I had been grocery shopping a couple of days ago and as usual received a handful of coupons for my next visit. Back home, while I emptied my pockets, out popped this big bunch of coupons. A quick glance indicated, these coupons belonged to 2 broad categories,
- Irrelevant
- Relevant but distant
I guess, you don’t need an explanation for Irrelevant but nevertheless, Coupons that are valid only across categories that I never buy. Some might argue, that’s the reason they give you those coupons, buy stuff you haven’t bought. I appreciate that, however after shopping with them for 3+ years now, at some point the message should reach home that no matter what carrot you show, I wont be interested in those categories.
Anyways, the 2nd category is an interesting set, relevant but distant. These are coupons that appeal to my shopping trends. They offer great discounts and are generous with the number of points if I present the coupon in my next visit.
I wonder, how is this experience designed to influence loyalty? The retailers expect customers to save these paper coupons in their wallets and furnish them at the right time to get a discount.Now visualize, a family with 2 kids going through their bags to look for the right coupons and holding up the till on a Friday evening. The kids wont enjoy waiting as they know all the bags are packed and want to leave. Now, there are other customers in the queue who are not appreciating this hold up. Net result, poor customer experience for everyone. I haven’t even mentioned the carbon footprint of printing all that paper that finds its way into the bin most of the time.
In most cases, customer lose these coupons or don’t have them with them at the point of purchase. This makes the entire program ineffective and does more damage than good.
Would it not be simpler if these coupons resided on my account and were automatically applied as I shopped instead of me carrying coupons around in my wallet. It would be a welcome surprise to see a discount being applied. Consumers can be sent sms / email alerts on the offers applied to their loyalty cards. They don’t need to keep track of paper or manually apply a coupon to their card before making a purchase. They focus on what they do best, Buy, knowing that the retailer will give them the best deal automatically.
This Article was originally published on Linkedin
19th February 2019