Catex Continues… Day 2

by Lynn Carr, Senior Account Manager, Customer Perceptions

We were delighted to return to Catex on Wednesday February 27th for Day 2.

After a very successful first day, we were looking forward to building more relationships in the hospitality industry and also, checking out the innovative and eye-catching stands put together by some of Ireland’s largest foodservice and hospitality businesses.

We were delighted to catch up with some our current clients on day 2, including; Henderson Foodservice, AIL Group, Acorn Insurance and the Restaurant’s Association of Ireland.

Some of the mouth-watering events throughout the day included a Vegan Dish Competition, an Irish Beef Fillet Competition, the Avonmore Irish Latte Art Competition and a Chocolate Masterclass. We were also delighted to note a Career Q&A whereby chefs hoping to pursue, progress and succeed in a career in the industry, had an opportunity to pick the brain of some of Ireland’s finest.

That evening, the Irish Cocktail Champion of 2019 was announced, with Oisin Kelly creating a vodka and elderflower sensation, which he named Solstice. Oisin will now represent Ireland at the World Cocktail Championships in China later this year!

The final and largest event of the day, the Aramark Chef of the Year 2019 competition, took place in the Chef Ireland Competition Feature Area at 5.30pm. A huge congratulations to Oran Colhoun to took home this prestigious award.

Similar to the day previous, our lovely neighbours made for great company throughout the day, especially Patisserie Royale, who insisted on keeping our sugar levels up – who are we to argue?
By the end of day 2, it was very obvious to us why this is Ireland’s largest foodservice and hospitality show! We didn’t want to go home and already couldn’t wait for the 3rd and final day.

Catex 2019 – Day 1

customer perceptions team

Catex Exhibition is Ireland’s largest foodservice and hospitality show, which takes place every 2 years in the RDS, Dublin. With more than 10,000 participants attending the last event in 2017, we were expecting big things, and Day 1 did not disappoint!

Catex 2019 kicked off at 10am on Tuesday 26th February, with the crowds appearing straight away.
Our stand was located just inside the main door on the right, so it was a lovely welcome face for all the crowds as soon as they started to arrive 🙂

We were located directly opposite the UCC Coffee stand (UCC Coffee – The Total Coffee Solution) which meant the wonderful baristas there kept us in coffee for the day. Along with our other lovely neighbour, Patisserie Royale, keeping us in cakes, we knew this was going to be a good event!

There were some incredibly impressive stands on display throughout the show and none other than Henderson Food Services, and it was so lovely to catch up with the Barista Bar team.

Also great to see so many people from the Hospitality and FoodServices Industry there – Laura from Butlers, Michael from Bujo, Dara from Insomnia and Charlie from JumpJuice, as it’s always a pleasure catching up with these guys.

At 11am the Chefs Network Masterclass kicked off and continued throughout the day with some of the finest chefs producing mouthwatering dishes!

The Avonmore Barista Championship was one of the main events for Day 1 where Ireland’s leading Barista’s put their skills to the test in this intensive challenge – and it was great to see one of the regional managers for Insomnia on the judging panel.

With companies going to such lengths with impressive stands, displays and innovation, it easy to see why this is classed as ‘Catering Inspiration’. We are looking forward to the next 2 day already.

Fitzers 5k Run/ Walk

Fitzers 5k Run/Walk

On Saturday 23rd February 2019 some members of the Customer Perceptions team took to the street of Dundalk to participate in the annual Fitzers 5k Run/ Walk in aid of Marie Goretti Children’s Respite and RehabCare Dundalk.

Whilst the rain pounded down on the crowds, it didn’t stop any of the team finishing with a smile of their face (and slightly out of breath!).

A massive well done to the organisers, the entire team involved in putting the race together as this clearly took a lot of time and effort, and didn’t go unnoticed.
Well done to each and every participant, and thanks to all the crowds who were there to cheers them on.

Looking forward to next year 🙂

Audits for your Business – Presto Audits

Presto Audits

What are Presto Audits?
Customer Perceptions bring a new technology to our Clients in the form of Presto Audits. Our Presto Audit system allows you or your colleagues to conduct any type of audit on your phone/tablet. We collate easy to interpret results instantly for you, in the form of a Dashboard.
This is perfect for internal audits that you currently complete on excel/word. The survey is designed and uploaded to the system, and you can have immediate access to the survey through your app.

