Like so many things that are viewed through a pre-COVID vs. post-COVID lens, the current process of incentivizing loyal customers and rewarding employees has been through a year of reinvention and adaptation. As much as the pandemic has eliminated the days when companies took the entire sales team to Hawaii, it’s ushered in a new era of relevance, immediacy and awareness that’s critical when it's time to thank the people who made it possible.
“With the pandemic, [typical incentives like] going out to eat, going to the movies, traveling, and even procuring and shipping merchandise — they’re just not practical,” Nat Salvione, chief commercial officer at digital rewards and loyalty provider Tango Card, told PYMNTS in a recent interview.
He said that when taking the time to thank customers or employees, what’s practical and important is to make sure the reward is relevant.
“Gift cards and payment options that are all digital have really proven relevant during this time,” he said. “They’re instant — nothing has to go through the mail — and a gift card, which is all about choice for the consumer, fits into everyone's different situations during the pandemic.”
Filling The Travel Void
By contrast, Salvione said that while travel is a great reward (and often even a once-in-a-lifetime experience), trips are logistically challenging even in normal times — and nearly impossible in the COVID-19 era.
As a result, Seattle-based Tango has “had to hustle” to fill the gap with experiential gifts. Salvione said popular alternatives have included gift cards for home delivery from services like Instacart, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub or “any kind of eCommerce site where you can order something and not have to go pick it up.”
Tango has even amended its internal rewards plan for company employees by adopting a virtual lunch delivery program that allows staffers to “get together” (virtually) while working from home. “We’re trying to replicate the experience of togetherness as best we can,” Salvione said.
Creating RaaS: Rewards as a Service
Salvione points to “T-Mobile Tuesdays” as an example of a successful loyalty program that Tango administers, calling the initiative’s weekly raffles and gift card giveaways a “really amazing way to thank their customers.”
It’s all part of the Rewards as a Service (RaaS) concept that Tango seeks to provide. “Our mission statement as a company is that we really want to make rewards easy to send and awesome to receive,” Salvione said. “The value proposition is to take all of the operational and tricky components of the reward delivery process and provide it as a service, so it is really simple for companies to get started and use.”
He said it’s really about providing an excellent reward, incentive or payment experience — because if the experience is off, a lot of the hard work, design and planning that goes into launching a rewards program can get quickly undermined. “So, we take [this] very seriously,” Salvione said.
Making Programs Work
It’s critical to have a rewards program’s various pieces in place, whether that means getting management on board, establishing consistent and sensible parameters or having a way to analyze an initiative’s success.
For example, Salvione said it’s “important when designing a loyalty or rewards program to get leadership buy-in.” With a well-designed program, senior management understands it, knows the expected outcomes and supports the reason why it’s being done rather than questioning the expense every quarter, he noted.
But Salvione said it’s also important to set clear parameters and rules to “keep things from going off the rails.”
For instance, if a company has a program where every employee gets a reward at their work anniversary, “you know what it’s for [and] the dollar amount, and everyone agrees to the benefit of the employee feeling more engaged and recognized at work.”
Setting up a reporting system is also important, and something Salvione said is best done early rather than as an afterthought. That way, companies can revisit their programs and have relevant data to either justify or change them.
The item actually being rewarded is also an important determinant in the reporting process. “If you give out a hat, for instance, it’s hard to report on [whether] people liked the hat or they brought it home and put it in the closet,” he said.
By contrast, Salvione noted that with gift cards, “you can track what preferences are and see who actually used it. That just re-informs the whole program for improvements.”
Gifting Around The World
Salvione said Tango has been working with Amazon since the eCommerce giant began a rewards choice program, and now offers gift cards in 16 different currencies for customers around the world.
At the same time, he said Tango’s work with employee rewards programs is also growing as a way for companies to keep workers engaged and feeling appreciated.
“Giving someone a shout-out by email is good, but recognition with a reward is even better,” he said. “Not only do you get the intrinsic recognition of being called out, but you also have a tangible reminder that the company values you.”
Salvione said studies have shown that two out of three employees who receive gift cards from work “remember forever” who gave it to them, why they got it and what they bought with it.
“Now that everyone’s remote and we’re all [working] at home, it’s more important than ever to take the time to recognize your employees, both verbally and also with a reward,” he said.
Salvione is looking forward to 2021 and focusing on new growth areas like digital payments and cash equivalent options rather than just gift cards. “A year down the road, [I] would like to be talking less about quarantining and the pandemic and more about business growth and the new kind of customers we’re talking to,” he said.
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