How To Improve The UX of Loyalty Programs: Our Top 5 Tips

At White Label Loyalty, we want to be able to provide you with the ability to get the most out of your loyalty program. This article is aiming to provide you with five pearls of wisdom regarding UX (User Experience) that will help guide you along your loyalty journey.

1) Choose a seamless data capture solution

Firstly, you need to make sure that your data capture solution is seamless! A loyalty program is only worth it if you have an appropriate way to capture data that isn’t too difficult for the consumer to use. At White Label Loyalty, we offer three great data capturing solutions.
 

• The first of these is card linking. Card linking is the process of turning a customer’s payment card into a loyalty card in order to create a frictionless experience. This is because it removes the barrier for entry into a loyalty program and a customer doesn't have to carry anything other than their payment card.
   
• Secondly, receipt scanning is another data capturing solution that White Label Loyalty can implement. Receipt scanning is simply the process of capturing customer's receipts from transactions. When a customer makes a purchase, they simply go to their loyalty app and upload a picture of their receipt. This technique provides a business with valuable and detailed purchase data.
   
• Alternatively, ePOS integration could be the idea for you. An integration of your existing ePOS systems can provide a smooth customer experience. Have a look at what White Label Loyalty offer here.

2) Have reliable technology

It is clear that reliability is one of the many components of the customer experience. An unreliable company will steadily lose business over time. With a loyalty program this is just as vital. Therefore, it is crucial that your technology is reliable. The possibility of an app or microsite going down or crashing could be potentially a deal-breaker for a customer. At White Label Loyalty, our platform has provided evidence of a 99.9% uptime as shown in our Burger King EMEA case study Therefore, you can trust White Label Loyalty if you want the reliable technology that is crucial for a loyalty program. 

3) Keep your rules easy to understand

Next up, it is vitally important that your rules are kept easy to understand. An example of such a rule includes clarifying that a 1 point per £1 spent, this is an easy to understand formula for a customer and therefore improves the relationship with the customer. In addition to this, there needs to be clear communication about special offers.

There are a number of ways that you can communicate these rules to your customers. Firstly, making sure that all of your employees are fully informed about the 'ins and outs' of your loyalty program. Furthermore, a dedicated explainer page can help clear up any issues that a customer may have in understanding any rules of the loyalty program.

4) Think Omnichannel

It is likely that your customer interacts with your loyalty program through multiple sales channels such as offline stores, e-commerce or a third-party. Therefore, you need make these processes as seamless as possible. This is so that they can get the most out of your program through any of these different channels. Included within this, regularly updating your social media channels with up to date information is very important. Ideally, you want a platform that can integrate or provide a solution for all of them without the customer having to create separate accounts.

5) Provide Excellent Support

Finally, the inability to provide excellent support to customers can be catastrophic, therefore you need to put your best foot forward. There should always be a support team ready to answer any questions and issues that arise to do with your loyalty program. 
 

This where the foundations of relationship marketing come into play, especially the concepts of communication and conflict handling. Firstly, communication channels need to be easy to access. Moreover you need to keep in touch with valued customers in a timely and trustworthy manner. One way of doing this is to have a dedicated email inbox and phone number for loyalty program support. Furthermore, having your existing support staff trained to a high standard on the loyalty program is crucial. These staff should also be aware of all possible FAQs and the answers to those questions. 
 

If problems do arise, you need to have the conflict handling capabilities to ensure that the relationship with a customer is not damaged. There’s a chance that a customer could stop using the loyalty program if they are not happy with the way that something has been dealt with. The ability to perceive what conflicts can arise with customers and being able to deal with them is essential.