Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
My intent is to Educate, Celebrate and Elevate the Consumer Relations function in CPG (Consumer Product Goods) companies, especially for Brand Specialist and Analysts roles and responsibilities... !
Welcome to the My Curious Colleague podcast with your host, me, Denise Finniere. We'll be talking all things consumer relations with a focus on consumer product goods organizations and the brand specialist and analyst roles and responsibilities. So if you like CPGs, like I like CPGs, marketing, insights, and caring deeply for your consumers, well, take a listen.
Denise V:Hello, my curious colleagues. This week, I'm curious about digital coupons in the CPG contact center.
Denise V:And to help me with this topic is my new colleague, George Patellas, managing director at TPG Rewards. So hi, George, and welcome to the podcast.
George P:How are you, Denise? Thank you so much for having me. It's such a great pleasure to be on here with you and talking about digital couponing and and all the fun stuff centered around that. So thank you so much.
Denise V:Oh my gosh. My pleasure. Well, you know, what's interesting is for those that are following along, episode 99, which was curious about coupon reimbursement in the contact center, I had teased out that I wanted to dig into digital coupons down the road that I I, you know, was hoping to have somebody come on and and help us out in that area, and here we are. Poof. You're here.
Denise V:So this is this is perfect.
George P:That's awesome.
Denise V:Appreciate it. Well, enough about me. Let's go into you, and why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this, business?
George P:So, Denise, it's a long story, but I'll try to keep it brief. Okay. I'm managing managing director at TPG Rewards. TPG is a promotional marketing technology company. It's multifaceted our business.
George P:We do a lot of work with, CPGs, as it relates as it relates to their consumer promotion, programs. We do a lot of work with consumer relation consumer relations teams, in terms of working with them to deliver digital coupons to their consumers. I started out in this business, about 26 years ago. And, you know, as a first generation Greek American, I worked at my dad's restaurant in New York City and learned a lot of things there. I learned a lot about what business was, how to treat customers, but I also learned about what I didn't wanna do in life.
George P:And I certainly knew that I didn't wanna work at my dad's restaurant. And so, I had a passion for marketing, from you know, as as you start and you you you you look back on the lessons learned, as a kid working, that that passion really grew for me in in in the restaurant without marketing. And so I decided to embark and and get into marketing, and I thought I'd be there for 1 year, and here I am. It's, you know, what, 26, 27, 28 years later. I've been with the same company working within marketing, consumer promotions, and really developing these platforms to make the life of the customer, a lot easier.
George P:And I'm sure we'll talk about how we do that with our digital couponing platform, which is BarcodeBox.
Denise V:Yes. And this, of course, is why you're here because you're the expert. You know, I have just sort of a monoclon of of understanding of digital coupons. You know? I'm thinking of coupon that a link in an email and it goes to a consumer and, you know, they can go anywhere, potentially.
Denise V:But I know that there's more to that. And you mentioned barcode bucks, So I'm gonna start there and and dig in. Because first of all, that is, you know, I love who doesn't love a good alliteration? Barcode bucks. And, I know you guys exhibited at the SOCAP conference in the fall.
Denise V:SOCAP is the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals. For those who may not know that one, I mention it all the time, as it's my industry group. But tell us a little bit about, you know, what barcode bucks is, How long has it been, you know, in implementation and, you know, some of its features for people like like us?
George P:Sure. So, Barcode Bucks in a simple way to describe it is a digital coupon that is secure, it's fraud proof, and it could be used at a vast network of retailers. And those retailers include, Walmart, walmart.com, Kroger, CVS, Rite Aid. We're gonna be rolling out to walgreensandwalgreens.com shortly. Instacart is another retailer.
George P:Retailer. So we're roughly in 65,000 retail locations across the country. So whenever we develop a platform, whenever we develop a platform, whenever we develop a system, we really look at what are the friction points, what are the things that we need to develop to make the process better than what it was before? And so one of the things that really was plaguing couponing in the past was, was fraud. Right?
George P:You would hear a lot in the news in terms of coupon misredemption and people, creating all sorts of schemes to to create fraud and and to benefit from that on a personal level. And so from from our perspective, when we set out to develop this platform, we wanted to make sure that it was secure, it was fraud proof, and it could only be used once if that's how we designed it, right, within the program. So, that that's the key aspects of of BarcodeBox. I mentioned to you that it it it functions like 1. It looks like 1.
George P:From a technical perspective, it's not a coupon. It's more along the lines in terms of how it clears and how it redeems and all the security that's involved in it. It's more along the lines of a debit card or a gift card. Right? Because when a consumer tries to use it, the, it goes for online authentication to make sure that that barcode box offer is live.
George P:It hasn't been redeemed before. And so when all of those things check out, that's the only way that that, you know, offer can be transact or how it can go through. The other thing that I wanna point out about bar code bucks is that it could be only used to purchase your product. Right? It can or your UPC or your SKU.
George P:It cannot be used to purchase anything else inside the store. So when we develop these, and and set the programs up, we set them up and include only the promoted or the participating UPCs, with this that that will be accepted. Right? So those are key things about BarcodeBox. Okay.
