Failed First Launch
On June 4th, 2018 the creation of the NG Rewards app began in South Texas.
The purpose of the app was to facilitate our loyalty program for employees of associated merchants. Prior to the app, businesses ran the NG Rewards operations through our website.
Our initial strategy was to to create networks out of businesses.
- Business owners signed up as members.
- Sign up the employees.
- And then the employees signed up every customer that walked in.
In theory this was going to work. What we didn’t expect was how difficult it was to sign up members and provide our members rewards through the website.
For example, in a restaurant there are over 20 waiters and waitresses. Waiters would have to take the food and drink orders and give great customer service. On top of these tasks, we were asking the waiters to sign them up to our rewards program.
Customers would have to open a web browser, go to our website, and register as a member. Then after the purchase was made, customers would have to provide their waiter their member number that would be assigned to them via email. The waiter would then have to write that number down behind the merchant receipt copy.
This was only the beginning. The waiter would then have to open a web browser, go to our website, and enter the merchant’s back-end to “capture the reward.” This means that the employee would need access to the merchant’s NG Rewards account, and manually type in the total amount purchased and the customer’s NG Rewards member number.
These tasks were too much for any employee to handle whenever they have more customers waiting to be attended. The app was created to solve these issues. We needed an app that was going to be easy-to-use for the customer, the employee, and the business owner. We needed an app that was going to make these tasks a fraction of the time. And finally we needed an app to give NG Rewards a brand that could compete in the customer retention market.