About two years ago, a small group of 7-Eleven executives gathered together to come up with new ideas of engaging customers in about 8,300 stores in North America, says Mike Debnar, Senior Director, Digital Guest Experience, 7-Eleven.
During a session titled, “If You Can’t Control It, Enable It!” at the 3rd Annual Engagement & Experience Expo, presented by Loyalty 360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association, Debnar told attendees that at the time the company knew very little about its customers.
“We handle millions and millions of transactions, but we found we didn’t really know anything about our customers,” Debnar says. “So we decided for all of us to write a position paper about what you think we should do as a company.”
As a result, Debnar points to Position No. 1.
“Position No. 1 is profoundly important in loyalty,” he explains. “Our customer’s voice is our customer. It is our brand and we have to listen to our customers. People want to feel special when they come and when things go wrong they want to know you’ll fix that.”
Debnar said the group examined a treatise written by Albert O. Hirschman called “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty,” – which hinges on a conceptual ultimatum that confronts consumers in the face of deteriorating quality of goods: either “exit” or “voice”.
According to the theory, members of an organization, whether a business, a nation or any other form of human grouping, have essentially two possible responses when they perceive that the organization is demonstrating a decrease in quality or benefit to the member: they can exit (withdraw from the relationship); or, they can voice (attempt to repair or improve the relationship through communication of the complaint, grievance or proposal for change).
By understanding the relationship between exit and voice, and the interplay that loyalty has with these choices, Hirschman believes that organizations can craft the means to better address their members' concerns and issues, and thereby effect improvement.
“Hirschman said that companies can lose their way and customers are trying to tell them,” Debnar says. “These omni-channels allow us to listen to customers like never before. The theory says if you listen to them and you change, you will build lion-hearted loyalty.”
As a result, Debnar says 7-Eleven’s first priority was to figure out how to open up and listen to its customers. The second priority, Debnar says, was to focus on Customer Relationship Management and “little acts” of kindness in 7-Eleven stores.
“How can we have these little acts of kindness in our stores, which we didn’t really have or that we didn’t think we had,” he says. “We went out and watched and saw these little acts of kindness. That’s where our CRM strategy came from. The world’s opening up to mobile and we’re going to be a data-driven, mobile-first type of company through the omni-channel.”
Debnar says 7-Eleven conducted experiments to figure out what problems it could solve for customers.
“Listen to your guests,” he says. “Go where they are and they’re mobile. Our customers want us to have apps and mobile optimized information for them. I learned at a young age that little acts of kindness make you loyal to a brand for a really long time.”
The original rendition of the 7-Eleven app launched in February with a store-location finder, mobile coupons, selected products, and news on store events and specials. The initial capabilities were selected based on comments received from 7-Eleven Facebook fans. Mobile couponing was the top request. The recent update also added the ability to check in to stores with the popular Foursquare social media app.
Frequent 7-Eleven visitors could even earn a Foursquare “mayorship” of their favorite store by using the 7-Eleven app to check in most often.
A store locator is the foundation on which most retailers build their apps, and 7-Eleven is no different. But while other retail and restaurant apps help find the nearest store, 7-Eleven has tailored its location app to identify stores that meet specified convenience needs. Filters for key products and services work in conjunction with the 7-Eleven app’s store locator. Store results can be tailored by selecting filters, like hot foods – chicken, pizza and egg rolls, for example; beer, wine, Redbox, lottery, ATM, fuel, diesel, propane, and whether SNAP (food stamps) payments are accepted.
Users may click on multiple filters or select the search option to pinpoint a product or service not included in the filters. Stores meeting a customer’s specific requirements can be starred as favorites. The app customizes products geographically, and by time of day and local weather.
Coupons can be redeemed at the register by scanning an on-screen UPC code from a smartphone. Users also can share a coupon link on Facebook and Twitter as well as opt in to receive text offers and email updates from 7-Eleven.
Since the original app launched nine months ago, 7-Eleven has added the Idea Hub, where people can share ideas about how to build onto the app’s basic platform and add services that would enhance its usefulness. Found in the app’s Control Panel (located by clicking on the gear icon), the Idea Hub is divided into four categories for suggestions – General, Stores, Events and Coupons.
Users can submit an idea and/or vote on one previously submitted, and sort the list by popularity or most recent suggestions. Ideas that have risen to the top of the list include adding mobile payment capabilities, more coupons, individual store reviews, a membership loyalty program, nutritional information and local gas prices.