I hate to see things go to waste.

Standing in line at the local donut shop (I think it was the one that “runs” America) the person in front of me dropped a handful of change on the floor. In acknowledgement of the coins clanging on ceramic tile, she grimaced and her feigned indecision turned to disgust as she pivoted on one heel and hit the door.

Slightly self-conscious, I reclaimed the coinage left in her wake and shook my head. At that very moment, I bet I was the only one in the store thinking about loyalty program breakage!

You see, I had misplaced my $50 certificate issued to me through my participation in The Men’s Wearhouse Perfect Fit loyalty program. It had been lost long enough that I suspected it was expired. My pain was magnified when I arrived to my office, checked email, and read that Perfect Fit members were being offered $25 off any purchase over the next 4 days. At that point I had to swallow my pride and visit the website to see if the cert was showing in my account and if it was still valid.

No one is perfect, and the Perfect Fit website evidences several flaws. I gave up trying to locate basic information and called the toll free number to learn the fate of my certificate.

To my surprise, the call center representative wasted little time in acknowledging that I had been issued the certificate and that it was still usable. “Sir, it is expired, but our Managers normally honor them for their good customers”. I almost dropped the phone. Here was a company whose default response was to “honor their best customers” rather than reciting program rules.

Within the next few days I was in the store to reload on a few no-wrinkle dress shirts. The manager helped me make a selection and was cheery in applying my $75 of store credits against the purchase. To test the Manager’s response against that of the call center, I had to ask if certificates had expiration dates.

“Yea, they do expire, but I never want to turn away business from our better customers”. The response came without hesitation. It was not practiced. It was genuine.

I’ve never thought of a “Surprise and Delight” promotion as consisting of liberal interpretation of program rules, but this experience was enough to put Perfect Fit on my favorites list of Retail Loyalty programs.

Some CFO’s might cringe while reading this. I can hear them moaning “Rules are rules and breakage is how we recover part of our investment in these fluffy loyalty programs.” Believe me, Mr. CFO, you may have given up some breakage, but you reinforced a relationship with a customer who will return and spend more in the future.

A successful Customer Strategy is executed with long term business interests in mind. Nothing was “wasted” in this encounter and I left the store feeling like The Men’s Wearhouse and I were a Perfect Fit.    >>> Bill Hanifin