Loyalty Rewards Program

Overview: What are we talking about?

Gingr offers an integrated Loyalty Rewards program that you can use to reward customer loyalty on your customers' accounts in Gingr. This article will cover how Gingr's rewards program works, how to set it up, and how to use points.

This article includes:

• How the Rewards Program Works
• How to Set Up the Rewards Program
• How to Use the Rewards Program

How it works: Loyalty Rewards in Gingr

Each business handles and rewards customer loyalty in different ways, so our teams had to ensure that the solution we offer accommodates the greatest number of businesses in a universal way. Based on several months of research and discovery, we decided to offer a program that rewards pet-parent loyalty based on their dollar spend by giving them account credit in return for spending money at your business.

With this system, $1 (or one unit of your currency) will give the customer 1 point on their profile. These points will be automatically incurred based on the subtotal (pre-tax value) of each completed invoice attached to an owner's account, and can be redeemed for store credit once set tiers are reached. Reward Tiers will be customized for your business, and can be configured in a way that represent different values that are specific to your business.

For example, you could set up your tiers to represent: 

$100 spent (100 points) = $10 in store credit, which carries the value of a free nail trim

$200 spent (200 points) = $25 in store credit, which carries the value of a free day of daycare

$500 spent (500 points) = $50 in store credit, which carries the value of a free night of boarding

Once a tier has been reached, staff users will be able to redeem points for the corresponding account credit, and then apply that credit in the cart at checkout towards charges. Customers are able to see their point balances and history on their Customer Portal, but are not able to redeem points themselves. Points can also be manually added or deducted from customers by employee users with the appropriate permissions.

Now that we know how the program works, let's cover how to set it up!

Helpful Hints: Before you begin.

• This feature is disabled in your application initially, and no customers will earn points until tiers have been configured in your application
  
  
• The Loyalty Rewards Program is system-wide, meaning that all locations that share an app URL will need to use a standard tier system
  
  
• Points are not earned on an owner's profile until the invoice has been fully paid

Set it Up: Let's get started. 

Setting up the Rewards Program is simple, however you'll want to ensure that you've thought through your Tier offerings prior to set up and that you've communicated your program's details to your staff and customers. Once you're set on your offerings, there are only three steps to get configured:

Step 1: Set Up Reward Tiers

To set up Reward Tiers, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Loyalty Reward Points.
   
   
2. Click + Add to create a new tier.
   
   
   
   
3. Enter the Points and corresponding credit Value for the tier. Remember that $1 = 1 Point, so your Points will be how much money a customer needs to spend to reach this tier. The Value will be how much store credit that tier will get them. In this example below, the customer will need to spend $100 (earning 100 points) to receive $10 in store credit once they reach that tier.
   
   
   
   
4. Save your changes and repeat for your remaining tiers.

Step 2: Configure User Permissions

All staff users are able to redeem loyalty points for store credit, but they will need permission to be able to manually adjust point balances on owner profiles. This action will be necessary to do things like:

• Migrate point balances from a previous loyalty program system
• Give extra points when running promotions
• Manually deduct points in special cases

To enable this permission, navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Groups. On that page locate the Can Manage Reward Points permission for any user groups that you'd like to be able to perform these actions. 

Step 3: Indicate if Points Expire

Lastly, you can indicate if rewards points expire, which will trigger the system to automatically deduct points from customers if they are not redeemed within a set time after they were earned.

To set point expiration, navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Loyalty Reward Points. On this page under the System-Wide Settings section, in the Number of days reward points expire in box, optionally enter a number of days after which points expire.

For example, if you'd like customers to redeem their points within a year, enter 365 days in this field.

 
How to: Use the rewards program.

Once your tiers and permissions have been configured, the Loyalty Rewards Program essentially runs in the background, and does not require any user action until an owner is ready to redeem points.

This section will cover:

• How to Earn Reward Points
• How to View Reward Point Balances and History on the Business Side of the app
• How to View Reward Point Balances and History on the Customer Portal
• How to Redeem Points
• How to Manually Add/Deduct Points

How to Earn Reward Points

Customers will incur points automatically on the subtotal value of all fully-paid invoices  for line items including reservations and additional services, point of sale items, open line items and packages. 

The only action that staff need to take to ensure that an owner earns points is to make sure that the owner is attached to the invoice in the cart! Easy.

If you'd like to require that an owner be selected when checking out a transaction, you can enable the Require owner for transactions setting from the Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Check Out Options page.

How to View Point Balances and History

As owners earn points, their point balance can be monitored from a few places on the business-side of the application as well as on the Customer Portal.

Viewing Rewards Points from the Owner Details Page

To view rewards points for a specific owner, use the Search tool on the Top Navigation bar to find their name:

Clicking on the Owners name will direct you to their Owner Details page, on which you'll see a section called Reward Points. This section will show you the owner's point history, as well as display their Current Point Balance.

 Viewing Rewards Points from the Rewards Report

To see the rewards points for all customers at once, you can utilize the Rewards Report, which is accessible from Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Reports » Rewards Report. This report can be generated for a point-value range, allowing you to see and communicate with owners that fit a certain point value.

For example, you can run this report for all owners that have enough points on their account to redeem one of your tier levels, and then send a marketing campaign to those owners to remind them of their points and invite them to visit to redeem their points towards a free service.

Viewing Rewards Points from the Customer Portal

Lastly, customers are able to view their point balances when logged into the Customer Portal. You can instruct your customers to view their point balance by following these steps:

1. Visit your customer portal link and log in as an existing customer.
   
   Note: If your Gingr url is https://happywags.gingrapp.com, your customer portal link is https://happywags.gingrapp.com/customer.
   
   
2. Once logged in, navigate to Top Navigation: My Account » View » Rewards Points to view their Current Point Balance and point History.
   
   
   

Important: Customers are only able to View their point balance on their own—staff will need to redeem points for store credit on their behalf.

How to Redeem Points

Once a customer has earned enough points to reach a tier, those points can be redeemed for the associated store credit. Points can be redeemed from two places:

The Owner Details Page

To redeem points from the owner's profile, use the Search tool on the Top Navigation bar to find their name:

Then, click on the Owners name to be directed to their Owner Details page. Here, visit the Reward Points section, and click the Redeem Points button to redeem their points for the tier they have reached.

In this case, we can see that this owner has 266 points on their profile, so we have enough points to reach the 250-point tier.

Once redeemed, the owners point balance will reflect the points that were redeemed, and their account will have had the appropriate amount for Store Credit placed on their account. In this case, we redeemed 250 of our 266 points, so our balance rests at 16 points. In our tier system, 250 points gives the owner a Store Credit of $25, which we can see in the customers' transaction history and reflected in their account balance.

How to Manually Add/Deduct Points

There are certain occasions where you might find the need to manually add or deduct points from an owners point balance. These can include:

• Migrating point balances from a previous loyalty program system
• Giving extra points when running promotions (E.g. Double Points days)
• Manually deducting points in special cases where an owner got a different reward or a refund was performed

In order to be able to manually add or deduct reward points on an owner's profile, the user must belong to a user group that has the Can Manage Reward Points permission enabled from Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Groups.

Points can be manually adjusted from two places:

The Owner Details Page

To manually adjust points from the owner's profile, use the Search tool on the Top Navigation bar to find their name:

Then, click on the Owners name to be directed to their Owner Details page. Here, visit the Reward Points section, and click either the + Add Points or - Remove Points buttons to manually adjust the owner's point balance.

Indicate the # of Points to add to the account and enter a Description to describe why these points were added (you'll see this in the point history).

Alternatively, indicate the # of Points to remove from the account and enter a Description to describe why these points were removed.