Customer Loyalty – Process of Redemption Part 2

Published on April 13, 2021

Recap of my Path to Redemption

I had garnered enough points in a rather popular loyalty program (hospitality industry) and decided to redeem some of them for Amazon Pay GCs to serve the twin purpose of (a) protecting my remaining points from expiry and (b) fueling my indulgence on Amazon. I had recounted my entire redemption process in the previous post/article (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sijunarayan_experience-loyalty-loyaltyprogram-activity-6786572354622509056-mI2J) and had also invited the finest brains in CX to deliberate on how friction-free could the brand have made my experience of redeeming my points. In this concluding part, I will be focusing on the GCs I received and why I personally believe it would have been profitable if this brand had gone digital. So, read on!

Redemption. Conclusion.

So, the 9th day post my applying online for the Amazon pay GCs, I finally received a courier – packaged in nicely branded-with-M paper. Honestly, as I opened it, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what it was since I did not remember having ordered anything that was even remotely visiting-card’ish in its form factor. Hence, the child-like excitement to open it! When the contents presented itself, I am sure I must have stared at it for a good 10 seconds – motionless. Or maybe 20s – I was kind of stunned. I finally realized I was holding the Rs. 15,000 worth Amazon Pay GCs and this is a picture of those babies.

At this point friends, you are either going “Yeah, these look so neat?” and are wondering why I was stunned for a period of time that I am now not too sure of, OR are going “What the…heck?”

My state at that point was the latter within the larger emotion of sheer amusement. As is with normal human beings, I capitulated to the first reaction of counting them. Yes, at Rs. 500 a GC, there were indeed 30 of them – delivering the INR value as promised. Once the initial reaction of amusement wore off, a slight irritation crept in only to be finally replaced by a solid sense of angry, disappointed bewilderment. Let us examine why I felt so.

1. Right from the word “Go”, given the stature of the loyalty program and the brand backing it, I had hoped for a pleasant experience of redemption of points – points that I owned as I had earned them. But like I hinted in Part 1 of this story, the experience of initiating the redemption was not really friction-less. The various experts also opined on how it could have been definitely better. But 30 pieces of had plastic was not what I had hoped for or expected in my wildest dreams.
2. Tackling the specifics first – I had ordered for 6 of Rs 2,500 GCs – so, if at all, the brand had to serve me beautifully laminated plastic, I could have been served 6 cards of Rs 2,500 each – 30 cards of Rs. 500, while mathematically/technically/scientifically accurate, was a mammoth disappointment and if you look closely, would need 5x efforts to conclude my redemption.
3. To credit the Rs. 15,000 into my Amazon Pay account, I will have to scratch a small rectangle at the back of the card that would reveal a14 digit alpha-numeric code which then needs to be fed into the box as shown below.And in this case, I would have to repeat this entire exercise sequence a grand total of 30 times.

1. Oh, and the print size of the 14 digit code is so small that my 48 year old, prescription lenses attired eyes could read it only when I kept it a fair distance away. The thought of having to do this 30 times almost triggered depression!

Why do I believe this is very wrong and that this not only clearly derails the entire redemption experience but also diminishes the brand’s equity in my perspective as well as convinces me that the loyalty program there is not really under the scanner to make it more frugal, agile and bottom-line augmenting? I will try my best to collate my disappointment headers – look forward to the comments and reactions.

1. Time to Reinvent – Clearly, there are better digital ways to deliver the GCs. An email to the verified email address (or an SMS or a WhatsApp message) with the 14 digits code (or codes – if you had to break it up into multiple denominations) would have made so much better sense! It would have shaved off at least 95% off my effort of adding the currency to my Amazon Pay balance!
2. Cost – the single most important component here. Look at the various costs involved (please add if I miss any)

• Cost of physical cards – I guess it would be about Rs 10 per card at cost
• Cost of shipping the cards
• Cost of maintaining the infrastructure (physical as well as manpower) to pack and ship the cards
• Cost of my interaction with the call center – 3 emails, remember?
• Then, add on the cost of delay (9 days to get the GCs), the cost of friction and the cost of effort that I have to put in (at 1 minute a card, I would need 30 straight, uninterrupted minutes with the same efficiency levels throughout!!)

Clearly, there are a lot of avenues that begs improvement. The reason I have neither mentioned the brand nor the program is because my objective is not to bash the brand or the program, rather is to bring forward the fact that even the finest of brands and programs are still now hostage to old ways of working. “Millennials” and “Digital” are no longer swank, new transformational concepts anymore – these are BAU parameters! Brands need to pivot on digital, re-examine their customer engagement strategies and make all experiences across channels as friction-less as possible! Else the primitive cost structures and the underlying components will be an elephantine drag on efficiencies! Thoughts?

And, by the way, is there anything positive about this entire experience of mine? Well, there is! I am getting my two kids (grudgingly, since they are at an age when we didn’t listen much to our parents!) scratch the cards (15 cards apiece) and read me out the 14-digit code. Well, I can count that as quality family engagement time, can’t I!