Even as GameStop approaches the seven-year anniversary of its PowerUp Rewards loyalty program, company officials are focused on evolving and enhancing the program, from the C-suite on down.
What’s more, officials want to make the entire customer experience as seamless as possible. One important measure they took to achieve that goal is Simplified Access
“We instituted what we called Simplified Access,” Darin Smith, senior director of Powerup Rewards at GameStop, explained to Loyalty360. “For GameStop, it made little change to what a customer sees, but how they interact with our company changed. We combined accounts and made it easier for them to access their accounts. Small changes, but ease of use, improved dramatically. It reduced calls into our customer care center by more than 73 percent in the first few weeks.”
Smith said GameStop officials measure customer loyalty through multiple items such as frequency, spend, adoption, sales and margin impact, along with cross-platform use and cross brand use.
“Are they interacting with GameStop and ThinkGeek, Spring Mobile stores, Simply Mac,” he said.
Leveraging mobile to create better customer experiences and drive loyalty is a key.
“We are looking for a better use of our native app and ensuring that we improve the experience and make things like one-stop purchase a reality,” Smith explained. “Says easy does hard, but we are looking to make things as simple and easy as possible for our customers.”
What’s the biggest challenge in mobile?
“Investment and ROI versus pure customer benefits/behavioral changes,” Smith said. “Sometimes short-term loss may be worth it for long-term gain.”
A customer journey, Smith noted, is about “how a customer researches the product they want, how they are looking at it, from what device, where they want to shop, what drives them to the store or online, and how are we interacting with them along the way. After the sale, also seeing what they did, or didn’t do- trade or buy pre-owned. What are they experiencing in each segment of the journey and how do we give them a great experience and not one that makes them go elsewhere.”
GameStop officials receive validation from their quarterly customer surveys and from their field organization employees.
“Listening to both segments is critical to the program’s success,” Smith explained. “We are in the process of modifying our current tracker and making it richer in data and feedback than just tracking trends. This will be so beneficial to the future of our program and company.”
Smith foresees some key trends in customer loyalty marketing.
“Moving to a more mobile experience versus desktop,” he said. “What was acceptable two to three years ago may not be relevant today. Looking to use A.I. to do more is also the other item that I am seeing and reading about. This will be something that changes the landscape, not only today but for the near future.”