I came across a Customer Engagement Management program on Britannia bread recently. The program was called Morning Jackpot and it was run jointly between India’s leading bread and biscuit manufacturer Britannia and Payment Service Provider PayTM.
Like in any other digital CEM program, each pack of the product – Britannia Healthy Slice and Britannia 100% Whole bread, in this case – had a code. By redeeming the code, the customer would get a cashback of INR 10 (US$ 0.15) credited to the their PayTM wallet.
While the value of the reward was too small to trigger action, the term “jackpot” in the program’s name suggested that that it was a sweepstake, with some big gift awaiting the winner.
But it was not. There was no sweepstake or raffle or lucky dip or anything of that sort. Brittania just happened to call INR 10 “jackpot”. Well, INR 10 is not a jackpot for anybody in India. Maybe the company is living in the old world where people waited in lines for bread rather than the modern world where bread lines wait for people, or it was being deliberately misleading with the choice of words for its CEM program. Either way, this was Strike One against the program.
From there, the program went downhill rapidly.
I then proceeded to the next step of a digital CEM program, namely, submit the code to the brand. The coupon asked customers to visit www.paytm.com and enter the code there.
Now, that’s the homepage of India’s largest digital wallet company PayTM. As you can see on the right, it features payments, shopping, tickets, games and a myriad of other things. I could not find any mention of Britannia Morning Jackpot – or of any other CEM program – on this digital jungle.
Strike Two.
In my past experience with brands running joint CEM programs with PayTM, the PSP had a microsite for every third party brand e.g. www.paytm.com/nescafe. But, in this case, I could not find any microsite for Britannia Morning Jackpot.
I then visited www.paytm.com/offer/britannia-help, the page mentioned in the T&Cs of the program.
I still could not find any place to enter the code.
But this page did give instructions on how to redeem the code:
- Go to the Paytm app or website
- Go to the Add money section of the app
- Click on “Have a promo code?” and enter your unique code
- Rs.10 Cashback will be credited in your account within 24 hours.
When I went to the Add Money section. PayTM had defaulted the amount to be added to INR 1000. Ever since I lost my trust in PayTM, I use the e-wallet sparingly. I had no intention of adding any amount to my wallet, let alone INR 1000. I deleted the amount but found the Promo Code button dimmed. There was no way I was going to add INR 1000 to my PayTM wallet just to claim Britannia’s cashback of INR 10.
Strike Three.
I was about to quit at that point but I thought I’ll give it one last chance. I entered a token amount of INR 10 in the amount to be added field. The Promo Code button became visible. I clicked it and completed the entry of the Britannia Morning Jackpot code. This step was conveniently missing from the aforementioned redemption instructions given on PayTM’s website.
After three strikes, Britannia Morning Jackpot was already out. I didn’t bother to check whether the INR 10 cashback was credited to my PayTM account after 24 hours.
Even assuming it was, I thought this was too much effort for a measly gift of INR 10.
I also felt that brute force digitalization attempts like Britannia Morning Jackpot reinforce the notion in some people’s minds that digital is more difficult than paper.
When it comes to Aadhaar-linkage, PayTM requires physical visit, banks don't. Many people find PayTM's customer journey more frictionless than banks'. Further proof that a well thought-out omnichannel approach can deliver better CX than brute-force digitalization of everything.
— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) March 31, 2018
On a side note, here’s one suggestion for PayTM to increase the conversion rate of its joint CEM programs with third party brands:
How to Increase Conversion Rate of CEM Programs
Have a separate page on the website for entry of codes for all third party CEM programs. Display the logos of the third party brands on this page e.g. Britannia, Nestle. Once the customer clicks the respective logo, display a field on which they should enter the code of the respective CEM program and hit the submit button. There should be nothing else on this page to distract the customer.
This measure will improve the UX of the redemption journey and increase the redemption rate of coupons. It might even turn the upside-down world of couponing back up so that digital becomes easier than paper.
A side benefit would be that this separate page would generate tremendous visibility for third party brands. While I don’t have the numbers, I can bet that PayTM attracts more traffic to its website than any of these individual brands running joint CEM programs with PayTM do to their respective websites. If PayTM is as smart as I think it is, it can use this benefit to negotiate better terms for itself while signing up joint CEM program with third party brands.