Who should use Customer Perceptions Presto Audits:
Presto Audits work very well for a variety of tasks:
• Internal Store Audits
• Coffee Machine Audits
• Quality Control Audits
• Staff Observation Audits
• Compliance Audits
• And many more…

Features and Benefits of Presto Audit
The advantages of using our Presto Audit system are as follows:
• Actionable Insights via our dashboards.
• Instantly alerts you to areas that need attention.
• Highlights your company strengths.
• Offline capability – no need to be in an area with internet access.
• Unlimited number of users can be set up.
• Easily track who has completed their allotted audits.
• Change/Amend your audit form any time you wish.
• No investment in hardware – use existing phone/tablet.
• Easily upload pictures to the audit form.
• Automatic analysis for you at the touch of a button.
• Customisable Dashboards.
• Software is company branded with your colours/logo.
• Drill down reports per store, area, manager and much more…

by Susan Reilly, Senior Project Manager, Customer Perceptions.

Staff and Customer Experience

I love my job

Business Growth and higher Profitability can be created through knowing what two groups of people think and feel about your business, (i) your customers and (ii) your staff.

 

At Customer Perceptions we have processed over 800,000 ‘Customer Feedback’/ Mystery Shopping Reports and our research and client engagement clearly show that:

 

  1. There is typically a big gap between the Service which Retail & Service managers think they are delivering to customers and the actual customer experience.
  2. Profit margins are considerably higher from sales made to returning customers as they don’t have “a customer acquisition cost”

 

Working every day with vast quantities of highly valuable customer insights we are often reminded of two great quotes from the founder of the world’s largest retailer Walmart, Sam Walton, who believed

  1. “There is only one boss and that’s the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else” and
  2. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish”

 

In more recent times Richard Branson has been saying that “surprisingly at Virgin we do not put the customer first, our employees are the company’s top priority”. While this breaks with decades-old business wisdom, it has worked so well for Virgin that Branson goes on “I’m surprised more companies haven’t adopted an employee-centric management strategy.

It should go without saying, if the person who works at your company is 100 percent proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job and they are treated well, they’re going to be happy,”

Closer to home, Ireland’s best known retailer Fergal Quinn describes in his book “Crowning the Customer” how to apply “the boomerang principle” to customer service, attitudes and behaviour.  With numerous other ‘nuggets of good practice thinking’, the book is as good a read today as it was when written 25+ years ago.

However, we really don’t need world leading business gurus or expensive business consultants to tell us that it is critically important to have our staff trained to do their job properly. Thereafter, if we create a work environment where people are happy and feel respected, these people have higher levels of productivity, have lower levels of sickness & absenteeism, look after your customers MUCH better and these customers in turn buy more and return more frequently  …it’s actually hard to make it complicated.

The Customer Journey

customer

5 Opportunities To Improve Your Customers’ Experience.

The customer journey is a map of the customer experience from your customer’s perspective.  In this blog we will break down the customer experience into five distinct areas or steps,  in order to best understand how customers are interacting with your business, and therefore to identify the areas for improvement moving forward.

Every business will have a different map, of course. There isn’t one customer journey that will cover all businesses in the same detail, but these are some quite common elements of the customer journey that could apply to a wide range of businesses. If nothing else, they may help you to draw up a customer journey more specific to your business. These are five proposed steps on a generic customer journey:

Step 1)  Your Website – For most of your customers, your website will be their first point of contact with your business. It’s crucial that it clearly and concisely explains your business – exactly what products and services you offer, and how to get in touch with you. It’s also increasingly important that your website be mobile optimised – that is, that it can be effectively displayed on a smartphone. Finally, your site must be optimised for search engines – that means your images must have proper alt text and that your metadata be completed and relevant to your content. In order to bring your customers along to the next step of the customer journey, you must design and maintain the most effective website possible.

Step 2)  The Phone Call – for many businesses the next step in the customer journey is the phone call. Depending on the services or products you offer, it may be that customers will want to check stock. They might want to book an appointment. Whatever the reason, you (or whoever is answering the phone) should use a standard, professional greeting. You also need to establish early in the call whether or not it’s coming from a potential new customer or a customer with a previously established relationship. For a new client, you should explain a little about what you do (and importantly what you can do for them), where you are located and the processes you’ll be going through with them whereas with an existing customer going through reams of information that they already know will be a real turnoff. Finally, you should also use the call to set the customer’s expectations – if the customer is making an appointment you need to be able to give an estimate of roughly how long that appointment will take, and crucially, if they need to bring any documents or material with them, you should let them know there and then on the call. It’s a good way to save time and make the actual appointment go more smoothly.

