Winning the digital diner: Building loyalty through rewards and personalisation
In our last post, we explored how F&B brands were streamlining the ordering process and what best practice looks like, using the top scorers from Inviqa’s recent report.
In this post, we’re probing deeper into how brands can build long-lasting loyalty with reward programmes and personalisation.
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Reward schemes have come a long way from the simple stamp card, where 1x purchase got you 1x stamp and each stamp got you closer to a free caffeinated beverage. (And where a good day would see your friendly barista stamp in a few extras to get you to your free bevvy faster. Those were the days.)
Now, many loyalty programmes come with an app and tiered rewards that offer higher-value items as a person progresses through the levels.
But what the loyalty reward is wasn’t what we were interested in when conducting our F&B digital CX research.
What interested us was the user experience of that loyalty programme, namely: how easy is it to sign up, track points, and redeem those delicious rewards?
Nando’s – Winning with a flawless loyalty experience
Nando’s got top marks in our F&B benchmarking research, and they scored full marks on their loyalty programme experience.
And the reason why lies in simplicity.
- The loyalty programme is prominently advertised on the website (something which 30% of brands failed to do!), so customers don’t have to go searching for it
- It’s convenient to access – you don’t have to download an app. You can join direct from the website, and the sign-up form is nice and short
- How the programme works is simply laid out – how you join, how you earn a chilli, and at what point you’ll be able to redeem your rewards
- Tracking earned rewards is easy – your account clearly shows how many Chillis you’ve earned, and how many to go until your next reward
- Redeeming rewards when ordering online is straightforward, with customers able to add any available rewards during the ordering process
- Plus, they give you a free chilli just for signing up, sweetening (spicy-ing?) the deal. What’s not to love?
Going on fan feedback, we also know one of the draw cards of Nando’s loyalty scheme – beyond its outstanding UX – is that it works like a traditional stamp card, but you get little treats along the way.
This tiered type of rewards scheme is one we saw among quite a few of the brands we tested, and it can be a great way to keep diners engaged, especially the younger generation. Smaller but more frequent rewards as a customer works their way up to the bigger reward keep things satisfying and motivating.
However, regardless of the type of loyalty scheme you choose to adopt, the basics need to be met: it needs to be easy to join and access, the rewards structure needs to be easy to understand and track, and earned rewards need to be easy to redeem – whether that’s instore or online.
Winning the digital diner with personalisation
While all the brands allowed customers some form of customisation to items ordered online – from selecting the preferred milk option for a flat white to effectively building your meal from scratch – one function that was missing from all the brands we researched was the ability to favourite items. And we know it’s possible, as it’s something that Starbucks offers through its app.
The closest experience we encountered was the ability to use a previous order to start a new one. While this is a nice workaround, it feels like a convoluted way to start a new order vs being able to have a series of favourites you can easily access for reorder.
Costa allows people to start a new order based on previous orders. It’s a valid alternative to favouriting items for easy reorder, though we’d still prefer the latter.
Being able to favourite an item can be particularly useful for brands that allow for a fair bit of customisation of menu items, like Tortilla does. Once a customer has found just the right balance between salsa, spice, and all things nice (a.k.a. guacamole), allowing them to favourite the customised item for easy reordering could just be the nudge they need to order it again, and again, and again.
And the use cases don’t stop there – family pizza night can be made so much simpler because little Jimmy’s “unique” taste in pizza toppings has been saved to the app, negating the need to constantly remind the orderer that they would like pepperoni, pickles and pineapple on their pizza.
The opportunity for F&B brands.
Keeping customers engaged doesn’t have to be complicated. A more gamified loyalty scheme can be made simple if the instructions are clear and the redemption of the rewards is seamless. Offering customers smaller rewards as they work their way up to a larger reward is also a great way to keep them happy to come back.
And when they do return, make it easy for them to reorder their favourites. At a minimum, allow them to start their new order using previous ones, but ideally, find a way to allow your customers to favourite items from the menu (ideally once they’ve been customised) for truly frictionless ordering.
Want the full picture?
See what other areas of the digital experience we assessed and how F&B brands are performing against them by downloading the report.
Inside you’ll find:
• The full ranking of the 20 F&B brands
• Best-in-class digital CX examples
• More detailed analysis of the loyalty experience offered by the brands in the report
• Actionable recommendations to improve the digital journey
