NOT JUST A BULGE IN YOUR POCKET
Standard Bank and Momentum step up to the plate and deliver true relief to customers when they really need it, writes Yolisa Mkele
Let’s do a little experiment. Pull out a couple of your loyalty cards and tally up how much value they’ve actually added to your life. How much did it cost to accumulate enough points to reach platinum status? How unnecessarily portly is your wallet all so that you can respond “yes” when the person behind the till says “do you have a xxxx card?”
The unspoken truth about loyalty cards and the programmes they represent is that a lot of them are more of a cumbersome inconvenience than the plastic they’re printed on. That, however, is not true of all of them. There are some whose aim seems to be to provide real value to their customers. Loyalty schemes that instead of ensnaring people in a morass of jargon and points technicalities are actually just designed to reward those who sign up.
Not all of them are the devil, though. If you get the right array of benefits, like you do with Standard Bank’s UCount and Momentum’s Multiply loyalty programmes, everything can be peachy keen.
One of the things that makes loyalty cards as comfortable as an unreachable itch is the sign-up process. Oftentimes you need to use extra cards, activation codes and a vial of blood with each transaction, all so you can get 38 cents back on your last purchase. Both Standard Bank and Momentum have deliciously easy sign-up procedures and once done, they only really require a card to use.
It’s rare that large corporations take an interest in actually providing value to our lives. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they’re far more interested in being the stereotypical business villains that we see in movies and documentaries.
Standard Bank UCount and Momentum Multiply are different.
Instead of just throwing a bunch of meaningless “rewards” at its customer base, they seem genuinely interested in providing benefits that can be used to alleviate the increasing economic stress we all seem to be finding ourselves under these days —all while being convenient.
Wow, we may just have to start adjusting some of our stereotypes about banks.