Step 3)  The Arrival & Greeting – this is a small but potentially crucial step on the customer journey. When the customer arrives, make them feel welcome. That means introducing yourself (for some businesses it may mean offering tea/coffee or apologising if a meeting or appointment isn’t starting on time), but for all businesses it means a friendly greeting and making eye contact. Establishing a rapport with a customer, putting a face to a name (name badges can help here, though not as a replacement for a solid, friendly greeting and introduction). Finally, the establishment at which the customer arrives should be clean and tidy. These are simple things, but they can make all the difference.

Step 4)  The Transaction – this is necessarily the most complex step of the customer journey, so we can subdivide it into two parts.

1)      Exploring customer needs – you need to ask relevant, straightforward questions without technical jargon or too much business-speak. What issue is your customer facing? What product/service do you supply that can solve that issue? Closed questions (questions with simple, definitive answers) are useful to focus in on this information, and they are a good way to maintain control over and direct the conversation, but don’t completely steer away from open questions – they can be invaluable in identifying upselling opportunites if any are present.

2)      Matching customer needs – you need to know the products and services you provide inside-out. You need to be able (again, in simple, concise language) why the product or service you’re recommending meets the needs you identified in the previous step. When introducing the product explain its features and benefits clearly, and at every step through the process check that the customer understands what you’re telling them.

Step 5)  The Close & Follow Up – there’s some very crucial elements of this step that can really make the difference between a successful sale and improved customer loyalty and a dissatisfied customer. First of all you should summarise what you’ve gone through with the customer previously. Just a short, clear recap. Secondly, if the customer doesn’t choose to proceed with the sale there and then, give them something tangible to take away with them – a brochure for example. Thirdly, (and this is maybe the most simple thing of all, though often overlooked) ask for the business. Do not let this opportunity pass – simply ask the customer there and then if they’d like to proceed with the transaction. Don’t badger them, be polite, but do ask the question. It’s crucial. Finally the follow-up might take the form of a phone call, an email or any number of other things depending on your business. Whatever the form, it relies on you getting the customer’s contact information, and then using it. Don’t wait for the customer to re-engage with you, send them a thank you mail with a voucher for a future purchase, for example, or if a follow-up appointment is required be sure to contact them, don’t wait for them to contact you. This final step is how you drive your business going forward – don’t waste the opportunity.

Mobile Payments Using A Mobile Phone

Customers and Mobile Phone Payment IMG

How Do Your Customers Feel About It?

Mobile payments (paying for goods and services using your mobile phone) is a quickly-growing trend across the world (most quickly outside of the West, however), with many businesses rushing to adopt the new method of accepting payments. There are several good reasons for that; it’s a very effective and versatile way of accepting payments for goods and services. It’s often (depending on the provider) very easy to set up, and especially handy for businesses who do a lot of business at remote locations – if you’re a food retailer, for example, that relies on a lot of trade fairs or farmers markets, etc, it’s a simple, effective way to set up a payment system without the hassle of major infrastructural requirements or credit card machines, etc. It’s also cheaper (again, depending on the provider) than accepting credit card payments, the service charge levied by the service providers often being less than those charged by traditional credit card companies.

There’s another reason why retailers love mobile phone payment, too – for information gathering and collection on your customer base it’s better than almost any other method of payment – loyalty programmes and targeted promotions live or die by the quality of the information provided. All of these advantages have something in common, however – they’re all vendor advantages. You might say that the cost saving would eventually be passed on to the customer, and while that’s true, it’s tenuous – there are multiple steps between the service and the advantage to the customer. The same is true of any targeted promotions. There’s an argument that it’s more convenient for customers, but do your customers really find it all that inconvenient to carry a credit card? So inconvenient that they’ll change their consumer behaviours? We wondered about that, so we asked them.

Our first survey question was our most direct. We asked simply whether customers would have any issues using their mobile phone for contactless payment in a shop. The answer was very significantly no. 64.08% of respondents said they’d have no issues. That obviously does mean that 35.92% of respondents did have issues with it, and that’s a significant minority, but it still is a minority. Apparently in this mobile world people are largely comfortable using technology (especially their mobile phone) for all kinds of procedures. You might think there’d be a generation gap in that comfort, and there is, but it’s only a slight one. Consumers 35-44 were actually the ones most comfortable with the concept of mobile phone payment (77.78% of respondents reporting no issues with using mobile phones for payment), but even in the 75+ category 50% of respondents reported they’d have no issues (which interestingly is the exact same proportion of 18-24 year olds). On the whole then, it seems that whether or not they feel there’d be significant advantages to payment by mobile phone, people are certainly open to the idea.

