Fidella compared with doing nothing

The most common alternative to any loyalty platform is not a competitor. It is nothing, and it deserves a fair hearing.

Where doing nothing wins

It is free and it is simple. No subscription, no setup, no staff training, nothing to go wrong at a busy counter.

Your attention is finite. A loyalty programme run badly is worse than none, and running one properly takes attention you may need elsewhere this year.

Some businesses genuinely do not benefit. If most of your custom is passing trade that will never return, frequency-based loyalty has nothing to work with.

You may already have one informally. An owner who knows their regulars, remembers their orders and occasionally stands them a coffee is running a loyalty programme. It is a good one. It just does not scale beyond the people they personally serve, and it leaves with them.

Where doing nothing costs you

You cannot tell who your regulars are. Beyond the ones you happen to recognise, they are indistinguishable from first-timers.

You cannot tell when one stops coming. A lapsed regular looks exactly like a quiet week, and by the time it is visible in takings they are gone.

You have no way to reach anybody. Every channel to your own customers is rented from somebody else and can be withdrawn.

You cannot run an experiment. Any change you make to how you treat repeat customers is unmeasurable, so you keep guessing.

The question that actually decides it

Have you started asking questions your records cannot answer?

How many of last month’s customers had been before. Whether the people who came weekly in autumn are still coming. Whether that quiet Tuesday is fewer customers or the same customers spending less.

If those questions have not occurred to you, doing nothing is a reasonable choice and you should not feel pushed off it. If you have asked one of them recently and could not answer, that is what a loyalty programme is actually for.