Loyalty programmes have always played an important role in the organised retail sector for establishing customer engagement. Retailers want to increase their revenues because of enhanced customer relationships. Talking in detail about the same, Alistair Gordon, Founder and Managing Director, ValuAccess shares his experience about what it takes to be the leading provider of gift card, loyalty card, and stored value card solutions to hundreds of retailers.
Please brief us about ValuAccess.
ValuAccess provides creative branded stored value (prepaid) and customer intimacy (loyalty & CRM) programmes for major merchants across all categories of retail, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, spas and salons across Asia (currently India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Bahrain and expanding). The company provides its retailer clients with a full service, device agnostic solution enabling the operation of combined or standalone, physical, mobile and virtual, gift card and customer intimacy programmes. Our solution covers real-time transaction processing and POS support to card logistics, reporting, analytics and an extensive suite of client support services that includes corporate and third party retail distribution.
The company helps its clients by expanding the value of the programme through the continuous development and implementation of new distribution channels and sophisticated capabilities and applications.
How and when was ValuAccess incepted? Tell us the story behind its origin.
When we started ValuAccess in 2006, prepaid gift cards didn’t exist in Asia. We wanted to lead the migration from manual (old-fashioned paper vouchers) to electronic transactions (prepaid gift cards) in Asia. We believed that this migration would be as successful in Asia as it had been for retailers outside of Asia and for the same reasons: improved control; increased consumer accessibility; availability and acceptance; reduced fraud; greater flexibility; and the enabling of new revenue opportunities.
Our background in running telecoms services had also fostered the absolute belief that data and knowledge enable businesses to be far more efficient and effective. In developing our tools to capture and manage prepaid transactions at the point of sale and our programmes to use these tools to drive incremental revenue through customer acquisition, we believed that the same tools could enable us to capture customer data and develop programmes that analysed and used this data to drive incremental revenue for a retailer through increasing customer visit frequency and average bill values.
ValuAccess was founded with the mission to provide creative branded stored value (prepaid gift card) and customer intimacy (loyalty and CRM) programmes to tap the booming Asia Pacific market.
Please tell us about your retail clients. What kind of services do you have for the retail industry?
ValuAccess currently operates live programmes for major merchants across all categories of retail, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, spas and salons in India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Plans are underway for further expansion throughout Asia. ValuAccess’s full service solution is managing over 21, 00,000 physical, digital and mobile ‘cards’ and processing in excess of 12, 00,000 transactions every month.
We target the leading brands in each retail category and we have been fortunate to have some very strong and credible clients. Pacific Coffee, Pizza Hut, Benetton, Tanishq, Apollo, etc. are some brands that are engaging customers in innovative ways. They are making use of our programmes to drive incremental revenue through customer acquisition, increased visit frequency and increased average bill values.
Can you share a case study of a retail client who has benefitted of your services?
As per Jannie Tam, General Manager, Dymocks, HongKong: “In the recent findings of Dymocks Branding Study … our gift card programme is seen to be a strong driver for customers to make a visit and purchase at our stores.”
Bhupesh Dinger, Director-Operations, Enrich said: “Our fundamental belief has always been that everyone has a gift and a duty to recognise this in themselves and others. We practice this everyday by creating systems and services that help people look and feel at their confident best. These gift cards are the best gifts for any occasion or no occasion at all. It is a gift to make your loved ones feel special. We are extremely happy about the association and the results of it.”
Loyalty programmes are often part of a comprehensive customer relationship strategy. Do you agree with the statement?
There are mainly three levers for the loyalty programmes. You get more customers or get your customers to come more often or get your existing customers to buy more from you. Gift cards and loyalty programmes are specifically designed to target these three levers. Expanding basic loyalty by adding analytical capabilities on data from multiple sources allows retailers to develop deeper insights into customer behaviour. These insights form the basis of highly targeted campaigns to strengthen customer relationships and influence customer behaviour.
How has customer relationship management evolved over the years, especially in the Indian retail scenario? Do you think retailers are now focusing more on loyalty programmes and gifting card options to lure more and more customers?