In terms of those advantages, 33.98% felt that using their phone for payment would be attractive due to the ease of use – their phones are always there, they know them and already use them for mobile banking, etc . People like their phones, and feel essentially replacing a credit card with their phone could be a good idea. 18.45% felt it would be quicker, with 1.94% felt it would be more useful for budgeting reasons, and 33.98% that it would cut down on the need to carry cash. A single respondent also felt that the fact that phones are password protected meant it was inherently more secure than a credit card, on which all the information required to conduct a transaction is printed right there on the plastic. That respondent, however, proved to be in something of a minority.

Overwhelmingly, the reservation displayed by our respondents was in relation to data security. Overall, 33.01% of respondents felt that if the phone was lost, they would be leaving themselves exposed to criminal activity. Even without considering losing the phone, 52.43% of respondents cited general security concerns as a perceived disadvantage of mobile phone payment. That means between the specific security concern of losing the phone and more general security concerns, 85.44% of respondents felt the security issue was the major factor in adopting this form of payment. In the survey we suggested other options – consumers’ comfort using the technology, (no one selected this, people love their phones) and vendor acceptance – how many businesses are set up to take payment this way, compared to old-fashioned credit or debit cards (only 8.74% of people considered this the major objection). Overwhelmingly, the reservation on adopting mobile phone payment was data security fears.

For retailers, who for reasons of cost or convenience are attempting to adopt mobile payment systems, the survey reveals both good and bad elements. Very few people seem to have an in-principle problem with using their phone for mobile payments. Fundamentally, the great spectre here is data security. To encourage people to adopt this form of payment they’ll have to be convinced of its security and safety. They seem quite ready to believe in the convenience and speed of the system – convince them it’s secure and it really will be able to viably compete with the other methods out there.

The Irish and Alcohol

cold beverages

How The Irish Purchase Alcohol Today.

The purchase and sale of alcohol has been a subject of much debate in Ireland for a long time. Changes to licensing hours, staggering closing times – over the years there’s been significant debate about multiple aspects of how we regulate our drinking, to say nothing of the annual discussion every budget day on what’s happened to the price of a pint. The Irish relationship with alcohol isn’t without controversy or something that the entire populace wholeheartedly embrace, but once upon a time it did, at least, seem unshakable. The Irish Pub was one of our most important tourist attractions, with even visiting foreign dignitaries making the obligatory stop-off for a photo shoot in some small hostelry or other. Against that background there’s a startling statistic, however – that over the past decade, 2,000 Irish pubs have closed (found here). The media will tell you that people’s drinking habits have changed – that people are more likely to stay home later with less expensive off-licence booze before heading out for a brief visit to a pub late in the evening (or possibly even bi-passing the pub completely for a more lively nightclub). It’s our business to know what people are buying, and how they’re buying it, so we asked some people exactly what they’re experience of purchasing alcohol is.

We surveyed people across a wide age range, asking where they most regularly purchase alcohol. Overall, by far the most popular type of vendor was the supermarket, with 75.65% of all respondents claiming that that was where they most commonly purchased alcohol. Among our respondents, the next most popular establishment for purchasing alcohol was the off licence, but it was a distant, distant second, representing only 13.04% of alcohol purchases. This stayed remarkably consistent right across the age ranges, also. Supermarkets were at their most popular among the age range 25-34 (92.86% of purchases made there), but it remained the most popular right throughout the survey until we reached the over 75 age group, where they were only 50% of respondents first choice vendor – obviously 50% still accounts for a huge proportion of sales.

When we asked about the factors affecting their purchasing of alcohol, again the responses were remarkably consistent right throughout the age ranges. The first may be the most obvious – cost. Overall 60% exactly of our respondents felt cost was the most important factor in the purchasing of alcohol. This tallies quite well with the previous finding – obviously the buying power of supermarkets make them one of the cheapest places from which to purchase alcohol. Again, there was remarkable consistency throughout our age ranges. Cost was overwhelmingly the single most important factor for all age groups (64.29% of 25-34s felt it the most important factor, 72.73% of 35-44s) with the single exception, once again, of the over 75s, where it tied with branding as joint most important. By the time you reach 75, you know what brands you like, apparently.

