Supermarket Chain Enhances Loyalty Program Plan

Giant Eagle, Inc. leads supermarket retailing in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland with 216 supermarkets and 93 convenient stores that generate approximately $5.5 billion in annual sales.

The company has enrolled more than 3.2 million active households in its Giant Eagle Advantage Card® program. The loyalty program targets members with unique product offers, lifestyle information and tips as well as electronic offers and online discounts. With so much invested in its loyalty program, Giant Eagle was eager to cut the costs of adding new customers and trim the resources required in a process that took three weeks.

Under the old system, consumers would join the program by going to the customer service desk and filling out a hand-written application. Each week, the stores sent the applications to Giant Eagle's corporate office, which in turn sent them to a transcription service. After transcription, Giant Eagle mailed a personalized card to the customer to replace the temporary card issued at the customer service desk.

"It was just the same thing being handled over and over again," said Connie Ferencz, Giant Eagle's Manager of Customer Care. "And the process left open points of failure."

Enacting a 'Reliable And Accurate' Solution

Giant Eagle wanted to automate the process of capturing consumer contact information so that a card could be issued at the customer service desk seconds after the application was initiated. The company decided to apply TARGUSinfo's On-Demand Indentification^SM for CRM & marketing to append names and addresses to phone numbers entered by employees into customer service computers. The process ensures that Giant Eagle accurately captures contact information in sub-second times.

"We saw that TARGUSinfo is an industry leader in this area and that's what drew us to their solution right away," said Brian C. Brand, Giant Eagle's IT Marketing Systems Manager. "We were looking for a very stable, reliable, accurate environment and that's what TARGUSinfo promised to provide for us."

With TARGUSinfo On-Demand Data^SM , Giant Eagle is able to populate member information fields instantly and automatically, minimizing potential errors in data entry. This also enables employees to verify information quickly against drivers' licenses. And instead of having cards imprinted with customer names, Giant Eagle now uses generic cards that cut its costs. "Including TARGUSinfo's solution was an integral part of our decision to issue our frequent shopper cards from within our stores," Brand said. "Our previous process had us mailing customers personalized cards to their homes and higher costs were associated with that approach."

Solution Excites Employees, Helps Shave Costs

When Giant Eagle first demonstrated its new loyalty program solution to store representatives, "The employees were very excited," Ferencz said. TARGUSinfo On-Demand Identification is part of a larger solution that let Giant Eagle eliminate costs for outsourced data entry, application paper, temporary cards, envelopes, postage, carrier services and personalized card production for each new loyalty program member.

"We are realizing a significant reduction in processing costs," Ferencz said.

The impact on Giant Eagle's workflow and resources has been just as dramatic. "We reduced our frequent-shopper card issuance time from three weeks to three minutes," Brand said.

Upgrading Customer Service

On-Demand Identification has also benefited Giant Eagle with other widespread effects, including a lift to customer satisfaction. "Our customer service employees are asked to perform many services for our customers," Brand said, "and reducing wait time for the customers in line is important to Giant Eagle." The company's employees can be more productive when they don't have to wait on loyalty applications being filled out manually. Automating the enrollment has shortened processing time at customer service desks by an average of 2½ to three minutes.

"It's such a time saver," Ferencz said. "Saving three minutes per person is a huge savings in itself.

"With this process, handling it on-screen, putting in a phone number and looking it up, they're handling it once and there's minimal points of failure," Ferencz added.