Creating a Rewards Program

As a POS system service and support provider, we often receive requests from our customers on setting up reward programs.  Reward programs can be more effective than other types of promotions because they foster a long-term relationship as compared to coupons or discounts.  A good rewards program creates customer loyalty by offering your customers what they need, thus generating value for your customers to keep coming back.  Here are some tips on getting the most out of your reward programs.

First, you need to decide the objective of the reward program.  Some programs aim to get new customers through referral, others are based on dollars spent or the length of time a customer has been shopping in a store.  For retail stores that rely on high frequency, you may want to lean toward a program that rewards the number of transactions or dollars spent.

Second, you want the reward program to target the right people, your top 10% frequent shoppers.  To know this group, you want to gather information on what they buy, when they buy, how often they buy and what rewards they would value.  Data from your POS system along with the right analysis will show you this information.  Of course, you do not want to neglect attracting new customers either.

Thirdly, your reward program should offer something that is tangible and a goal that is easy to reach.  You should design your data gathering and reporting methodology to get the information from your POS system so you could offer rewards that are meaningful and obtainable to your top customers.  When done right, the reward will create excitement among your customers.  When they reached the point of redemption, you want to make the redeem process easy.

For any reward program to generate any buzz, you need to reach out to as many customers as possible.  Use multiple avenues to spread the word.

Lastly, check out what your competitors are doing.  Learn from what they did right or wrong and use this knowledge to create a competitive edge.

It is simple for any retailer to offer a reward program.  However, with careful planning and the right execution, you could create a reward program that truly generates customer loyalty and attract new customers to help your business grow.

Data Protection for Your Business

As technology evolves, additional aspects of our daily lives intertwine with electronic devices.  Most people use some form of electronic devices daily and interact with them for just about everything they do.  These electronic interactions leave a “footprint” of the person using or interacting with these devices.  This is why businesses should protect personally identifiable information of the consumers.  These electronic footprints also represent data that could be analyzed to produce valuable information for just about any purpose.  Therefore data protection is vital in this increasing electronic world.

As a business owner, what do you need to know about data protection?  The basic step is to make a backup of your electronic data.  The first question for data backups is what to backup and how often?  With the advance of data storage devices, it may seem that we can back up anything and everything.  That may be true for home and small businesses.  However, as your system collects more data and your business increases, it may not be the best way to simply backup everything.  The following are a few things you should consider.  How do you control the ever increasing data that is being backed up?  You might want to take into consideration what information is valuable for your reports and analytics.  Take some time to come up with parameters and build your data backup and protection strategy around these.  Another thing to consider is how to contain the increasing need for data storage.  The simplest way is to increase the size and the number of storage devices.  When your existing storage space is near capacity, you may not have the time to plan for the best strategy.  Take time to plan your data storage need for the next few years and re-evaluate the need periodically.  This could provide you with a more efficient system that allows for modular growth. 

As your data grows, the managing of the process and data analytics could become more time consuming.  When possible, consider automation for every process with a way to audit these processes to ensure completion.  You also need to consider the method for system recovery in case of failure.  It is a good investment for you to test and verify your data recovery process periodically.  This will not only validate your recovery process but also the backup process to ensure that when a real system failure occurs, you already have a proven solution for a quick and hassle free recovery.

As data volumes continue to climb, you need to periodically re-evaluate your strategies for providing data protection.  New technologies can deliver higher levels of data protection while saving significant administration time and opportunity for human error.  You should not set it and forget it especially if everything is automated.  You still need to verify and evaluate your processes to ensure that when you need the information or restoration that your procedure and data are sound and valid.

Being Healthy Together

You’re a busy small-business owner.  You have sales to close, employees to hire and meetings to attend.  Why should you care about office wellness?  Office wellness is incredibly important.  Companies can save money on health insurance and cut down on employee absences.  Your wellness initiative doesn’t have to be anything like the company programs you remember.  Instead, it can be a relaxed program that transforms an office to be more focused on health without pushing employees.  Here are a few ideas on how to motivate your team to become healthier individuals:

Schedule an all-company meeting:  Before committing to a wellness program gauge your employee’s interest using a survey.  This will give you an idea of how many employees are interested in the program.

Assign a team leader:  By assigning a team leader per department it will help others to team up and take a twenty minute walk during your lunch hours.  This can make a big difference on how you feel.  Instead of talking about work, talk about the reason why you are so motivated to stay in shape.  

Get creative:  Share recipes and or ideas for lunches and dinners. 

Commit to a new company culture:  Just like a personal diet program, an office wellness program is only effective if everyone sticks to it, including management.  By following these steps your wellness and the wellness of the company will be at an all-time high.

Engaged Employees Create Loyal Customers

In any economy, keeping existing customers is essential for a business to maintain and grow its profit.  In this slow-growing economy the competition for customers is even fiercer between competitors.  Some have discovered that the best weapon is highly engaged employees.

Engaged employees go the extra mile to service customers and deliver superior results.  Therefore, they provide the customer with a better shopping experience.  They approach the job with energy that enhances productivity.  They often come up with service improvements that can be used to better serve the customer.  Engaged employees stay with their employers longer, reducing turnover and the associated costs.  These factors combined deliver enormous payoffs to the business. 

So how do successful businesses foster engaged employees?  Environments that foster highly engaged employees include: a strong sense of purpose, ample autonomy, opportunity for growth and a sense of affiliation.  To achieve these company leaders must regularly solicit feedback from customers and use them to change business processes in ways that both empower employees and increase customer advocacy.

To create desired employee behavior many companies use performance matrices for employee evaluation.  These matrices often measure the time in which certain tasks are completed.  These types of matrices often do not take into consideration the customer promotion that an employee tries to accomplish.  Rather, focus on behaviors that promote customer advocacy within guidelines that is in line with the business’ objectives.  With this, a company can create a culture of engaged and empowered employees.