A possible response worth considering (especially related to the issue of cost) is that 6.96% of our respondents mentioned that they bought their alcohol in Northern Ireland or abroad. This may be an extreme example of cost-saving, but it does represent a small but significant number of people willing to travel, and finding it worth the cost. This would obviously be most significant for traders in border regions, but it also marks the rise in the phenomenon of people hopping on a ferry to France with an empty car or small van, loading it up with booze and being sorted for a year. Ultimately, everything underlines the pre-eminence of cost in the decision-making process.

For alcohol retailers, the absolute concreteness of these responses may make for grim reading – by far and away the most important factor for people in purchasing alcohol is the price, what might have seemed inconceivable a generation ago – that Irish people would abandon the pub for cheaper alcohol elsewhere – seems to have come to pass. The only real light at the end of this tunnel is that overall the second most important factor in choosing a place to buy alcohol is the variety. At 22.61% of respondents choosing it, it’s a distant second to the 60% who chose cost, but it’s a significant number just the same. It seems the best way for off-licences (and pubs, in fact) to compete with the big supermarkets in the sale of alcohol is to offer their customers options that they wouldn’t get anywhere else. That means craft beers and micro-breweries, unusual imports etc. It’s not a way of by-passing the fundamental importance of cost in this process, but it’s certainly a way to meet what is an important need of a very significant number of potential customers.

How Mystery Shopping Works

Thinkstock

What Best Practice Mystery Shopping Looks Like.

Every week we stick up another blog on this site, and we try always to make them relevant and useful to business. We have 20 years’ experience in mystery shopping and consumer consultancy, so we have the information to base it on. However, we’ve only occasionally gone into the actual process of mystery shopping – how it works and how it can benefit your business. This week I want to dispel any impression I’ve given that mystery shopping is a hit-and-miss activity, a series of idle observations by casual observers who don’t know the workings of your business. Thinking of the procedure like that, you’d be forgiven for imagining that the process may be of limited use, or at least that its usefulness may be unpredictable and patchy. This isn’t the case, and while you may be forgiven for thinking we would say that, here’s a little bit on our procedures, on how a mystery shop really works, and how we make sure it’s relevant and useful to your business.

Step 1: What Do You Want To Learn?

This is our first step, every time. You need to know exactly what you want to learn. Obviously, mystery shopping is always about gaining insights into the customer experience, but within that there’s distinctions you need to make. Do you want to know why one area of your business is working while another isn’t? Why customer footfall has gone down (or even up, you want to be able to sustain it!), or why sales fluctuate in a given way. Think about the questions you really want to ask. We can always send in shoppers and give you feedback, but focused feedback is better than general, especially when it comes to practical actions later in the procedure.

Step 2: Formulate The Questions.

Now that you know what you want to know (so to speak), you need to decide how best to get that information. We’ve been doing this for a long time, we can guide you on how best to do that, but a necessary first step is always to speak to staff (and any information you’ve already picked up from customers in casual research). You need to decide definable metrics that can be measured and recorded. Formulate an evaluation form that records the measurable metrics which addresses the questions you decided on, which the mystery shoppers can address.

Step 3: Perform The Mystery Shop.

Select an experienced, articulate and observant mystery shopper. Inform them of the questions being asked by the business in question, walk them through the evaluation form so they understand the context and reasoning behind each of the questions, then send them into the business armed with this understanding, ready to make useful, relevant observations.

Step 4: Report The Findings.

This step might seem to almost go without saying, but I want to make sure we cover it. For many mystery shopping companies, you’ll find that reporting is kept quite rigid – their mystery shoppers are required to tick boxes and give simple, one or two word answers that directly address the questions in the evaluation form. That’s fine, you might think, and indeed we certainly require that all our mystery shoppers are to-the-point and supply the required information. However, we are slightly different to other mystery shopping companies in that we do allow a certain amount of subjective observation on the part of our shoppers. We have time and again seen the benefit of allowing a mystery shopper to make an unexpected observation that can inspire insight into the customer experience or a previously not considered method of addressing customer needs.

Step 5: Analyse The Report.

Once the report is filed, the time comes to mine it for all the useful information it contains. You need to take the feedback and identify gaps in the service delivery and the origins of those gaps. It’s also at this stage a crucial to decide the actions to take that will effectively address them. Mystery shopping isn’t about punishing anyone or catching them out, it’s about reinforcing best practice and identifying issues in your service delivery that would otherwise go unrecognised. The actions should be positive and designed to answer the specific issues raised.

Step 6: Implement The Actions!

