Author Topic: Membership/Loyalty Integration  (Read 17331 times)

JohnS

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 677
Membership/Loyalty Integration
« on: January 06, 2012, 03:58:06 am »
After spending much time playing with the features of SambaPOS, and thru a few demonstrations to clients, I think with very little effort a basic membership system could be implemented. As most retail businesses implementing this system would have or would like to have some membership/loyalty system inplace, I believe that this could be designed in a manner that all areas could use.

Basic information that is required for a membership/loyalty system
- Membership #
- Group
- Name
- Phone
- Email
- Address
- Date of Birth
- Notes
- Status

This would allow for birthday promos, infact entitles only members to get the promos, marketing, and membership renewal if a paid membership.

The ability to scan the membership card during item entry would be a nice feature, prefix the membership number with # to keep numbering separate from barcoding. Thinking about this, we will need to use Code39 barcodes.
The ability to export to CSV all customer details - for advanced marketing and membership renewals.
The ability to make members inactive at a specific date each year

My scenario will be different to many other users as I primarily work with hospitality (Pubs and Clubs).
Most clubs have a paid membership (shareholder) system, but many smaller clubs are doing this manually. I would like to see SambaPOS allow renewals thru purchasing a membership packing, setting their group (social, golfing, etc) and setting their status to active. If an inactive member uses their card, the system alerts the operator and the member can renew and keep receiving benefits. In Australia it is an offense to be in a registered Club in your hometown without being a member.

I am sure printing to plastic cards from Zebra printers (P110i) would be easy just using printer templates.

Please let me know what your thoughts are as I can see a huge potential for this.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2012, 04:43:10 am by JohnSCS »
SambaPOS - POS'n the World, one Terminal at a time.

emre

  • SambaPOS Developer
  • Samba Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1564
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2012, 05:51:15 pm »
Thank you for the detailed explanation. (Far better than asking "will you implement membership?"....)

If we implement these features I'm sure we can get more attention in our country too. Very nice. This implementation also creates a path to membership implementation for SPA, health clubs, etc..

The only problem is we need to create first V3 alpha before implementing such feature because if I do it in V2 I have to re-implement it for V3 too because account (for customers, employee, wholesalers,etc.) handling totally changed in V3. Yes I can't give an ETA for V3 because I need to work for other projects for generating income. I'll try to do my best...

JohnS

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 677
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2012, 09:10:15 pm »
Fully appreciate where you are coming from, being self employed myself the need to eat can be strong factor :)

So without 'reinventing the wheel', what can be done within the constraints of V2. What is achievable and what will we have to live without until V3. What workarounds do we need.



Customer database already exists, and from your post on promo features, we can manipulate data and run checks using this data.

1. The Customer Database

Fields already setup for customer database
- Customer Name
- Group Code
- Phone
- Address
- Note
- Internal Account

In my case, we do not use caller id - therefore phone field can be used for membership number.
Is it possible to add the following fields that can be accessed thru rules and actions
- Alternate Phone
- Email
- Date of Birth
- Status (boolean or a drop down)

2. Can we select a customer while entering items to a ticket

If using caller id, this would possibly cause issues if someone calls while your taking another customers order.
So how do we avoid this. At the present you can only select a customer by being at the select customer screen, and when in a ticket any number scanned is assumed to be a product barcode.
If we prefix the customer number with a character like '#' or 'M' can SambaPOS be told that this is a customer phone number (aka membership number) and add the customer to the ticket? Under Program Settings you have Weight Barcode, can a membership prefix be defined here?

Existing method using Delivery department works fine, but the above would be a nice feature.

3. Prompt operator of inactive membership (done)

Simple Rule & Action test on Status field to trigger a Message

4. Member discounts, promos, etc (done)

Should be as they are now - just remembering to check Status in the Rules & Actions of all promos

5. Date of Birth Promo

*Member needs to be active & have a date of birth

Can we thru Rule & Action a). prompt the operator that it is the customers birthday and give them a free drink (simple version)
or b). Automatically gift a product or product group (harder version)

6. Renew expired membership (renewal after expiry, never before)

Can we in some way add an item called 'Membership Renewal' (just like any other item) and when the ticket is closed, the customer status is updated to active.

6a. Can we also trigger a print job under this scenario for a card printer.

