Enrollment & Allocation
Enrollment is the act of formally signing up a customer for your rewards program. Typically there are 2 methods of enrollment that may be used:
- Standard (or Manual) Enrollment
- Auto-Enrollment
With Standard Enrollment each customer must be explicitly enrolled. This is typically done through a workflow where basic demographics are collected including name, email, and possibly phone number. At this time, the in-store associate would communicate to the customer how they will identify themselves for future transactions so they earn rewards as they shop more.
With Auto-Enrollment, the Clutch platform will automatically enroll a customer when the data fields identified as required for enrollment are complete. At this time, an email is typically sent to the customer welcoming them to the program and providing them with relevant information including account number (if applicable), and instructions on how to identify themselves at future checkouts.
Allocation is the act of taking an existing member/card ID and providing it to the customer for continued use. At this point, the customer is still not “enrolled” but they can use that card to identify themselves during future checkouts. They can continue to earn based on their activity, but typically won’t receive rewards until they register their card. It is at this point that they must provide all the demographic information required for enrollment.
One of the benefits of doing allocation without enrollment includes line speed, since associates don’t need to collect additional demographic information from the customer. However, a downside is that a portion of customers will never complete their registration, which leaves the brand without a way to communicate and market to those customers.
For a certified integration, your POS should support both methods (standard and auto) of enrollment. Your integration should include the ability to do a standalone enrollment as well as enrolling during the checkout flow.
Enrolling Customers
Your POS integration should support both enrolling customers
1) as a stand-alone function, and
2) as part of the checkout flow
When you enroll a customer, you will need to know what fields are required. Within Clutch the customer model contains fields required for enrollment (typically name, email, phone) as well as an extended profile containing customer preferences and custom demographics setup by the brand. Typically, one reward is configured for enrollment and another for when the customer completes their profile. Usually customers will complete their profile online, but the POS should support the ability to complete as well as edit the customer information.
Stand Alone Enrollment
Best practices for stand alone enrollment are to add an “Enroll in Clutch” button or action on the customer view, if the user is not currently enrolled.
Enrollment can be done by first searching for an existing customer in the Clutch platform via API call between the POS and Clutch. If customer is not found by search, the enrollment process will continue by collecting specified customer information and calling Clutch to assign a card number to the newly enrolled customer. If customer IS found during search, Clutch will return customer Loyalty ID and it can be attached to Customer record in POS.
Best Practice
The majority of POS systems already have a concept of a “customer” built in but for some, this does not exist.
If your POS does already have a customer profile, we recommend using that to show Clutch enrollment status, and if the customer is not enrolled, providing a button or clear action to enroll the customer. Typically first name, last name, email address, and phone number are required for enrollment. If your POS shares the same requirements, the enroll action can be as simple as allowing the associate to click a button. At this point, you perform a customer search to ensure this customer is not already registered, and if not you allocate and enroll the customer. If you do find a match on your search, you should use that match to populate the Clutch ID on the customer in question.
If your POS has not yet collected the basic information required for enrollment, you will need to prompt the associate to provide that information and then follow the same flow to search for that customer and then allocate or enroll.
If your POS does not have a customer profile, Clutch can provide the necessary data storage to add it. In these cases, any time a customer interacts with an associate at the POS, a quick lookup can be done either by member ID, email, phone, etc.
Enrollment During Checkout
A more common scenario is that enrollment happens during a checkout. Depending on your POS you may already be creating a customer for every checkout, or have the option to. In these cases, best practices are to leverage the data fields already being supplied to the POS, add additional fields as required and include a checkbox to “Enroll this customer in Clutch”.
Your integration should support both Stand Alone and In-Checkout Enrollment.
Your integration must leverage Clutch APIs to perform a customer search prior to enrolling a new customer. This prevents a duplicate customer record from being created. Often times Clutch will be notified of a new customer created through another channel whether that is an ecommerce website, mobile application, or even batched from a traditional CRM. Because of this, searching prior to allocating is very important.
