About Us > Blogs

Blogs

Memberson -Red Herring 100 Asia Finalist 2011

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:50:00 +0000

Oct 2011, Hong Kong
Memberson is a proud to announce being one of this year's Red Herring 100 Asia finalists as the “Most Innovative Company Leading the Next Technology Wave". They have screened hundreds of companies for the award.

Since 1996, technology industry executives, investors, and strategists have valued the Red Herring 100 lists as an instrument for discovering and advocating the most promising private ventures from around the world. Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia list has become an annual mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies. Red Herring were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, eBay, that would change the way we live and work.

Please click here to download the press release.

From the blog post Memberson -Red Herring 100 Asia Finalist 2011.

Let's work together!

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 03:56:00 +0000
Join us in the front line of Customer Loyalty Technology.

Memberson offers a progressive and multicultural environment with the opportunity of working with innovative software development and exciting global implementation projects. We are a genuine knowledge company whose strength lies in the expertise of our co-workers and therefore we grow when our co-workers make progress.

Follow this link to find out more. http://www.memberson.com/about/careers/

From the blog post Let's work together!.

Did your unhappy customers stop screaming?

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 11:12:00 +0000
A detractor is a loud unhappy customers who had a bad experience and 10 years ago this was not a big problem because the detracting damage was limited to how loud the customer could scream. A screaming person in the store would be seen by others as a crazy person rather than a warning sign and the screamer might just have increased the entertainment level for other customers in the store instead of having a negative impact on their purchase decision.
This unhappy customer could still cause some damage for by telling her story to family, friends and colleagues but it would be limited to a personal contact level.

The way of complaining to retailers have changed. In the old days not many retailers had feedback and complaint functionality on their web sites, if they even had a web site, but today it is a must for a retailer and customers demand that they can communicate via the web site or by email.

Most sources of complaints do not happen until the customer is back at home and realize there is a product defect or other reason for unhappiness, so with the email and web pages customers do not have to go back to the store to scream.

Fantastic! It looks like we have less screaming customers now because of the email capabilities and web based feedback forms, but that statement is of course wrong. Today unhappy customers are even more damaging than before. They are grown up in the social media age and write about their experience in blogs, on facebook, twitter and other social media sites which reaches out to thousands of other consumers. To make it even worse, the bad word of mouth happens instantly, at the moment of anger.

The majority of us would not be angry if we buy a defect product. We understand that mistakes can happen but what can make even the most humble and laid back person go mad is when they do not get any response on an inquiry.

Memberson did a survey and tested 30 different retailers inquiry forms and customer service email addresses. Surprisingly only less than 50% of the retailers responded to the inquiry within 1 month. The worst case was a retailers who sent an automatic response saying that they value their customers and that a person would reply to the issue within 2 days but the reply newer came.

Why are many retailers making the effort to put up a feedback form if there is no one answering the queries? We believe it is because they are lacking a system that manages feedback and complaints. A system that assures there are notifications and reminders sent for open cases. In today's IT enabled world these kind of failing customer service process is what makes people mad.

Retailers who manage feedback and complaints effectively are converting detractor to promoters. Isn't it very satisfying when you get the customer service response you deserve as a customer. Then it is easy to forgive a mistake. You might even twitter about your good customer service experience and how fast your failing product was replaced.

Learn more about Retail CRM and how to run and operate customer loyalty schemes, multi tier, cross border and cross brand memberships at www.memberson.com

From the blog post Did your unhappy customers stop screaming?.

Value of Customer Knowledge

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:06:00 +0000

Many retailers trust that their frequent walk-in customers will continue to visit their stores. In some lucky cases this is true and the revenue generated might be enough to run the operation and to generate a wealthy profit which even allows for expansion. But what happens if a competitor attracts 20% of your most frequent or valuable customers? Do you even know who they are? How much do they contribute to your company's value?

The obvious and commonly brought up value of having a customer database is that a company can communicate with their customers by marketing campaigns and to take measures building customer relationships and retaining valuable customers.

