The Kobas loyalty offering

Kobas can offer you a customer loyalty rewards system that is designed to maintain good customer relationships and increase return footfall and spend per head.

Last updated 08 May 2024

Jump to:

• Introduction
• How it works
• Set up considerations
• Reward considerations
• Supporting your customers
• Further settings

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Introduction

Interacting with your customers, and rewarding their loyalty is a key part of any modern successful business plan within the hospitality industry. Kobas allows you to keep a database of your customers through various interactions with your business via Kobas. Through our Marketing Integrations, you can communicate with those customers, and our Loyalty Offering allows you to reward their continued custom.

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How it works

Accessing the scheme

The loyalty scheme is administered through our Customer Interaction Centre (CIC). Once set up, Kobas includes fully integrated customer loyalty technology; complete with a branded member portal, which allows your customers to track and manage their own loyalty accounts.

We can support RFID Cards (proximity cards; "tap and go") or QR loyalty cards. We do however see most of our clients now no longer issuing physical cards, and your customers can collect points and redeem rewards simply using their phone, through our e-QR code.

Points accrual

Points are accrued at a rate of 1 per full £1 spent in any of your participating venues. All venues in your Kobas account can be included in the scheme (though they can also individually opt out), in terms of points accrual and voucher redemption. You can also choose some payment methods that do not accrue loyalty points if you wish.

Rewards

A member’s points balance is a constantly growing total, meaning that points never get "spent". However, rewards are awarded when a member’s points balance passes certain thresholds, defined by yourself. The rewards given are dictated by any promotion (reducing the price of items) or discount (reducing the price of a whole order) that you can create using our Discount Manager. 

We email your customers when they have signed up, been assigned a reward, or need to confirm their details. The emails will have your company logo at the top, and have our standard text. For a small cost we can customise the reward emails on your account, please contact the Support Help Desk.

Find examples of our basic standard emails here. 

Sign up methods

Loyalty sign-up is via email or mobile number and can be completed easily through our EPoS, or during the process of purchase online through Mobile Ordering of Gift Cards. However, sign-up can also be completed online by your customers at a later date (using a unique receipt code), if sign-up at the point of purchase is considered too disruptive during busy periods.

All methods require the customer to enter details online and confirm their account and card (if applicable) before the account is considered active and rewards can be redeemed.

Automated birthday communication and offers

The loyalty scheme also gives you the ability to send your customers automated emails in the run-up to their birthday, and to award them a specific reward or offer to use around their birthday - your gift to them! Please read here for further information.

Loyalty point boosters

We can also allow you to define time and product ranges that will accrue additional points. This could include "Double Points Monday" to push trade on a Monday, for example. Please read here for further information.

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Set up considerations

Domain – what will your scheme be called?

Something memorable and easy to type into a URL bar is best. The URL will need a word or words in front of your website. This is explained in more detail in the Initial Set Up article. However, if your website is www.mybar.com, then your rewards URL could be rewards.mybar.com or theclub.mybar.com or customers.mybar.com, for example.

Cards – will you offer physical cards?

Cards carry a production cost but act as a physical reminder of your brand that customers carry around with them. Also, remember that not everyone has a smartphone.

Thresholds – how frequently will you reward your members?

Choose thresholds that are achievable for your customers, but appropriate in conjunction with the value of your rewards. Sign-up rewards work well to instantly build a positive relationship with your customer, simplicity in the ongoing thresholds works best.

Rewards – what will you give away?

Any discount or promotion type that can be set up in Kobas Cloud can be assigned as a reward. This means you can choose to give away whole items, money off vouchers, or even access to other offers (such as buy one thing, get another for £1 etc). Money-off vouchers tend to work best when you can give an appropriate percentage of the bill off, and still have the voucher appear to be of good value. For example, a £10 voucher off of a £50 bill carries more perceived value and incentive to a customer than a £1 voucher off a £5 bill. In a quick-service environment with comparatively low transaction value, we’d recommend opting for giving away whole items as rewards.

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Reward and point thresholds considerations

When thinking about rewards, keep it as simple as possible. Even if you feel you are offering your customers more by coming up with something more complex, you run the risk of not being able to communicate that value in a clear and desirable way.

It’s best to talk in terms of rewards for points rather than £X = X reward as if the customer can easily equate a spend value with a reward (e.g. £100 = free pizza), they may not perceive it as such good value. However, 100 points entitling you to a free Pizza sounds more attractive.

It can be a great idea to offer a sign-up reward. This encourages your customers to complete their account sign-up quickly (as the reward cannot be redeemed without that happening) and to visit you again soon. As this doesn’t require a purchase we’d recommend giving away a low-cost item or access to a special offer (“Buy a coffee, get a free cookie” or similar).

Rewards can give you a great opportunity to promote new or lesser-known offerings in your venue. For example, if you are busy at lunch but want to promote your breakfast range you could offer something from the breakfast menu as a reward.

We’d advise that when defining your loyalty rewards scheme, you consider metrics such as your average transaction value and profit margins.

Example rewards scheme – A

• Sign up – Free smaller item (e.g. coffee)
• Every 100 points (e.g. 100, 200, 300, 400...) – Free larger item (e.g. pizza)
This is the most straightforward and easy-to-understand scheme, but it also makes it easy for a customer to equate a £100 spend with their reward. The closest equivalent to the well-understood "buy 10, get one free" rewards methodology.

Example rewards scheme – B

• Sign up – Free smaller item (e.g. coffee)
• Every 50 points (e.g. 50, 150, 250, 350...) – Free smaller item (e.g. nachos)
• Every 100 points (e.g. 100, 200, 300, 400...) – Free larger item (e.g. burrito)
This would effectively alternate the rewards, so “nachos” at 50, “burrito” at 100, “nachos” at 150, “burrito” at 200, and so on. It’s easy to understand for the customer, and harder to equate the spend with the reward. It requires a higher spend to earn higher value items, but with a halfway ‘bonus’ reward that is of low cost to your business. Be aware that the customer loyalty portal only shows progress towards the next reward, so it may not be immediately clear from that location alone what points threshold you need to hit to get your next “free burrito”.

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Supporting your customers: Important considerations

Businesses often overlook the customer support requirement of offering loyalty, but it’s important to consider this cost upfront. As soon as your customers have a loyalty account and a more formalised relationship with your business, you’ll need to be prepared to spend time assisting them with any questions or queries.

Generally, the kinds of queries you’re likely to come up against with loyalty are around topics such as card and account statuses, personal details, points balances or vouchers.

While the Kobas support team are able to advise you on how to find answers for your customer queries, as standard we do not interact with your customers directly. A loyalty scheme with around 20,000 members may require 10-20 hours of centralised management time, though this of course can vary depending on your customer base and venue staff.

If preferred, it can be arranged for Kobas to deal with these kinds of queries on your behalf and provide loyalty support direct to your customers. More information and prices for this service can be provided upon request from your Account Manager or the Support Help Desk.

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Further settings

When the initial set up of your CIC is complete, you will need to activate certain Integration Settings, including ticking Kobas Loyalty in the CIC Tab and also choosing if you wish not to gather certain personal information from your customers.

You can read more about our compliance with GDPR in relation to your customer and staff personal information here.

Once the integration settings are complete, you will also need to ensure that in Administration > Venue Settings > Settings > Sales & Marketing, the field Include venue on loyalty site tick box is checked.

Finally, you will need to check the Loyalty section of your Kobas System Preferences to ensure you have customised how the scheme works for you.