Lecy rewards the visit, not the amount spent: one visit, one point, whatever the basket. It is a design choice, and it is the one the research and customers confirm. In February 2016, Starbucks replaced its star per visit with two stars per dollar, raising the reward from 12 to 125 stars; the customer of a $2 coffee went from 12 to about 30 visits for the same reward, and the reaction, measured on social media, was overwhelmingly negative (Forbes, February 2016). Two reference studies explain why: customers speed up their visits as they approach the threshold (Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng, 2006), and a goal whose progress is visible is reached twice as often (Nunes and Drèze, 2006). This article explains why "thank you for coming back" is fairer and more effective than "you spent X, here is Y", which shops it is the right choice for, and how the visit remains a reliable measure without the team checking anything.
What Starbucks learned in 2016
Until 2016, Starbucks Rewards gave one star per visit, and twelve stars earned a drink. In February 2016, the brand announced the move to two stars per dollar spent, with a reward at 125 stars. The maths is simple: the customer of a $2 coffee, who got their reward in twelve visits, now needed about thirty. The logic was financially rational, it favoured big baskets. Customers reacted differently: a continuous stream of almost entirely negative messages on social media, and regulars explaining that they no longer felt valued (Forbes, "Yet Another Starbucks Loyalty Miscue?", 23 February 2016). The lesson is not that Starbucks got its margins wrong. It is that the loyal customer does not experience themselves as an amount.
What the research says about counting visits
In 2006, three researchers from Columbia and Chicago tracked café loyalty cards, the ones where every purchase is worth a stamp. The result: customers buy more and more often as they get closer to the reward, and those who speed up the most are also those who pick up a new card fastest after getting it (Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng, "The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected", Journal of Marketing Research, 2006). That mechanism only works if the customer sees where they are and every visit counts the same: it is exactly what the Lecy page shows after every tap, the number of visits left before the reward. A scale in euros blurs that count: the customer no longer knows how many visits are left, and the effect disappears.
The visible threshold doubles completed cards
The same year, a second study tested two cards at a car wash: an 8-box card, and a 10-box card with 2 boxes already stamped. Same effort in both cases, eight washes. The second was completed by 34% of customers, the first by 19% (Nunes and Drèze, "The Endowed Progress Effect", Journal of Consumer Research, 2006). What customers reward is progress they can see. A per-visit programme, with a clear threshold and a counter, is the most direct form of that progress; a per-amount programme hides it behind a calculation.
"Thank you for coming back" versus "you spent X"
A per-visit programme tells the customer: you came back, thank you. A per-amount programme tells them: you spent this much, here is what you are owed. The first recognises a relationship; the second settles a transaction. For a local shop, where loyalty is made of regular visits and small baskets, the first is the only one that resembles what the shopkeeper would do themselves if they kept count in their head. And it is the one that pays: Reichheld and Sasser showed as early as 1990 that a service business can nearly double its profits by retaining just 5% more customers (Harvard Business Review). It is visits that are retained, not bills.
Why it is also what makes Lecy simple
To reward the amount, you have to know it, so read the till, so integrate the programme with the till software. It is that integration that makes other solutions slow to deploy, fragile and different from one shop to the next. By rewarding the visit, Lecy has nothing to read: a tag at the till is enough, in one shop or a hundred. Choosing the visit is not a technical limit dressed up; it is the decision that makes deployment in one gesture possible.
A reliable measure, without team checks
One point per visit assumes the visit is real, and it is, without anyone checking. First, the tag is at the till, next to the payment terminal: to hold up a phone to it, you have to stand where you pay, in front of the team. Then, a minimum delay separates two points, three hours by default: scanning in a loop gives nothing. Finally, the reward only comes at the threshold, ten visits for example: a "stolen" point is worth a tenth of a coffee, and you have to come back nine times to collect it. Nobody builds a fraud on a tenth of a coffee while exposing themselves at the till. None of this requires a team check, and that is what matters: checking is what kills simplicity. Compare with the stamp card, where the friendly stamp is the rule and where nobody measures anything.
Where the visit fits, and where it does not
In a supermarket, a basket ranges from €1 to €300: one point per visit makes no sense, and Lecy is not suited to it. In a coffee shop, at a barber's, in a bakery, a gym or a wine shop, the basket is fairly steady from one visit to the next: the point per visit measures exactly what the shopkeeper wants to reward, the return. The rule fits in one sentence: wherever the stamp card worked, Lecy is perfect, because it does the same thing, without the card, without the stamp, and without the cheating.
The €25 and €150 salon
A hair salon takes €25 for a men's cut and €150 for a technical package. Is one point per visit fair to the one who spends €150? Ask the question differently: who is the loyal customer, the one who comes every three weeks for €25, or the one who comes twice a year for €150? The first brings in more over the year, and it is the one a per-visit programme recognises. The second is not short-changed: the salon adjusts its threshold, or gives them a manual point for an exceptional service. And if a shop really wants to reward the amount, Lecy is not its tool, and we say so rather than configure a programme that will not hold.
Frequently asked questions
Can visit and amount be mixed?
No, and we advise against it: it is what makes programmes unreadable for the customer, and what breaks the progress effect measured by the research. One visit, one point, a clear threshold. For an event, the manual point exists.
And "buy 10, get the 11th free"?
It translates as is: ten visits, one reward. In a bakery, ten visits to the till are ten purchases.
Which threshold to choose?
The one your regular customers reach in a few weeks: close enough for progress to be visible, far enough for the reward to be earned. The counter shown after every tap does the rest.
Sources: Forbes, Roger Dooley, "Yet Another Starbucks Loyalty Miscue?", 23 February 2016; Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng, Journal of Marketing Research, 2006; Nunes and Drèze, Journal of Consumer Research, 2006; Reichheld and Sasser, "Zero Defections", Harvard Business Review, 1990. Read next: your loyalty budget, in real time.