time.
Customer Insights and CX Strategy Focus: Profitability, Not Growth
When Camilla joined the Uber Eats team during the pandemic, she quickly realized that chasing growth would be a distraction.
“If I had focused on growth, I wouldn’t have been so successful. I had to understand the real challenge and work backwards from there.”
The real issue? Profitability. Costs were climbing, and the business needed to become more efficient, without sacrificing user experience. That framing changed everything.
Connecting the Dots With Customer Insights and CX Strategy
Camilla’s approach wasn’t about collecting data for the sake of it. It was about identifying patterns with strategic value.
1. Women Led Restaurants Were Quietly Winning
While scanning customer satisfaction and repeat order metrics, Camilla noticed something interesting: women led restaurants were consistently outperforming others.
Instead of letting that insight sit idle, her team responded. They launched targeted promotions to boost the visibility of these restaurants, rewarding what was already working and amplifying positive outcomes for both customers and the platform.
2. Dessert Orders Unlocked Off Peak Demand
Another unexpected finding? Women were more likely to order desserts outside of typical mealtimes, especially between lunch and dinner.
This insight opened up a new revenue opportunity. By launching dessert focused campaigns during these off peak hours, Uber Eats was able to drive more orders without adding pressure to peak time operations.
3. Courier Loyalty Was the Bottleneck
Fast delivery is great, until couriers jump to the next best paying app. That volatility was hurting performance.
Camilla’s team aligned courier incentives with campaign timings, helping to improve delivery reliability without inflating costs. With smarter scheduling and better engagement, they turned a logistics problem into a CX advantage.
A Flywheel Strategy That Worked on Three Fronts
Camilla’s approach wasn’t about collecting data for the sake of it. By leveraging customer insights and CX strategy, she identified patterns with strategic value that could directly impact profitability.
- Customers enjoyed faster, more relevant service
- Women led restaurants received more visibility and orders
- Couriers got more predictable work
- The business improved profitability by 2 percentage points
This wasn’t a soft win for customer service. It was a calculated business strategy driven by insight, timing, and empathy.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: The Business Secret CX Leaders Are Hiding From You
Camilla’s story is a reminder that great CX doesn’t come from dashboards alone. It comes from knowing what matters to the business and working backwards, with data as a guide.
Her work shows what’s possible when CX leaders think beyond satisfaction scores and start influencing business decisions directly.
It’s the kind of strategic thinking we explore often on The Insights Frontier, where the real stories behind customer experience come to life.
About Camilla Ferreira
Camilla Ferreira is a globally recognized voice in customer experience. With a proven track record at companies like Uber and Groupon, she’s passionate about transforming CX into real business results. A global speaker and author, Camilla helps brands lead customer experience with the same rigor and impact as any core business function.
Follow Insight7 on LinkedIn , Youtube and TikTok for more insights on data driven growth.
