loyalty points not reinstated when cart cleared

[Lynn_TRU]

One of our volunteer cashiers ran into a bug today with a live customer; later research provided some details. It seems to be a bug that I hope can be fixed by the square development team in short order, as this affects customer satisfaction.

We've set up our loyalty program so that for every $10 a customer spends, they earn a point; 10 points can be redeemed for $5 off a purchase.

What our cashier found was that if a redemption occurs but the customer does not complete the purchase (e.g. "I left my credit card at home & will need to come back tomorrow"), if the cashier uses "clear cart", the points disappear into the void. As you'd expect, this makes customers quite upset.

In later research, we found that if the cashier first removes the redemption from the cart, then the points DO get reinstated to the customer's loyalty status.

Yes, the workaround seems easy to an expert cashier, but most of ours are once-a-week volunteers, and these subtleties are impossible to remember for such infrequent users. We'd like to see points from a redemption reinstated if a cart is cleared, without forcing the cashier to first explicitly remove the redemption.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @Lynn_TRU.  Wow.  That is definitely a bug — an obscure one that hopefully doesn’t happen a lot, but real, nonetheless!  Good catch and great investigation!  Of course, since it is a long holiday weekend, it’s very possible you won’t hear from Square about an ticket being created for this until Tuesday at the earliest.  

In the meantime, if I may offer another workaround that doesn’t require an “expert cashier.”  We have a standing policy here that we don’t redeem rewards until the customer is ready to pay.  Yes, we might add the customer to the transaction at the beginning, but to be safe no rewards are added to it until the very end, just as they are ready to pay.

This actually is basically the same flow that our connected terminal payment device uses — it doesn’t tell the customer they have rewards available until the transaction is complete, and it gives them the opportunity to redeem a reward at that time if they want.  Of course, we can’t wait quite that long, but the principle still works for us, I’ve found — waiting to add rewards to the cart until the very last minute.

I hope you find this gets fixed quickly, regardless!

[Lynn_TRU]

I appreciate the prompt reply 🙂  .  How can a redemption be delayed? We have a customer-facing screen that allows entry of a phone number; as soon as it is entered, a redemption prompt occurs, even as the cashier is still entering items.

Having the cashier "approve" the redemption has appeal to us: we view a redemption as a discount, and would like to prevent a redemption when other discounts are present (such as "20% off for seniors day").

[TheRealChipA]

@Lynn_TRU Since I don’t know exactly your platform or device, I can’t give you specific instructions.  But, you are either going to set up your device/POS checkout settings (in the Customer Engagement section) to ONLY collect customer information after checkout.  You probably have both before & after toggled on right now, and this is why your customers can check in early.

I use the Restaurants POS, and this setting is in my dashboard device shared settings for all of my POS.  You experience will differ, depending on whether you use Register or not, and which POS you use.  It could be like mine (in your online Dashboard device settings) or directly on your POS in More -> Settings -> Checkout).

I hope that gives you a place to start.