George P:The coupons that are for that have foil on it and and and all of that stuff, are are, you know, they're great. There's some security concerns with those as well. But the major issue with those types of coupons is that they need to be mailed to the consumer. Right? And so what what we end up doing with our platform, with with with our product Barcode Box, is that it could be emailed to the consumer literally within minutes.
George P:Right? The foil coupon that, you just described is something that needs to be mailed to the consumer and can take several weeks to get there depending on what that fulfillment term time is.
Denise V:Okay.
George P:There's costs associated with that in terms of fulfillment and postage. There's printing costs that are associated with that, and let's not discount the effect that it has on the environment with the printing of trees and and the the the printing of paper and and and the cutting of trees to print those the the that that, those coupons. So there's a lot that goes into that.
Denise V:That's really a salient point, you know, the environment. This episode is sponsored by the launch of my very first website, aptly named my curious colleague dot com. There, you'll find links to episodes of all my podcast, YouTube videos, downloadables, and links to the podcast accolades and rankings. There's even a store feature for future products. Right now, my official sticker is available with the CPG CX hashtag on it, and it is available for free.
Denise V:So go now to order a sticker and show your pride in our function and share your support of my little podcast. That's www.mycuriouscolleague, all one word, dot com. Were you were talking about, you know, you only have the participating SKU. Okay. So that's not a differentiator factor to some of these other types of coupons.
Denise V:But what I think is juicy or different, and I I'm agnostic here in this podcast. I don't, you know, I'm not for or against anything. I'm just here to understand. Absolutely. Tell me more about the, the vast network.
Denise V:How do you like, you mentioned did you mention a couple?
George P:Yeah. I did. I did. And the the biggest one is obviously walmart@walmart.com.
Denise V:Yeah. Now the rest of them kind of feels a little bit like, more on the mass merch drug story, but you have Instacart. And, like, would this is this list static now, or how does it work, say, if you wanted, you know, I was interested in working with you, but I have a lot of my eggs in one of the other mass retailers, even though Walmart is one of the largest. Sure. So, is this list, you know, growing, or is that what it is for right now?
George P:So our concentration of retailers right now, our existing, concentration is really primarily in the in the mass space, in the drug space, in the grocery space, and the dollar space. Right? Our goal is to constantly grow that network of participating retailers. We want as many retailers in the network as possible, But we also wanna do it in a way where we're adhering to those core values of making sure that, these the the barcode box rewards, the coupons are secure and fraud proof. So for us to do that to effectively do that Right.
George P:We need to integrate with the retailer's POS system. So that way, when a consumer does scan a participating product, right, and they purchase that participating product and they're using barcode box as the as the digital coupon, we're authenticating to make sure that that coupon is live. It's being applied against the proper product, and then we can go ahead and work all the magic behind the scenes. But it to do that, it does require a level of integration between us and the retailer to ensure that we're, validating these purchases and and and kinda closing that financial loop with that retailer in an efficient way.
Denise V:So what I'm hearing is it's not like you're just gonna be throwing these retailers against the wall. Okay. Let's go. Let's go. There's this more, you know, complex behind the scene.
George P:That's right.
Denise V:And for that reason, maybe this list, will grow, but at a at a reasonable
George P:That's right.
Denise V:This is prudent pace, I guess.
George P:So in in q 4, we're actually slated to add a whole bunch of retailers, and, you know, primarily the ones that we will add that are that that I think will be a difference for your audience and be interesting to your audience are safeway.com and albertsons.com. So we know consumers are purchasing. Their purchasing habits have changed ever since COVID. Ecommerce is super, interesting to consumers. They're shopping there.
George P:And so adding the the walmart.com is is was was big for us and big for the consumer and, you know, delighting them with those these types of options. I think adding Safeway dotcom, Albertsons dotcom, obviously, Instacart is is another venue in terms of where consumers are shopping and and how they prefer to shop. So we wanna be
Denise V:Mhmm.
George P:In front of that. Right? And we wanna Yeah. Provide them options where we're delighting them every step of the way. Because, ultimately, that's what we're in the business of doing.
George P:Right? As marketers, as people that that focus on, customer service, Ultimately, we wanna delight the customer, make the life of the customer, easier, simpler, and better.
Denise V:Yeah. Interesting. Is there any well, let me back up again. But, how long has the the barcode box kind of been going? So, you know, barcode box started out.
Denise V:So last year?
George P:No. Well, it started out we we've been we've been deploying promotional programs, and that's for, I'd say, around two and a half years or so. You know? So we've been around with Barcode Bucks for for quite some time. We made the four way foray into consumer relations really because of the work that we were doing on the promotional side.
George P:Right? Very often, when we launch promotional programs, right, we meet with the customer service teams, and the customer service teams wanna know about the promotional programs that will be in market during a specific time period. And so we briefed the customer service team, and the program launched. It launched and it did well. And what the customer service teams noticed was that they didn't get any calls as it relates to the incentive that the consumers received.