With changing consumer behaviour towards retail brands, the availability of data that can drive meaningful insights and intelligence is also changing. Retailers who can delight their customers across all contact points and occasions will build relationships that will deliver incremental revenue.
Customer relationship management creates instant, relevant and perceived value for the customers, which needs to grow from being a simple ‘rewards for purchase’ scheme to something more sophisticated by way of recognising customers and better brand involvement. Indian retail brands are now effectively utilising different customer acquisition and intimacy initiatives including gift cards, loyalty programmes, e-coupons, bonus promotion, and marketing campaigns to increase customer engagement and lifetime value.
The propensity towards personalisation, recognition, participation through two-way communication and various engagements is bringing a lot of difference in the behaviour of consumers toward their favourite brands.
According to you, how developed is gift card and privileged card industry in India? Do you think more and more retailers are adopting this as a part of their CRM strategy?
In 2013, Indian spent more than Rs. 3,000 crore on gift cards. According to estimates, the Indian gift card market would triple to Rs. 9,000 crore by 2017–18. Customers are excited to offer different branded gift cards to their friends and family on different occasions. Corporates offering gift cards for rewards, recognition and incentives have increased aggressive demand in the market. With the advent of the digital medium, consumers have explored instant delivery and recognition of their favourite retail brands.
All leading brands, across categories such as apparel, lifestyle, luxury accessories, food and beverage, cinema and entertainment are adding new variants to their gift card offerings.
What kind of potential do you foresee for loyalty programme and gift card service industry in India?
Gone are the times when brand names, logos or labels could solely woo the customers. The industry has changed drastically and emerged as the experiential economy. Brands today constantly require engaging in loyalty management initiatives and offer higher intangible value to the customers, and ultimately ensure long-lasting relations. As gift cards help to acquire new customers, loyalty programmes play a crucial role in retaining them and increasing lifetime association and value.
The industry is set for a drastic growth in view of the additional value and personalised experience presented to the customer by utilising different customer engagement tactics. This not only guarantees their association with the brand but also generates further opportunities and customers.
What kind of marketing and consulting help do you provide to your retail clients?
Our strength and key point of differentiation lies in the sharing of our knowledge, experience and expertise in how to market, merchandise, implement and operate a programme. This experience, gathered over eight years of Asian operations, ensures that each programme is designed, tailored and implemented to fit an individual merchant’s operation and to deliver increased sales, acquire new customers, expand brand reach and build stronger customer relationships.
As a marketing expert, we help retailers define and design their programme to achieve their objectives and fit with their operational requirements and limitations. In addition, to prove our exceptionally robust and tested technology, we help our retailers with their programme’s operational execution, defining process and procedures and track operational performance data. We provide best practice guides, advice and input for programme marketing and merchandising, which includes developing communication strategies as well as detailed marketing collaterals to increase visibility, multi-location display of gift cards for more impact, different key messages and themes for different category. In more complex loyalty or CRM programmes, we help manage the programmes providing everything from operating the analytics; identifying the revenue opportunities; creating the campaigns, their communication and then managing them; all the way through to the response tracking and performance reporting.
How much do your services cost?
Being international programme manager in gift card and loyalty programme, we have brought best practices of different markets in India where we provide sophisticated and robust telecom grade technology, marketing intelligence and strong operational capabilities. At the same time, we have designed our commercials as per the Indian market’s need and affordability. As far as we can, we charge on success, tying our fees to the success of the programme. This ties our commitment to delivering not just technology but also delivering the expertise to ensure that the technology is being used to deliver on the programme objectives.
Can a retailer calculate clear RoI after investing with your loyalty services? How quickly can they expect return on investment after adopting your services?
All loyalty and CRM programmes must have RoI analysis built into them. The speed on return on investment varies according to the retailer category and size, programme objectives, complexity of the programme and so on.
Please tell us about your future growth plans.
Our horizons as a company are purely focussed on Asia. As I mentioned earlier, we are currently operating in five countries across Asia (India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore) and have recently launched our first client in the Middle East that will take us into two new countries. Plans are underway for further expansion throughout Asia.
