What do all of you do when a customer calls the store and places an order with a bogo coupon, but shows up without it.
I ask them for the coupon - 90% of the time they will pull it out of their pocket (hoping that no one was going to ask them for it). For the people that don’t have it, I try and gauge how they say it, you can usually tell if they really forgot it, or just never had it. I’ll then check their order history and see if they “used” one on their last order. If they did, then I tell them I need the coupon. If they did not, then I just tell them “ok, I’ll do it without the coupon but please throw it away when you get home”. Then I’ll make a note on their customer record that they showed up without the coupon.
We did what Registered Guest did and gave them the benefit of the doubt. Then we began to see such misuse with it we finally decided that we didn’t want to advertise in the coupon book that it came in (Entertainment coupons). We actually had one customer who was using it constantly and finally asked them why they had so many coupons and they told us that they sold the books, but took our coupon out of the book before they gave the book to the buyer.
We also found out that the Entertainment Book company was putting unlimited coupons on the internet and in other books that we had no knowledge of…we just quit advertising with them and very glad that we did. It’s really hard to monitor the usage when you’re delivering and the drivers don’t try and collect the coupons when they’re not handed to them at the door.
We tell people what their total is before the coupon and tell them on the phone that they need to bring in the coupon as we take the discount off at the register. No coupon no discount. Seems to work for us I haven’t gotten any complaints as they know they need to bring in the coupon to get the discount.
Ben most folks that have complaints just remain silent and go elsewhere next time…Not sure it is worth “pissing” off a clients over what amount to a small amount versus the lifetime value of a client…
I do agree with you, and I should clarify that there are exceptions, but to be honest 99% of the people bring in their coupon since we tell them they need to bring it in up front.
I have been battling the same problem for years - here are some of my “tricks”.
Im not sure if you have delivery, but make the BOGO’s “carryout only”. That way you dont have your driver waiting 10 minutes on someones front step while the customer searches the house for the coupon that they may or may not have.
I like the way Ben handles that, but I am a little more sneaky about it. When the customer calls in their order and mentions they have a BOGO, I take their order, and tell them “Thank you. We will have that ready for you to pick up in XX minutes”. I dont give a total. I then just adjust the ticket when they arrive. If they happen to ask the total when they place their order (this happens about 10% of the time), I tell them “With that coupon, your total is $XX.XX”. I feel that this way you arent accusing them of not having the coupon, yet stating what their total is WITH the coupon.
Good luck!