At the end of the day, if we need to use the transaction reports to see which customers have purchased 'Membership Renewal' and manually change their status to active, then so be it - this is not a big issue.

7. Creating a new membership

Add the customer manually, select 'Membership Renewal' (as in 6 above) and complete transaction as normal.

8. Under Customers in Manage, can we have a table layout (like Price List Editor) for all customer details so we can do mass changes to data easily.

9. New membership year/period

A trigger to reset all customer status to inactive on a certain date or even dates if less than annual memberships

10. Ability to sort Rules as you may need some to execute before others - currently they execute in order created.


What I have learned so far.
Not much :) Kidding.....

- I can use Customer Group Code for Active/Inactive.
- Notes can be used for Membership type, Phone & Email.
- I can trigger messages based on the content of notes and group code.
- I can trigger discounts for active members. No discount for inactive.
- I can trigger discounts for different member types.
- I can sell membership renewals. Just stuck on a way to automatically update their status to active on payment received.



Food for thought - The Saga continues.......
« Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 11:14:29 pm by JohnSCS »
SambaPOS - POS'n the World, one Terminal at a time.

jenem

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 154
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2012, 01:48:53 am »
John,

Would you need a field for date to indicate membership start and/or date of birth ?

This would prompt renewal date or elapsed membership.

Edgar

JohnS

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 677
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2012, 02:17:45 am »
It depends on your renewal period.
Some memberships are for a paid period of time like a Gym.
Our Club memberships are a fixed 12mth period - doesn't matter when you joined. Renewal is same time every year.
SambaPOS - POS'n the World, one Terminal at a time.

emre

  • SambaPOS Developer
  • Samba Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1564
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2012, 11:11:46 am »
These are really amazing features John. I'm adding a screenshot from V3 for showing how we'll handle customer management with V3.



I think I should focus on V3 development because going with V2 makes things harder for me as I have to implement same features on both V2 and V3 and sometimes I make mistakes and release bugs with V2... From now on I should only fix bugs on V2.

My plan is creating the first V3 alpha before entering FEB and we'll continue development of these features on V3. How it sounds?

jenem

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 154
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2012, 11:28:20 am »
Thanks for update Emre,

Good work looking forward to V3

Edgar

JohnS

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 677
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2012, 05:55:23 pm »
I've just checked out V2.79...

Awesome  :D
Thank you for the changes & updates.

Now before I continue I just want to say Emre, I understand that V3 needs to get off the ground, and therefore respect that focus needs to be on V3 features and design, not V2. Like I have said before - what can we achieve with V2. My ideas and suggestions are just that - and you have the right to say 'No, next version', and I will not be offended.

PS - If you need help testing V3 please let me know.

Question 1. Customer selection is by 'Phone' when scanning or using caller id. As per my suggestion earlier (about scanning customer card during item entry) how would you plan to make a 'Customer Card' integrate into the system. For example, product barcodes are usually EAN8/13, so if customer numbers are no longer than say 6 digits, the system will never get confused if the barcode is a product or customer number due to the length. If you create your own barcodes, then use 7 digits to again avoid overlapping barcodes. By this method would you search the customer database after products to find a match?

The reason for this question is for preparation of current customer/membership cards in readiness for V3. As I suggested before about a prefix to the customer number - I don't think that is necessary, and I don't think at this stage alphanumeric customer numbers are needed.


Question 2. There is an Action to Update Ticket Account - I have tried this, but can not get it to work. How do you use this?.
Is there a possibility to add Customer Group Code to this?


Great work team.

Bring on V3!! (yes I am just a little excited)
SambaPOS - POS'n the World, one Terminal at a time.

emre

  • SambaPOS Developer
  • Samba Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1564
Re: Membership/Loyalty Integration
« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2012, 12:09:21 pm »
Hello I think I missed your last post sorry.

1. Like we did for weight barcodes we can differ customer barcodes with prefixes.
2. Update ticket account used for assigning an account to a ticket. We use it for linking tables with customer accounts so when users clicks to Boss table ticket automatically assigns to Boss account.

On latest release I added two new parameters to "Customer Selected to Ticket" event. One of them is LastOrderTotal. For example it is possible to execute actions if Previous Order Total is > 100.. The other one is LastOrderDays. It returns the day count between last order date and today. So we can execute promotions if Previous Order is not older than 5 days...

I wrote it here to document new membership features...