Membership Cards

These days any retail outlet that you visit, is eager to dole-out a 'membership-card'. That membership card shall accumulate points when you shop and shall mean some rewards and so on... Knowing very well that in this era of competition and fickle consumer-loyalty, these cards are a way to 'engage' with the customer and ensure repeat footfalls, I have also been gladly taking these cards as they were offering it to me free of cost and there was no harm in accumulating some points, if I decided to shop in that store the next time around.

However one of the hyper-marts that I visited not so long back offered me a similar membership card but wanted to charge me Rs. 200/- for the same. I politely refused and asked the salesperson, that if they are so eager to make me a member-customer, why they should expect me to pay for the same. The sales guy made an unsuccessful attempt to explain it to me that this is only one time payment and then I stand to gain etc. etc. but I did not budge and I am safely assuming many others (customers) did not budge either. For during my recent visit to the same mart (sans the membership card) another sales guy offered me the same card but this time the payment that I was supposed to make was half of what they had asked me the first time around. This time too I politely tuned down the request.

So What?

I read lessons in engagement from these experiences:

1. Engagement cannot happen on conditional terms (especially those that are unilaterally laid-down like asking to pay for the membership card). It has to happen more on equal terms.


2. Engagement onus lies first on the organization but choice (to engage or not) lies with both organization as well as the stakeholder (that can be customer, could be an employee).


3. Token engagements or symbolic engagements are contributory but cannot be guarantee of engagement alone. (Remember I re-visited the hyper-mart even without a membership card). Engagement has to build on solid 'offerings' and not only on symbolic chanting.


4. Engagement is not a 'transactional' process. Transactional approach kills engagement.