Morrisons has upgraded its loyalty scheme app, so customers no longer need to use a physical loyalty card and paper vouchers.
Instead of scanning a loyalty card and receiving a paper reward coupon at tills, customers can now scan a barcode in the Morrisons More app. The points are then automatically accrued in the app and can be redeemed the next time it is scanned, with no need for a coupon.
The new app, which went live last week, was announced yesterday by Morrisons’ senior online manager of analytics and data science, Chris Amor, speaking at the IGD Digital Commerce conference in London.
Amor told The Grocer the challenge of the exercise had not been developing the new functionality of the app but installing the necessary hardware in stores.
“We’ve been through an upgrade process across all stores so scanners [at the till] can now scan a mobile phone screen. It’s just a barcode but the old-style standard barcode scanners wouldn’t deal with the screen in a reliable enough way.”
The loyalty scheme, originally launched in 2014, gives customers five points for every £1 spent and rewards them with a voucher worth £5 when 5,000 is reached.
The upgraded app also introduces more personalisation, used to promote products customers may want by offering them extra points for buying them within a time frame.
“All I have to do is activate the offer. That’s it. If I buy that product in store by 28 October, I get those points,” said Amor.
The upgrades have been introduced in response to customer feedback. Before the changes, “the app kept a track of the points, so you could see the balance, but it didn’t have much functionality beyond that,” Amor said.
Customers could still get a physical card and coupon if they chose, but for many the new system would eliminate the frustration of losing the points voucher, he added. “About 11% of £5 paper vouchers never get redeemed,” he said.
Morrisons More is the fourth largest UK loyalty scheme with more than seven million cards issued and associated with 70% of in-store spend, according to Amor.
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