Loyalty Program Functionality- Drive-Thru Coffeeshop

[Coffeeshop4]

We signed up with Square a little over a year ago, and switched from Clover. There are many features and functions that are really nice, and there's definitely some drawbacks. I have had interaction with the loyalty program team, who have been helpful, but as I understand it, can't do anything more than request the feature be added. I am writing this in hopes that it may help escalate and expedite attention to this issue

One of the main reasons we looked at switching to Square was knowing that we had the ability to add a loyalty program; something that our customers have requested for a long time. We are at the place now of wanting to launch the loyalty program, only to learn that the only way to use it is through phone numbers. I can see where in an inside cafe setting this wouldn't be an issue. However, in a busy drive thru setting it's very impractical to ask each customer for their phone numbers, and then have the barista manually enter it in. 

We already pay to use the square gift card system. Customers already go online to register their gift cards with their names and account info. Is it possible to connect the gift card account with the loyalty program? This way, theoretically, a person could load their gift card, pay for their drink with their newly loaded gift card, and then get loyalty points in their account? This would also make it simple for the customers, who as I understand it currently, would have 2 accounts to manage.

If I have misunderstood how the program works, I would be grateful for someone to help me understand. Otherwise, I would greatly appreciate your looking into and acting on this request.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @Coffeeshop4.  You understand the Loyalty program perfectly.  While it IS attached to a customer account, the only way to sign up, accrue points, redeem rewards, etc, is via cell phone number.  There used to be a “hack” that I recommended, but they patched that hole a few years ago.  So….

I searched the formal feature requests for the Square Loyalty program and did not see that another seller has ever requested this.  So, my recommendation would be for you to do so now.  One word of advice.  Don’t make the request too broad.  You mention a couple of things in your post that could be features.  Don’t put them all in one request or it will be rejected.  Keep each request simple and discrete. 

Another idea would be to give each customer a QR code they could show us that we could scan during checkout.  Again, we can do this with e-gift cards so it should be possible to do with the Loyalty program as well.  iOS customers can add a loyalty pass to their wallets to do this, but Android customers can not I do not believe.

Feel free to submit one or both by going to the board I linked above.  And, if you do submit feature request(s), put the link to each of them here in a reply.  I’ll look them over and most likely like/upvote them, and I’m sure others will as well.

For now, however, what you see is what you get.  Thankfully, mine is a walkup window.  I have a sign that says “Loyalty Program Member?” Give us your phone number to check your rewards.  It works and has for months now.  But, you are correct that it could be much easier.

Regards,

[PartyManiaMD]

Weird, I swore I created a thread asking for loyalty to be able to be signed up without a phone number. Might have just been an informal gripe. Ah well, it doesn't make sense to require a phone number when they're paying with a CC given it can link it to the card... The only time it should require a phone number is when it's cash transactions.

I know that Square obviously wants as much data as possible as a business but requiring a phone number isn't necessary for debit/CC cards and turns people off. So many people decline to enroll even though I promise not to do anything with their data.

[rtfulk]

With Square gift cards you should be able to link them to the loyalty program. 

In the dashboard click on customers then enter the customers name and scroll down to Loyalty Summary, click on the 3 dots, then manage cards. The gift should be linked there or you should be able to link it.

On the POS tap menu/customers, then enter the customers name, on the right scroll down to Loyalty Summary, tap the 3 dots, then tap Manage Cards.

[TheRealChipA]

@rtfulk To clarify your post, are you saying that Gift Card payments work like credit/debit card payments with Loyalty?  I know that if the customer pays with the same credit/debit card each time, their loyalty points are increased.  But I didn’t know that payments with e-gift cards would do the same thing.  Interesting, if so.

[rtfulk]

@TheRealChipA According to Square gift cards, when you sign up for a gift card you can link it to the loyalty program, the gift card is associated to your account several ways, phone number, email address, below is a photo from the video and a link to the video.

https://squareup.com/us/en/gift-cards

[TheRealChipA]

@rtfulk Well, chalk this up to learning something new today!  I wanted to see it in action, so I comp’ed myself an e-gift card and added it to my Square customer account that I use for testing purposes.  Then I bought something with that card.  The points were added to my test loyalty account!  It also asked me if I wanted to redeem rewards because I have 3000 points in my test account so I can test loyalty tiers, and such.  It worked perfectly!

Of course, there are drawbacks, such as:

1. When the e-gift card is issued the first time, it must be manually linked to the customer account.  I only see a mechanism for us (the seller) to do that from the POS or dashboard.  The customer can’t do that, from what I see, so there’s that.
2. The customer will have to hand their phone to us (the seller) so that we can scan the QR code on e-gift certificates, just as they hand us physical gift cards for scanning, now.
3. If customers have enough points that they ONLY want to redeem them and not do any other purchase that requires payment, they will still have to give us (the sellers) their phone number to make this happen.
4. If customers don’t want to prepay to load a gift card, then we are stuck with asking for phone numbers unless the customer always uses the same payment method.  There’s no way around this, currently

All of those are minor issues, though, and they might work for @Coffeeshop4.  Anyway, @Coffeeshop4, the summary of this back-and-forth between @rtfulk and myself is this.

