Loyalty certification requires that the following be included in your integration. The Clutch checkout API process should provide a few key functions including:
- Passing member transactions to Clutch for loyalty earning
- Passing identified non-member transactions to Clutch for tracking and marketing (if possible) if possible in your POS
- Passing anonymous transactions to Clutch for reporting
- Doing real-time checks to see if members qualify for in-checkout offers or discounts
- Passing specific information about the customers purchase including SKUs, total amount, taxes, etc
In addition to the checkout information itself, the checkout flow serves as the hub for many other important functions relating to Clutch. The following bullets are all required for a certified integration. These include:
- Surfacing detailed customer information to associates
- Enrolling or allocating new cards/accounts
- Adding a card/account to a checkout
- Searching for a customer’s account who may not know their number
Recommended Checkout Flow
The checkout flow illustrated here represents our recommended best practice. It takes into account leveraging the full power of Clutch data. We do understand that for given verticals or situations this may need to be adjusted. However, close adherence to this flow is required for certification.
Redemptions & Real-Time Offers
Thus far we’ve learned how to enroll customers and process checkouts. The next important piece is being able to redeem rewards, balances, and discounts that a customer has on their account. While the Clutch platform supports unlimited number of custom value types, some of the more common ones include:
- Points – earned with spend, typically convert to a reward type at a threshold to be spent. (1000 points = 20 Cashback)
- Punches – usually counted by “visits” – great for brands with very consistent average spend.
- Promotional Cash – often known as “cashback”, this promotional currency is used for most monetary rewards, it typically has a 1:1 ratio with currency type (10 cashback = $10 USD discount)
- Other Custom Types – these can be anything ranging from “Free Drink” to “Gift With Purchase” – many of these custom types represent a “Product” reward or SKU that will be given free.
Within the POS and as part of the checkout you will need to build the capability to redeem balances and make any adjustments to the final check total amount.
The other task relating to redemption or offers is checking for any realtime offers that a particular customer may be eligible for based on the items they have in their basket. Since Clutch also provides the opportunity for marketers to target specific promotions at individuals or segments, they likely could be running a campaign such as “Buy 3 items from Home & Patio and save $30”.
Redeeming Existing Rewards
As customers proceed on their journey, Clutch closely tracks both spend (transactions) and non-spend (events) activity. Event activity most often takes place outside of the POS, usually via Ecommerce or social media, but can affect the customers point or rewards balances. All of this activity is processed by the Clutch platform and various rewards can be issued based on the customer’s unique profile and actions.
Rewards, or balance types, are one of a handful of actions that the Clutch platform can take when processing activity, but in regards to the POS, they are likely the most important. Outside of the POS, Clutch also triggers communications via email, text message, or direct mail.
When rewards are issued, they appear on each customer as a balance type. These balance types are the available to the POS either for redemption, or for customer service. Redemption of balance types should be accounted for as a pre-tax discount in the POS. POS reporting should reflect these discounts separately from Payment tender types such as Credit card or gift card payments.
Most commonly, a reward will be redeemed during a checkout. It may be promotional cash that is being applied as a discount, or it could be “gift with purchase”. In regards to the POS flow, it is recommended that upon searching or looking up a customer, that customer’s balances are viewed in the POS and can easily be applied to the transaction. Most brands will prefer that these balance types can be selected within the POS user interface to allow the customer a choice to either redeem in full or partially. Example: Customer has a balance of 10 Cashback on account, but only wants to redeem 5 Cashback during this transaction.
The recommended flow and best practices for checking and redeeming rewards, discounts, and stored value is shown in the checkout flow above, but these elements should be redeemed in the following order:
- Apply and redeem any balances
By doing this first, any other promotions that depend on a minimum basket size will be applied after these redemptions. - Apply any non-Clutch discounts or promotions
- Apply any Clutch realtime discounts or promotions (see below)
- Apply any stored value or gift cards as a tender type
- Process remaining payment if necessary
Real-Time Offers
As mentioned before, the ability to offer customer specific real-time offers during checkout is a key piece of functionality in the Clutch platform. Within Clutch, brands can configure campaigns that provide discounts based on any combination of the following: order size, # of items, presence of specific SKUs. They may use Clutch’s targeting to run a campaign whereby a customer who spends at least $100 on skus from a specific set or department, gets 15% off.
The way real-time offers work with the Clutch platform is that the POS would make a Checkout Setup API call . This call would include the customer ID as well as everything that is in their cart. At that point, Clutch will return any relevant discounts that customer qualifies for. The POS would then apply that discount to the order and complete the sale.
