12/2009 – Rudy Dory, Owner;
What is your approach to technology in your stores?
We work hard to deliver a great and unique experience for every customer on every visit. If there is a technology that helps us do that, we’ll take a good look at it.
How does Accelitec | interact fit within that view?
It helps our competitive profile in a couple ways. It gives us a great deal of flexibility to do things differently – the $5 signup credit, Moolah, and automatic rebate are good examples of our ideas in action. None of our competitors can offer anything like the Food-e Flash Card benefits. Beyond that, we can easily create campaigns to appeal to different segments of our customer base, such as wine buyers, people looking for organic products, and so on. We want a platform to deliver relevant benefits that are unique to us over the long-term so our customers will have a reason to visit our store more often for years to come. Competing effectively in this economy means doing more than just delivering a price, and the technology behind the Food-e Flash Card helps us do that.
How do these tools help?
We know our customers very well as a group, but we had no way of accessing data and connecting with them in a way that reflects what is unique about their shopping habits – what they buy, how often they shop, what they are interested in. Accelitec | interact helps us get a handle on this, and makes it easy to deliver the right message to the right part of our audience. We’ve always had great marketing ideas, but until now haven’t had the tools to bring them to life. We think these tools are better than anything any of our larger competitors are offering.
Has the platform helped bring in more customers?
The success of the Food-e Flash program starts with being easy for our customers to understand and for us to operate. It really is unique – who else is putting $5 in store credit on a customer account? – and we have seen a good bump from the word of mouth around town. Getting new customers in the store is crucial, because we know that our store experience is unmatched. Combining this technology with a great store experience puts us in a great position to keep these new customers coming back.
Does Accelitec | interact provide any tactical advantages against your competitors?
Accelitec | interact lets us be more aggressive and responsive to any opportunity or requirement we think is relevant in our local market. We can act daily – hourly – if we want to deliver a special promotion to select customers or to all our members. We like anything that lets us work fast and use our creativity to take the initiative against our competition. Accelitec | interact is the first thing I’ve seen that gives smaller independents like us better marketing resources than the national and box stores.
What are your customers saying about the program?
Our members like the fact that getting on the program is easy, and that it’s a unique program. The concept of putting Moolah on customer accounts is generating good word of mouth – the kind of advertising money can’t buy. We’ve seen nothing like it, and that’s very important for us in a very competitive market.
How would you rank this technology and its ROI to other technologies you have implemented over the years?
I think this is one of the best pieces of technology I have put in my store to achieve increased profitability. We’ve tried a lot of technologies, and many have performed just as advertised (and some haven’t), but this one actually delivers to the bottom line.
Are you meeting your program goals?
We are ahead of schedule for customer signups, with over 5,417 since we launched in mid-December. Our customers really are buying into the Food-e Flash program, and we’re just starting to use some of the neat tools Accelitec | interact provides.
Who is running the program for you?
We are in an exceptionally competitive market, in the middle of the “big boys.” We didn’t have to hire anyone, but when we saw the flexibility of this system, we thought this tool gave us a new way to compete and a way to show our customers our appreciation for their business. And of course to keep them out of these other stores! So we brought someone in to market our concept to the community.