When a retailer plans to expand with an investor or to sell their business, the professional buyer or investor will not only look at costs and sales revenue. They will ask how well you know your customers. How you have segmented the customers. Which are the valuable customer segments. What is the purchase frequency per segment. How do you manage feedback and complaints. How do you recognise when a competitor is targeting one of your customer segments.

Modern company value calculation models use customer database information as key metrics.

The values that reside in your customer database are directly linked to the company's value. Do you know your customers? Do you have an active customer database?

Learn more about Retail CRM and how to run and operate customer loyalty schemes, multi tier, cross border and cross brand memberships at www.memberson.com

From the blog post Value of Customer Knowledge.

Cost of Points compared to Discounts

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:43:00 +0000

Compared to a discount based scheme where all purchase transactions generates a costly discount all point based transactions will not necessarily generate any cost. Some points that are unused will expire and do not generate any cost at all. Points can be converted to no cost or low cost generated services and events which still have equal or higher value to a consumer compared to a product discount.

In some industries and markets frequent customers expects discounts but the costly discount levels can be decreased by offering a combination of lower discounts together with points and other benefits.

When a night club offers exclusive entry, bypassing the long door queue, it has a much higher value to the consumer than discounts given on drinks and food. Be creative and invent the member benefits that will attract the wanted customers.

A point based loyalty system will have a higher initial implementation cost but will be many times more profitable over time than the discount based scheme.

Learn more about Retail CRM and how to run and operate customer loyalty schemes, multi tier, cross border and cross brand memberships at www.memberson.com

From the blog post Cost of Points compared to Discounts.

All are losers with a Free Membership

Sun, 09 May 2010 02:08:00 +0000

Free membership defeats the purpose of the membership concept. A membership should be exclusive. As a consumer you want to feel special when you hold a member card. You want to be part of a group that has special privileges. A free membership is not special at all because anyone can get it. It feels much less interesting to have the membership even if the benefits are good. People also tend to not want to give any information about themselves in return for a free membership and they might feel their information will be part of a mass marketing database where the purpose of the membership is just to collect their personal data.

It is proven that a membership with a price has a higher value to consumers. You have paid for it and therefore it is more worth than a free membership. You are not part of a mass marketing database anymore. You are part of an exclusive group of members.

A retailer collects revenue from the membership sales which can finance a more exclusive membership package.

As an alternative, or combination with a price on the membership, a free membership can be offered to customers with a qualification purchase amount. The amount should be slightly higher than the average receipt amount. This method also makes the consumer feel exclusive and they feel they have archived a goal, done something smart by adding another item to the purchase basket so they could get the free membership. This is proven to increase the spending on the first receipt when customers become members. All are winners with a price on the membership.

Learn more about Retail CRM and how to run and operate customer loyalty schemes, multi tier, cross border and cross brand memberships at www.memberson.com

From the blog post All are losers with a Free Membership.

Worst mistakes to avoid when designing customer loyalty schemes

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 01:15:00 +0000

The biggest loyalty configuration mistake is to create point schemes without point expiry, which over time increases the point liability to customers, having a serious impact on a company’s financial report and after a couple of years it will become uncontrollable.

Although many companies today are aware of that points should expire we still see this happening when companies rush to implement loyalty schemes without the help of an experienced loyalty advisor.

A modern Loyalty System has built in reports providing exact point liability status and point expiry forecast to the finance departments. It is easy to control the liabilities and points will expire if they are not used.

Another common mistake when designing loyalty schemes is to create life time memberships. Even though a life time membership sounds cool and exclusive to offer to the best customers it is a life time liability to the company where the promised benefits are expected to last forever. The company also looses out on the benefits of periodic customer communication with membership renewals and the driving of sales to reach a purchase level criteria for free member period renewal.

If you found this to be interesting you may also like to read the following...

About Time it's About Loyalty

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:11:00 +0000
This is the first blog post from the founders and partners of Memberson Loyalty Systems, blogging about loyalty and membership systems and processes.

Keep reading. It's about time we talk about loyalty....

From the blog post About Time it's About Loyalty.