The final step in the process, but maybe the most crucial. This is the step without which all the previous steps amount to nothing. You need to find creative and effective ways of ensuring the insights you’ve gained from the process up to this point are auctioned in the daily running of your business. We’ve been through the procedure before, of course, and we can help you with that. It might mean developing a reward and incentive scheme related to employee performance. It might mean providing coaching or training to employees to effectively develop their technical or behavioural skills. It’s not all about staff, either. If gaps exist in your procedures or systems, they have to be overhauled so customers aren’t bearing the brunt of poor design. There’s a lot of potential areas where mystery shopping can expose deficiencies or suggest improvements.

Hopefully having run through the actual procedure of mystery shopping we can show just how useful, practical and focused the activity can be.

Customers and Loyalty

Supermarket Loyalty Card Customer Loyalty Blog

What’s So Great About Supermarket Loyalty Cards?

I recently read a very interesting article on supermarket loyalty cards (here’s the article). It’s a very interesting read, so I recommend you give it a glance over at least, but here’s the salient point: supermarket loyalty cards don’t work for supermarkets, despite the fact that supermarkets seem determined to run and even expand them. Some of the main points covered were fairly straightforward and common sense – most people don’t own just one loyalty card, preferring instead to carry a walletful of options, making loyalty card shoppers the most disloyal of customers when the numbers are finally crunched (according to the above article, the average loyalty card shopper shops in 3.6 outlets for consumables, compared to 2.9 for non-loyalty card holders). The article also makes the point that compared to special offer leaflets and traditional deal promotion of that kind, loyalty card schemes are expensive to run (administration, IT, analytics, and most of the data they collect is collectable from transaction records anyway), the deals they offer are exclusive – you have to have a loyalty card to avail of them, whereas traditional methods allow you to attract a broader range of potential new customers – and finally, despite the investment in loyalty card deals, major retailers like Tesco have still found their business being eroded by discount retailers like Aldi. All in all, the article paints quite a bleak picture of the overall effectiveness of loyalty card schemes.

Having read the article, we decided to do some of our own research, to try and understand better from the customer’s point of view exactly what part loyalty card schemes play in influencing customer decisions and behaviour. Here’s what we discovered. The first question we asked was the most obvious and the most straightforward: Does having a loyalty card influence where you shop? The response was overwhelmingly positive: for 72.4% of our respondents, the answer was a definite yes. This means that almost 3/4s of the people we surveyed did decide where to conduct their supermarket shopping on the basis of membership in a loyalty card scheme. We also asked our respondents if membership of a loyalty card scheme (the availability of bonus points, specific loyalty card promotions, etc) influenced their specific purchasing decisions within the store, and once again the answer was (perhaps surprisingly) that it did – 68.9% said that it had. This would seem to put a lie to the findings of the initial article, which found that loyalty card schemes had such little effect on customer loyalty.

However, when we asked what factors affect a customer’s decision to enter a loyalty card scheme, by far and away the most important factor people cited was value for money (79.1%). No other factor came close, really, with brand loyalty accounting for just 6.9% and data security concerns just 3.4%. One shopper mentioned the proximity of the supermarket to their home, but the majority of those who wrote in a specific “other” factor mentioned things like “It’s just a little bit back. I wish Lidl did it!”, “What return I get from shopping there” and simply “rewards”. We can also say that when we asked people what store ran the best loyalty card programme – Tesco came out on top (41.3%), with the nearest runner up being Boots (24.1%) – only one of our respondents seemed unable to compare and contrast. That respondent said “As I have no experience of the others, it is not possible to give the “best””; all other respondents were able to compare and contrast quite happily, suggesting that the idea of “loyalty” doesn’t feature strongly in shoppers’ thinking about such programmes. Rather, they tend to shop around, factoring the loyalty bonuses and such like into their calculations of supermarket value. Regardless of how customers may initially say they feel about loyalty card programmes, it seems their behaviours tell a slightly different story, and a story much more in keeping with the findings in the original article.
There was one other contribution of note to survey. One of the respondents, when asked about the best loyalty card schemes out there, shared this anecdote:
“Years ago I had a Dunnes loyalty card, I used it when I shopped. After shopping in there and using the so called loyalty card every time I shopped they sent me a voucher for €1.00 ! I was so annoyed I said I would never shop in Dunnes again. Which I havent and I would never bother with a loyalty card again. It had a negative impact on me!”
This is something for stores to consider when setting up their loyalty card schemes – these schemes should be ways to extend extra value to your customers, but they can end up turning around and having an opposite effect. Ultimately, any store currently running a loyalty card programme should certainly step back and consider the costs of such programmes, and whether the benefits might not be achievable some other (less costly) way.