How a leading QSR leveraged a rewards program via Hashtag Loyalty to increase repeat purchases and average order size.
Case Study
Challenge
A cost-effective yet exciting rewards platform across company-owned and franchise outlets that can be managed centrally.
The brand, a fast growing QSR, has grown from 3 outlets to more than 200 within a timespan of two years. With a varied mix of company owned and franchise outlets spread across over 50 cities in India, the brand required a solution that allowed the outlets operational liberty while maintaining a central control over the same.
Owing to the sheer number of daily transactions, 15K, and the rate of the brand’s growth, it demanded a robust as well as scalable solution.
Due to the involvement of multiple franchise owners and the vast geographical spread, effortless implementation paralleled with functional simplicity were key.
The brand looked to centrally execute campaigns as well as allowing the outlets to run the same locally, hence multiple access levels were required.
Keeping in mind the quick service nature of the restaurant, the short time allotted per customer and the limited skill of the staff handling the operations an easy and time-saving solution was of the essence.
Apart from the above, the brand desired to stay updated on the revenue generated and the performance collectively as well as on an outlet-level basis.
With a constantly growing and fleet-footed customer base, they needed a way to identify their customers, recognize and retain them.
Solution
Spend based loyalty and rewards program seamlessly integrated with the brand’s existing PoS System.
The Plug and Play nature of Hashtag Loyalty’s solution was an easy fix to address the challenge of the widely spread locations of outlets. The rewards program was integrated with the brand’s existing PoS (Point of Sale) system POSist. The setup of the same was done remotely by the Hashtag Loyalty team and took no more than 15 minutes per outlet. The staff was subsequently trained and equipped with guides and demo videos of the earn and burn processes. The learning curves for the same were short and quick as the interface was the same as that of the PoS.
Hashtag Loyalty’s solution for the brand was built-to-scale, the retrofit nature of the integrated resulted in the same being part of the brand’s protocol document for franchises.
The brand specifically looked to keep the reigns of the program with themselves on a central level; Chain Owner access to the Merchant Dashboard was provided to enable them to do the same. While the Franchise Owners had the liberty to run campaigns to their customers via an outlet level Merchant Dashboard, the knitty-gritties of the program and engagement were decided centrally and the authority to edit it remained with the brand.
There were cases where a Franchise Owner had multiple outlets they owned and looked overview them and conduct engagement as a whole, in such cases a special Sub-Chain access to the Merchant Dashboard was extended to them.
It was of utmost importance for the brand to understand the individual performance of each of their outlets as compared to others, a real-time leaderboard and outlet comparison feature was created for the Chain and Sub-Chain Owners respectively and was available to view on their Dashboard itself.
To improve outlet performance and ensure the staff was recording customer transactions, an incentive program namely “Loyalty Champions” was introduced by the brand wherein the staff of the Top Performing outlet for the month would be recognised and rewarded.
The deep customer segmentation, reward performance, insights on customer activity and behaviour that Hashtag Loyalty provided, enabled the brand to initiate and execute data driven campaigns to their customers in a targeted and personalized manner, maxmizing the RoI on their spends
Campaign results and metrics were available down to the click with a clear revenue attribution against the spends, allowing the brand to replicate and optimize future communications.
Customers were communicated with via a channel with an offer that they were most likely to respond to; details down to the visit frequency, average order size, favourite items and real-time activity was avaliable for each customer.
The brand along with each individual Franchise Owner received timely reports, covering details of the performace of their outlets on a daily, weekly or monthly basis — and kept them up-to-date.
All of the above, while enhancing the customer experience and positively impacting the revenue being generated.
Impact
Customers return faster and more often
After introducing a rewards program, data showed that loyalty customers returned 10x faster than regular customers, netting the brand increased sales equal to 21,312 additional visits.
Customers are highly active & engaged
Activity of over 20% of the customer base was tracked on a weekly basis via Hashtag Loyalty. It was inferred that new customers were 5x more likely to return than earlier thanks to the rewards program. Regularised communication and reward incentive was the key.
Lost customers were retained
Via regular campaigns and marketing automation, customers were engaged at crucial points of their lifecycle. Resulting in retention of customers who would’ve otherwise dropped off the purchase cycle.
Increased average order value
Apart from an increased rate of visits, the rewards program led to a 15% increase in the average amount spent by customers during a visit at the brand. It was further inferred that customers spent 18% higher than average on a redemption visit.
