Why is the Loyalty Program so difficult to use?

[debshugg]

Hello,

I have had Square Loyalty for 12 months or so.  I know we're not fully utilising it because my staff complain about it all the time.  And, frankly I can't work out how to make it easier for them.

Some of the issues that come up are...

• You need to produce a receipt before the loyalty screen appears.  However, producing a receipt doesn't necessarily guarantee the loyalty screen.
• Customers who are already enrolled need to reenter their phone number in the loyalty screen.  This is annoying for everybody because we've already 'enrolled' them and have their phone number etc in the loyalty program.
• I know their card is linked to the loyalty phone number and this automates the applying of award points. However the process to redeem points happens before payment (as you'd expect).  We don't know all our regulars by name (and face masks have made it harder) and so we have customers accruing points and not redeeming them.  This creates a financial liability for us because we might owe many customers 10 or 20 redemptions.  
• We also collect 'members' from our website and I import them to Square and set up their loyalty.  In that we ask (as per privacy and anti-spamming rules) for permission to send information to their phone. Then, they still have to give me their number again at the register (after the transaction) which then slows down the whole ordering and checkout process. It frustrates them, the customers behind them, and my staff!
• I have a sign up at the register for people to tell us their name before they order but most people don't and because the loyalty program is so frustrating for the staff they don't want to use it. They skip passed the customer screen at the beginning.

I figure it shouldn't be this difficult so maybe I'm missing something?  

Can anyone help me get value for money from Square Loyalty or should I abandon it for a simple card punch?

Pleeeeaaaase  : )

[Seamus]

Hey @debshugg,

Thanks for getting in touch and providing this detailed feedback!

Generally speaking the flow I'd use here is:

1. Begin a transaction

2. Add a customer to a sale from within the transaction, before going to the receipt screen. You can read about how to do this here under "Add an Existing Customer to a Sale'.

3. Once added to a sale, the phone number should automatically appear on the Loyalty screen provided the customer / phone number is registered to Loyalty and the sale is eligible for loyalty rewards.

If the customer doesn't have an existing profile set up with you in Square, you will still need to manually enter a phone number on the Loyalty screen. If the Loyalty screen does not appear, it means the transaction isn't eligible for rewards, you can manage these settings here.

Being a mobile phone number based Loyalty system, I think the best way to manage this would be a combination of staff training in the above steps, understanding what triggers a phone number to automatically appear vs having to enter it, and also having the adaptability to manually enter phone numbers as needed, for new customers or customers who have not provided a name. I can understand this would be frustrating if you've got a line of customers, masks making communication more difficult etc.

I'll share your feedback with the wider Loyalty team - your pain points here are understandable, especially in a fast paced hospitality or retail environment! It may be that a old school punch card system could be more adaptable to your situation, though I'd like to think we can build a system that works well at a good pace for most businesses!

[vanityfur]

In short, go the old fashioned card punch physical solution.  This is seriously a half baked solution that must only work for very specific businesses, although I cannot for the life of me work out what kind of business it will work for!

We are 23 months in with Loyalty, if you count the free month trial that we got, and what looked like it was going to be a wonderful addition to our business has caused nothing but angst and anger from our customers and a complete lack of trust in Square from our staff.  So we have now paid over $1000 for this and here are the problems that we have:

1) Approximately 35% of our transactions are actually accruing loyalty points because the majority of our customers order and pay for our products and services online, but then they come into the store to receive their service.

2) Some cards get linked on payment (at the Square terminal only) and other cards don't get linked at all.  No idea why - despite support calls for assistance - although it apparently has something to do with the order that you add the customer's information into the sale (????)

3) I have no way of working it out because it isn't possible to customise any reports on loyalty but I estimate that approximately 30% of the customers who tap the Square Hardware actually get their points assigned to them.  

4) It then becomes an intensely manual process that I am pretty confident only computer science degree qualified people can work out to find who is missing points and manually assign them back to them.

5) Redeeming them, just doesn't happen.  It is too hard for my staff to work out.  They aren't idiots, just busy people standing in front of busy customers, who just want everything to be a lot simpler than it is.

So I have spoken at length to Square about this and have been told the following:  

They will not tell me if they have any intention of making it work properly with any part of Square other than the Square Hardware - in short unless your customer physically taps their card on the Square reader, no loyalty points will be accumulated.  Unfortunately Square happens to have many other ways that a customer can take payments.

So if that is your business and 100% of your transactions are taken at the register, then loyalty has a chance of sort of working for you.  It still doesn't get past the problem that the onus is completely on the customer to ask you to check their balance before any transaction takes place if they want to redeem their points, which is pretty inelegant and clunky.

Because of the lack of reporting or even ability to export and manipulate Loyalty data, you just have no way to work around this.  

My heartbreak is completely over the fact that IF LOYALTY WORKED, it would be the most suave system and actually really add genuine value to my business and impress my customers.

Because it appeared to be accumulating points, and pretended to work, it has taken us 2 years to figure out that it really wasn't working, and not because of something we have done.  Some documentation (other than marketing) would have been good, as would have some honest marketing, with a categoric - not designed for use with Square Appointments or anything other than Square hardware only.

Check out my feature request here: https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Feature-Request-Loyalty-Rewards-integration-with...