Self Service:

The truth is that self service makes customers happy! Think of the impact the advent of the ATM has had on the banking industry. Could any of us ever go back to dealing with bank tellers, limited branch hours and waiting in lines? And while there are benefits to consumers in self service, there are huge benefits to business too.

Self Service applications are credited with increasing the average sale; lowering human resource costs, diversifying offerings, differentiating organisations from their competitors and increasing profits. Where does one start? Enter BlueBox's Loyalty offering, an ERP module designed specifically for use as a membership based self service system aimed at motivating and increasing consumer expenditure, either as a stand alone solution, or part of your fully integrated BlueBox ERP system.

System Benefits:

The BlueBox Loyalty system is a simple, effective rewards oriented solution with a low cost of operation and a low cost of ownership. It provides full centralised database ownership, giving you insight into your memberships customer purchase data. It provides a cost effective and rapid means to communicate with members via SMS, e-mail or Direct Mail. It has the potential to provide a monthly revenue stream off new memberships which could in turn fund competition prizes. It provides opportunities for value added customer convenience such as access to "point-of-decision" information that assists customers in purchasing the right product; cross selling; digital brand marketing opportunities; online payment options and more.

Mobile Internet Devices as out-the-box Loyalty Hardware:

Mobile Internet Devices (MID's) are the emerging technology based loosely on the iPad craze. These are much cheaper "tablet" devices out of China and are basically small touch screen web browsing devices. What we like about them is their affordability (almost at a disposable-after-use level) and the fact that, through there web browsers BlueBox loyalty will run immediately on them without installing any extra software.

We have found suppliers in all of our regions and sourced decent MID's with bluetooth, wifi and USB slots. Some manufacturers we have been looking at run Google Android and we would be able to run a web-interface on them without installing any software. We will be able to secure volume discounts and preferred suppliers very easily, but it would literally be possible to have stores purchase a device from our suppliers and follow 5 easy steps to self installing The BlueBox Loyalty Solution in-store. Obviously if there are any technical limitations we will be happily involved in this process.



So, with regards to supporting the device, we propose the following: we would easily be able to avoid a costly human resource overhead and rather provide a courier-based service to support your business, whereby devices are pre-configured and shipped to the recipients with wireless connections intact. If hardware fails we will deal with the supplier and organise swap-out devices. There will obviously be small time, courier and hardware costs involved in this process but these would be minimal, and could be charged on an ad-hoc basis to avoid inflating the monthly costs. For ultimate redundancy, stores could install 2 devices so that they always have a backup if one device is being swapped out.

Alternatively, due to the open and common nature of the devices, a support contract with a national technical firm is also a possibility and perhaps this could be chosen on a store-by-store basis.

The Plug-n-Play Loyalty System PDF is available for download by clicking the PDF Icon. This document shows the Plug-n-Play Loyalty System with integrated Gift Card, Kiosks, Competitions, Vouchers, Surveys and Communications.