The dry spell brought back 9 customers who had gone quiet
About 3 times your normal rate for a fortnight. Worth knowing that the weather, not a nudge, did that.
The sixth wash is on the house.
The most famous experiment in loyalty was run at a car wash, and it found that a card with a head start got finished nearly twice as often. Customers tap the sign as they pay, their card sits in Apple or Google Wallet, and the sixth wash is on you.
First two months free. Then £39 a month. No contract. Cancel anytime.
Bicester
Bridge Street Valeting
4/6
Two more washes, one on the house
Tap for your 6th wash free
Straight to your wallet. No app.
Built for how it actually runs.
The weather decides the week
It does, and it is the reason a takings figure tells you almost nothing. The dashboard counts customers rather than cash, so a fortnight of rain and a fortnight of losing regulars stop producing the same number.
There is a cheaper wash down the road
There usually is, and price is the only thing a customer can compare unless you give them something else. A card four stamps in is a reason to drive past the cheaper one, and it belongs to them rather than to you.
Nobody runs loyalty on a forecourt
Some of the best evidence in the field came from one. The head start study below was run on car wash customers, and it is the reason every TapReward card arrives with a stamp on it rather than blank.
A car wash is a repeat business that mostly does not behave like one. TapReward is the part that remembers.
Tell a rained off week from a customer who has gone.
Weather moves the whole week at once, and a lost regular moves one line. Seen only as a daily total the two are indistinguishable, which is how a slow decline hides inside a bad spring. The dashboard separates them by counting people.
Tuesday is your gap. 7 customers are one wash from a free one, and 4 are overdue by a month.
What we noticed
An example of the kind of thing your dashboard will say. The numbers will be yours.
£39/month
First two months free from the day you activate.
- How long does the first visit take?
- About 15 seconds on their own phone - one email address, no account, no password. Every visit after is one tap.
- Do customers need an app?
- No. The card goes into the Wallet app already on their phone.
- What do staff have to do?
- Nothing during a visit. To redeem a reward, a four letter code on any phone or tablet signed in to your dashboard. About five seconds.
- What if a tap does not work?
- Serve the customer and sort the stamp out afterwards. They can tap on the way out, or you can add it from your dashboard. No queue waits on us.
- Can people cheat free stamps?
- One tap, one stamp, once a visit, and never more than two stamps a day per customer wherever the tag is tapped from. Blocked taps are counted on your dashboard. Only a stamp you add by hand is uncapped.
- What happens if I cancel?
- Nothing gets deleted. Customers keep their cards and you keep your list.
34% vs 19%
- This is the study that was run at a car wash. Customers given a card needing 10 stamps with 2 already filled in completed it at 34%, against 19% for customers given a card needing 8 from blank. Both groups had exactly eight washes to do. Every TapReward card starts with the first stamp already earned. Nunes & Drèze, Journal of Consumer Research, 2006
Independent research on loyalty mechanics, not TapReward results. Your own dashboard shows your own numbers. Read the studies
