Aargh. It seems that loyalty check in during transaction checkout (on Stand 2, and on connected terminal) is either broken or has change to be extremely frustrating for customers to use. After a few complaints, I checked for myself.
It used to be that if a loyalty customer used a card they had previously used for a loyalty transaction that it would automatically know they were a loyalty customer and not ask for their phone number again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Now it asks for a phone number every time, every transaction, for every card. I’ve tested this with payment on Stand 2 and on a connected terminal. Both no longer work the way they used to work.
Also, even after they enter their phone number the checkout process no longer displays rewards available for them to choose if they want to. It just shows rewards (sometimes) with no possibility of using them.
At this point, it seems that our only option to allow our loyalty customers to use their rewards is for them to give us their phone number up front so we can add them to the transaction. Then we have to verbally tell them what rewards they have or they just can’t use them.
My loyalty customers are getting frustrated. My employees are getting frustrated. I’m beyond frustrated. I hope that someone can tell me that this is just a very unfortunate bug that can be corrected soon. Because if this frustrating, very user-unfriendly way of recognizing our loyalty customers and giving them access to their rewards is the New Loyalty, then it just became something that most of us did not sign up for. It would be sad to have to start over with a different loyalty program.
Thanks.
@ryanwanner Well, I guess I’m happy that I’m not the only seller seeing this. Or am I? LOL. This one definitely is sounding like a bug. I certainly hope that it is not what I would consider a very bad, unfortunate design change decision. One of the big selling points of using Square Loyalty — and one that my customers really loved — was the fact that their cards were their quick and easy connection to their loyalty accounts. It was what set Square Loyalty above the other third-party offerings. So 🤞 this is not another “KDS” decision that we all know wasn’t the best move. Ha. Thanks for weighing in here.
Thanks @Katie_SQ. I haven’t verified this yet, and will when I get to the shop today. But I was informed by an employee last night that it might have changed in the last few days because (they said) it is working now. When I get to the shop, I’ll run a test transaction using my test loyalty account and let you know, too.
Yeah @ryanwanner I’ve made requests for that to go to CT, too, just like CT now prompts for whether cash-paying customers want a receipt or not. But, so far, no go.
@Katie_SQ I can confirm that the check-in part of my post has indeed been corrected. Existing loyalty customers who use the same card(s) for payment no longer have to keep entering their phone numbers, which is a big relief!
However, I still have one issue. I use a connected terminal to collect payments on my Restaurants iPad (Stand2). For a while, if a customer had rewards available a screen would pop up in the payment flow showing their available rewards and allowing them to choose one to apply to the transaction. This is no longer the case. For some reason, in order for my customers to use their rewards, they still must check in before starting the payment process so that we can look up possible rewards and apply them manually.
Any idea why that changed? I was really excited to find out when i opened this season that loyalty rewards worked with connected terminal. And now I’m frustrated again because my loyalty customers have to go through another extra step to be rewarded.
Thanks for getting part 1 of this fixed!
@Katie_SQ Here are some statistics on how much this issue has impacted my loyalty program.
In April, I had 79 rewards redeemed.
In May, customers redeemed 113 rewards.
In June (2/3 complete), since there is no easy way to redeem rewards at a connected terminal now, customers forget. Customers this month have only redeeed 14 rewards. That’s insane! My loyalty program is no longer working, which is sad.
@Katie_SQ I have my connected terminals set up for automatic software update. So it’s hard to tell if an update has been pushed or not. Can you tell me what the updated version will be? I’m currently at these versions:
OS 5.49.0024
App 6.45
Thanks!
My Connected terminals have updated to 5.51.0067. The issue of customers not being able to redeem their rewards when paying with connected terminal is still there. It was not fixed with the next update, as was indicated it would be.
I’m going on 6 weeks now of the worst loyalty stats ever. I’m getting feedback that most of my loyalty customers have given up on my program completely. So, I’m passing that along to the powers that be.
I have started trials of third-party loyalty programs that integrate with Square. I need consistency and something that “just works” for my customers. Square Loyalty does not seem to be that thing anymore, which is a shame since I really liked it a lot. I think I have been more than patient waiting for what amounts to a bug fix of something that used to work. But I can’t be patient anymore, especially as the regular season winds down and I head into my first winter open — when loyalty customers will be critical to my success or not.
I just can’t waste time on this, and waiting on a phantom fix, any longer. I do hope that it is correct soon, however, for everyone else.
This is a follow-up post to express my gratitude. I know that I’ve been more than a little frustrated in my posts here, and as much as I tried to temper that frustration, I also know I wasn’t always successful.
Regardless, a few days ago my employees and my customers noticed that the capability to redeem rewards on a Restaurants connected terminal had been restored. Let’s just say there was much rejoicing and merriment! As I mentioned, I was very close to jumping ship here in order to try to salvage my very stagnant loyalty activity. So whatever changed happened truly did happen just in time to put the brakes on that. After all, who in their right mind really wants to start over! Ha.
Anyway, I appreciate the work that obviously went on behind the scenes, and figured I should express that appreciation rather than letting it slide like most people do. My thanks to you @Katie_SQ and to the team.
We are working on something (bonus points, perhaps) to express our appreciation to our 2000+ loyalty subscribers for sticking with us through this. That’s the least that Piper’s can do, for sure. I’d give everyone there at Square HQ free frozen treats, but I don’t they’d travel well from Kentucky to California! (Or wherever).
