Training staff on a loyalty programme

The technology is not usually what limits a loyalty programme. The counter is.

One sentence to offer it

Give staff the actual words. Not “promote the loyalty programme”. An actual line: “We’ve got a stamp card now. It’s the code on the counter. Ninth coffee is on us.”

A written sentence gets said. An objective does not.

Tie it to something they already do

Handing over the order. Not a separate step to remember, but a rider on an action that happens every time.

One habit for scanning

Ask before ringing up, not after. Applying a reward to a completed transaction is harder for everyone and produces the awkward moments that make staff stop offering.

One honest answer when it fails

Staff need to know the fallback: the customer’s short code, or a manual lookup. Nobody should be improvising at a busy counter.

They also need to know never to tell a customer a scan worked when it did not. A false confirmation is discovered later, at another counter, by a different staff member, and it costs far more than the original failure.

What not to do

Do not incentivise signup counts. It produces accounts created to hit a target, which contaminates the completion and frequency numbers you were building the programme to get.

If you want to recognise staff for it, recognise the venue’s completion rate. That rewards signing up people who actually come back.