The SecuriLink Loyalty Solution is a new module developed as part of the SecuriLink™ electronic payment processing system, operated in Malta by Bank of Valletta since 2001. This is a sophisticated customer loyalty management application that is being offered to Bank’s for their own deployment as well as for its deployment by the bank to its clients.

Customer retention programs can be a powerful tool in the arsenal of customer relationship management. Customer retention is important to most companies because the cost of acquiring a new customer is far greater than the cost of maintaining a relationship with a current customer.

For many firms, customer profitability is skewed in such a way that losing the most profitable customers has a very serious effect. In many banks, for example, the top 20 percent of customers (when ranked by profitability) can make up 100–150 percent of total customer profitability. In fact, the bottom eighty percent of customers may provide no profitability or, worse yet, destroy 50 percent of profitability. In addition to saving profitable customers, retention programs allow companies to collect data about their customers. This data can be used to better understand, target, market to, and communicate with customers or to customize future interactions with customers. Retention programs can be a relatively inexpensive means of making customers feel special, increase their purchases and recommend prospects.

The challenge is to determine who is a loyal customer. Customer loyalty doesn't happen overnight - it has to be earned. It is all about making promises to the customer and keeping them! It calls for a commitment at senior management level to develop strategies and policies that are customer–oriented coupled with a company-wide effort to meet and exceed customer expectations. The plan to develop loyal customers is thus built around four sequential stages, namely.

• Turning suspects into prospects
• Turning prospects into first time buyers
• Turning first time buyers into repeat customers
• Turning repeat customers into clients

To achieve this, there must be an understanding of the customers’ needs and expectations and a customer focused system that provides the products and services at the customers’ convenience.

THE SECURILINK DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

This fundamental conceptual framework lies at the heart of the SecuriLink Loyalty solution, providing a very cost effective solution to firms that are committed to being customer-focused as the key to their long term success. The SecuriLink Loyalty system is based on:

• a design concept that is built on Client Server architecture.
• an independent system that is integrated with the well established and proven SecuriLink Payment Gateway
• a capability to integrate any client system to the SecuriLink Loyalty Server via API for any transactions, query and data base synchronisation.
• an operating structure that shares resources with all participating members, or can use local resources.
• a client system that uses a simple to understand, very graphical menu system together with a powerful help system.

SECURILINK LOYALTY OVERVIEW

There are TWO concepts driving the SecuriLink Loyalty System.

Concept 1 - Customer Relationship Management

CRM is the way to keep in close to customers, to understand what motivates their purchasing patterns and how to meet their needs in the most effective manner.

Concept 2 – Rewarding Customer Loyalty

Developing systems that reward customer who provide repeated business. It is possible to award Loyalty Points on purchases made within the business, depending on spending/Visiting thresholds and Loyalty Scheme types. Customers may then redeem points gained against the purchase of goods and services. SecuriLink Loyalty enables users to : -

• Award Loyalty Points on purchases made at the point of sale.
• Let customers redeem their points at the point of sale, against purchases.
• Produce Special Offer/Discount Vouchers that customers can use at selected outlets.
• See when customers are visiting your establishment.
• See how much customers are spending.
• See what customers are purchasing. (If integrated with POS)
• Communicate with customers via: - Mail, E-mail, SMS "Text" messaging
• The Loyalty Points can be either redeemed as a method of payment against the purchase of goods or saved for use against future sales.