Loyalty Migration Issues

[CA-K]

We are based in Ireland and in the progress of migrating our coffee shops from Lightspeed to Square Restaurant. Most of the Square set up has been pretty straightforward and wonderfully intuitive. But I'm a little confused in how best to set up / transition our existing loyalty program to Square? And I am hoping someone here could share some advice.

With our Lightspeed loyalty program we offered enrolled customers 5 points in store credit for every €1 spent - basically a 5% discount on all purchases (which are admittedly small). These points could be redeemed at any time and applied to any future purchase. This program has been very well received by our customers.  And I would like to create a similar program in Square.

Migrating our Lightspeed customer database appeared straight forward. But has become a little tricky now that we're trying to apply the same loyalty conditions in Square. The first thing we've discovered is that Square has a maximum loyalty limit of 1000 points.

This appears problematic using the former "5 points for every €1 spent" program.  With Square's 1000 points limit, this means customers could only accrue a maximum of €20 in credit. And unfortunately many of our existing customers have much higher balances than this. 

I'm sure there must be some way to configure this so that:

1) we can import customer records from Lightspeed and maintain customer's existing credit balances (again bearing in mind many have a balance in excess of €20),

2) continue to offer 5% in loyalty credit to enrolled customers.

Any advice on how best to set this up would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Karl.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @CA-K.  So let’s take these one at a time.  First, maximum loyalty points?  There is no such thing.  I have a loyalty account that I manually added 1,000 points to, just to test it.  I now have 1,028 points.  Where did you run up against this maximum you found?  I can’t find it anywhere in Square’s Help Articles.

To your other question, that’s easy to do.  When you set up your Loyalty Program, in the “Earning Points” section, choose the rule to “Earn by Amount Spent.”  Set the Amount Spent to €1, and the Points Earned to 1 point.  Now, for every dollar spent the customer will earn a point.  Note that I believe that if a customer spends€6,45, or€6,95, they will still earn only 6x5 or 30 points.  It seems to truncate the cents from the calculation.

Otherwise, I see no reason why you can’t both import your current list, OR set up your Square program.  However, if you can give me an example (screen shots, please) of where you run up against the 1,000 point limit, I’ll investigate further.

Regards,

[CA-K · Accepted solution]

Hi @TheRealChipA. Thanks a mill for coming back to me so quickly!

As I mentioned, I'm based in Dublin, Ireland. I posted on this board as Square is relatively new in Ireland and the support community is considerably smaller. 

As you can see below, the maximum points this customer is allowed must be no greater than 1000. Perhaps Square has different limitations for international customers? This customer has over €102 in store credit available. But unless I've set something up incorrectly, I appear unable to credit him the amount due?

 

Thanks in advance! K

[TheRealChipA]

Ah!  I see, now.  Actually, it’s not the customers total points that is the problem.  You are only allowed to add a maximum of 1,000 points FOR EACH ADJUSTMENT.  There is no limit on how many times you can do that for one customer, I don’t think.  Yup it will be a pain, but hopefully not too much of one.

Also, if you want to make a feature request to the Loyalty Program to remove that limit, go here.  However, this will start a review and decision process.  Even if Square were to agree to remove the limit, it could take days (probably not!) or months (more likely).  For now, if you need to add 10,000 points to a customer, you’re going to have to do it at 10 times @ 1,000 points each.

Ugh.  But at least you have a work-around?

[CA-K]

Ah, great! That's not the worst news @TheRealChipA! We were due to go live with Square on Monday, and I was just about to pull that launch due to the issues around loyalty. And the potential complications this would cause with customers and their store credit values. 

We have over 1400 customer loyalty accounts that now need to be updated with correct values. So perhaps I'll speak to the Square team here to see if the correct point values can be uploaded by the engineering support team? I'd rather hold off on launching for a few days to ensure the staff and customer's first Square experience is a positive one.

Thanks a mill for clarifying that for me! Much appreciated, K.

[TheRealChipA]

I’m sure that someone at Square will revoke my annual all-expense paid vacation to the Bahamas for saying this (Ha), but if you have the luxury of delaying and having the engineering team give you a work-around without totally screwing up your public image, that’s what I would do.

I’ll give you one other work-around, though.  Make a sign, send a loyalty email, whatever.  Tell your customers that you are having some issues but that their points are safe.  You will fix them when you can, and in the meantime if they really want to redeem points, they should just tell you in person at which time you can bump up their points right then and there (1,000 at a time!) so they can redeem them.

It’s not perfect, but it would allow you to go live Monday.  Besides, Square support is pretty bare bones on weekends for anything except true emergencies.  It’s Silicon Valley, man!  LOL

I wish you well.  My husband and I have plans to do a castle vacation of your fair country in the next few years.  I’m looking forward to it, being a castle freak!  Besides, he’s Irish, through and through (a fair-skinned Killian).

[CA-K]

Yeah, the only pressure to go live is coming from me (and my very well known distaste of Lightspeed). There's no harm in another few days to ensure our staff and customers are impressed with Square from the get-go. 

And limited weekend support isn't exclusive to Square... FWIW, they've been pretty helpful up to now. 

Again, thanks for you help and guidance on this! I couldn't find anything in the documentation. Sending you belated St. Patrick's Day well wishes. I'm certain you'll be welcomed here with open arms. Kindness and good karma go a very long way... K.