1. Gift cards on file (both physical and e-gift cards) can be linked to a customer’s record, either from your dashboard or POS.  Your employees will have to do this, but once it is added, it is there.
2. Customers can pay with their e-gift card.  This works just like any payment card.  Square Loyalty will recognize it as a card the customer has used previously and automatically increment points for that purchase.
3. if a customer has rewards available, the POS will alert your employee so that they can ask if points should be redeemed.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, if a customer DOES NOT want to prepay on a gift card, then you will have to continue to ask for their phone number for both cash payments and if their payment card has not already been used to accrue loyalty points in the past.  That can’t be changed.

I hope that makes sense.  And, @rtfulk, thanks for teaching me something today!  Wow!

[TheRealChipA]

I’ll add a couple of more thoughts, @Coffeeshop4.

1. I still think that having an Android loyalty pass like we have iOS loyalty passes, that can be scanned is still the ultimate solution.
2. There does need to be a way to sign up customers for loyalty without phone numbers.  There are still very old people, and Luddites, in the world, after all.
3. Oh, and a suggestion.  You can also look up customers by name.  So, if they hand you a card your employees CAN ask if the name on the card is the same as the name on the loyalty program and look it up that way.  No phone number needed except for the first time when signing up.

[rtfulk]

@TheRealChipA  Thanks, the only reason I knew about it, is I'm  working on a reward card like grocery stores. There will be a barcode on the back and when a customer walks up gives us the card we scan it and their info is displayed on the POS. I still have to scan the card in under the customers name in the reference ID section.  That's the Achilles Heel of the process, when we are really busy I can just stop and do it.

I have also looked at a few companies that do digital loyalty cards that will be in your phones wallet.  It may be easier because I get signups, then put the number in their reference ID section. I could pre sign up regular customers and not have to worry about a physical card.

[Coffeeshop4]

Thanks @rtfulk and @TheRealChipA these are all very helpful suggestions! You both definitely have more insight into the topic than I've been able to find!

I did want to follow up- I followed the path- dashboard> customer> directory> select customer> loyalty summary > create account. This worked well for the individual account. However.....

I currently 40k customers in my directory. Obviously not all of them are active gift card users and many are the same person with different payments. I was able to filter it down to 167 customers with gift cards as their saved payment info. I know we have thousands more out there, but up to now, there has never been a reason to register your gift card. 

     Questions----

1) I set the 'gift card payment people' into a group so I can work with them specifically in this process.

As of now, as I understand it, I would have to manually click through each of the active gift card accounts and create loyalty card with them, which seems totally bananas. Is there any way of toggling on the loyalty account in bulk that you can think of?

2) Knowing the volume of accounts that we are talking about, is there any other work around that you could think of for handling the account activation and use in the drive-thru? 

            -I thought of doing a marketing email/phone number campaign asking customers to sign up for the loyalty program in advance, but I read through How to Enroll a Customer through POS , but don't see an option for remote activation on the customer part.  Downside of this scenario is the only folks who would be able to access their accounts/ use their accounts in the drive through would be those who stores their digital pass in their iPhone wallet (sorry android), otherwise we are back to phone numbers or gift cards (Am I understanding that correctly?).

3) @TheRealChipA I have never submitted a feature request before. Would you have any specific verbiage you recommend after we've talked through it in this thread? 

         - I guess what I am wondering is, what is the root cause of this issue, and how would you word that in a way that could be submitted. 

Thank you both so much for your help!

[rtfulk]

@Coffeeshop4  On the dashboard click on then Loyalty, tab, then click on Marketing. You can send out an email or text to get people to sign up to the loyalty program.

In theory, if they have their phone number associated with the gift card and they enter their phone number for the loyalty program, everything should work.

[Candlestore]

@Coffeeshop4 ;

One way to collect the information to sign up your customers to a Loyalty Program would be Create a Form in Google Sheets.  Then have a QR code by the Drive through window that takes the customer to your form for their answers.  Then you can add these at a later time when your not busy.  I use this method for keeping track of my Scent Samples.  That way we know which ones are Good/Bad, The supplier, Their Product Code for ordering, any notes and current cost.  This save us time when we want to add a scent and can search the data to see if we have a sample and what we thought of it if we did have a sample previously.  So you could set up your Form to let each person only respond once to the form which is tracked by their email I believe.  You could even send a small discount to them for signing up to your Loyalty program.  You can test this with yourself or family before making it Live so you can see if there is any other information you need for your customers to add, and then add that Question to the form.  Since this is on Google sheets as a Form it is Live 24/7/7.

[kmacmmurchy]

I'd be curious on how you are using square with a Drive-thru. What kind of setup and methods do you use?>