George P:And so they said to themselves, like, well, if this is a brand specific offer that these consumers received as part of this promotion, and we didn't get any consumer complaints about usage and things of that nature, how about we use it for our own efforts to send out to consumers who call our call center? Right? We can streamline the process. We can digitize it. We can strip a lot of costs out of it, right, from a setup perspective, from a mailing perspective, and we can delight our customer by delivering that coupon to them literally within minutes.
George P:Right? And so that's how we really got into the space of, consumer appeasements in in the in the customer service side of things.
Denise V:Interesting. Oh, how about that? What what are what are these, demanding other customer service folks like myself asking for when it comes to your services?
George P:You know, really, what they're what they're asking for and what they're looking for is how do I make it easy for my customers, the first and foremost. Right? And how do we use existing systems to make
Denise V:Okay.
George P:Integration and implementation of this easier for us. Right? And so what we've done to do that to what we've done to make the to to to hit on each of those points is we went ahead and created a platform, right, that customer service teams can use. It's a web based platform. Each each, customer service agent has a username and password.
Denise V:Mhmm.
George P:They could log into that platform, and they could issue, coupons to the consumer by just entering in the consumer's email address. Through that platform, they're able to issue. They're able to look up and see if that, Barcode Bucks offer was redeemed. So let's say
Denise V:Mhmm.
George P:A consumer calls back up and says, hey. I never received it. You can look up through that portal and say, yeah. I sent it to you on April 21st at 10:33 AM. And I also see that it was redeemed at Rite Aid at, 12:02 PM.
George P:Right? So through that portal, you're able to to all of these different things. You were able to cancel a coupon if you wanted to. You can reissue it, but all of it is really within your fingertips to provide quick, service to your consumers, really, you know, close that, close the gap, right, between calls and recalls and calling back and and so forth and so on. So we're able to so we provide a a platform, a portal that customer service agents can use.
George P:Other teams say to us, you know, your portal is great. It's easy to use, but we have our existing platforms. Can we integrate with, our existing platforms, specifically Salesforce and Emplify? And the answer to that is yes. We can.
George P:In fact Okay. We've already integrated with Salesforce, which is great. And we're gonna be in integrating with Emplify, in the near future as well. So that will be another option that, CPGs and clients will have, in terms of issuing these digital, mobile offers and these digital coupons, bulk of the box.
Denise V:That's good news. And you're talking about, like, on the Salesforce side and Amplify, the CRMs for the
George P:That's exactly right.
Denise V:Yep. Okay. And a lot of my colleagues I know have are using those platforms among others, but that's great. Alright. Now, we're winding down, George, sadly.
Denise V:You know, how else might you all be using your capabilities for future products that may be of of interest to our audience?
George P:You know, an area that's really interesting and where I see a a use case, for our digital incentives or or rewards, our our digital coupons is in the AI space and how companies are using AI. So I saw some of the things that, Amplify is doing and and others that are that that have that are deploying AI technology. And, you know, one of the things that they're doing is that they're using AI to look at message boards, to look at consumer postings, and to identify if consumers are posting negatively about the brand or positively about the brand and reporting back to the CPGs and letting them know. So a great application would be deploying AI to identify positive and negative comments and then issuing coupons, digital coupons seamlessly and instantly to consumers who post either positive or negative. So if they've posted something positive, you can send the message that says, hey.
George P:Thank you for your for your post. Here is $5 off your next purchase of x, y, and z. And if they purchase if they've posted something negatively, they could certainly send a message that says, you know, sorry that you've had a bad experience. Don't give up on us yet. Try again.
George P:Here's a free coupon.
Denise V:Full value, maybe. Okay.
George P:A full value coupon to try it. So I think the future holds a lot of of those types of interactions with consumers, and it's the use of AI and and the issuance of these types of offers to consumers, to really keep them within the franchise, keep them within keep them within the fold, and just keep the lightning them every step of the way.
Denise V:Yeah, that's the name of the game.
George P:That's it.
Denise V:Well, this has been great. And, you know, just curious if there was someone out there who wanted to kind of see how this comes over to a consumer, or how this might look, maybe you can get a website for me that we can post in the show notes or if you have one handy now. And then this way, they can just see a sample and, you know, kinda what that journey looks like.
George P:Absolutely. I'll, I'll provide you with a website. Okay. Where those that are listening to this wonderful podcast will have the ability to essentially go to, the site and actually sample what, a what the experience is like, and and I think you'll be blown away by how simple it is
Denise V:Okay.
George P:And how seamless it is for for consumers. The other thing I'll mention is that you don't have to download any apps or anything of that to use BarcodeBox. It's Nice. No barriers.
Denise V:Yeah. That's great. I never have enough memory on my iPhone anyway, so that's always good.
George P:And you're not the only one, Denise, not having enough memory on your phones and and space. So a lot of people suffer from the same.
Denise V:Alright. Well, that's very helpful and, really appreciate your time, George, here on this, Monday evening. Thank you thank you so much.
George P:Denise, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It was fun doing
Denise V:it. If you've learned even a kernel of an idea or was inspired by this episode, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Be sure to share out the hashtag CPGCX because CPGCX really and truly rocks.
Denise V:You have been listening
Denise V:to the My Curious Colleague podcast with Denise. Thank you for your time.