In the world of business, few things are more valuable than customer loyalty.
And it's a phenomenon that is distinctly contagious. If you have a customer who can't get enough of the gourmet burgers your restaurant serves, or a client who swears by your company's automotive products, they're going to tell their friends.
Throw some consumer incentives into the mix, and you may have hooked some customers for life.
Enter Punchcard, a company created through the Pasadena-based business incubator, Idealab. Punchcard has created a mobile customer-loyalty app that not only benefits customers with discounts but also provides merchants with valuable information on their customers' buying habits.
"We made it really easy to use," Punchcard CEO Andy Steuer said. "All a customer has to do is take a picture of their receipt at the end of each transaction. Then they select the business where they bought the product and earn punches on a punchcard."
The Punchcard app replaces physical punchcards that businesses often have.
"We've modernized it so that it all goes into your smartphone," Steuer said. "Consumers often lose the regular kind of punchcards and merchants also have no way to ID who their loyal customers are."
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