Introduction

Every company recognizes that not only by providing a good service or improving the quality of a product helps to increase profits but, to a large extent, the loyalty of its customers is what ensures success and improves profits in a high percentage. That's why many companies are dedicated to rewarding the loyalty of their customers based on points redeemable. However, the constant changes in the market and technology have created an environment where customers do not keep track of the accumulated points and forget to redeem their rewards. In this publication qiibee is presented as an excellent solution for the loyalty schemes of the companies, both for their brands and for consumers.

Customer Loyalty

Before knowing the advantages of qiibee, it is necessary to define what customer loyalty means. It can be said that when a consumer (a costumer) chooses to use a service or buy a product from a particular brand or company instead of using other companies that offer the same service or product.

Customer loyalty can define the success or failure of a company. That's why all companies have a consumer experience management department. Where it has been determined that customer loyalty is the result of emotional experience, physical satisfaction and the perceived value of an experience, which includes the product or services.

Retaining customers costs less than acquiring new customers. Customer loyalty guarantees more sales, reduces the cost of marketing and the cost of consumer education, therefore they become promoters of the organization.

To ensure customer loyalty, many companies make use of point-based programs or schemes to reward customer purchases and keep them motivated to trust their favorite brand.

Why is Customer Loyalty important?

Source

Up to here, everything is excellent. However, to keep customer loyalty motivated, it is not enough to offer a good service, or to maintain the high standards of a brand. Companies must invest in the alliance with customers, to keep the brand in their minds.

Customer loyalty: A relationship, not just a scheme

The traditional customer loyalty scheme must reinvent itself, according to The Deloitte Consumer Review, 1 in 2 consumers, uses the loyalty scheme; 42% of users indicate that they want more than points to buy products from a specific brand.

Added to that, more than 50% of consumers do not always exchange all their points, some because they forget it or because they lose their points cards

Sir Terry Leahy once said: "The true source of loyalty is to create benefits for people ... Sometimes people concentrate too much on devices like a loyalty card."

This shows that loyalty schemes must evolve together with the development of new information technologies and social networks, changing the expectations of consumers

Ensuring customer loyalty is important. Loyalty must be more than just accumulating points. Customer loyalty is often tied to routine, so any innovation that simplifies a routine while improving the customer experience is a reward in itself.

In the digital era in which we live, it is important that loyalty schemes give consumers some control over the selection of reward programs and the level of interaction they have with the brand.

The latest research shows that consumers want to be recognized and rewarded as individuals, hoarders of anonymous points. Consumers want to be rewarded based on their personal tastes and expect brands to be more relevant in the way they interact with them.

The innovation of the loyalty program is usually risky and expensive. However, the profit obtained is invaluable, since as mentioned above, loyalty becomes the brand's own promoter.

According to research by The Deloitte Consumer Review, only about half of consumers always exchange all their points and take advantage of all offers; these pending redemption costs in a company's balance sheet can be difficult to manage. The figure is even lower among the group of younger age.

People are still interested in loyalty programs, but their expectations have changed, especially among young people, who represent the new generation of clients. It is necessary to develop mobile applications that meet the expectations of the new generations, to achieve the loyalty of future customers.
 

qiibee - Loyalty on the blockchain

qiibee is revolutionizing the loyalty market by offering a blockchain-based loyalty ecosystem, on which every brand can build its very own loyalty application. This way, we are encouraging brands to build their programs on the same foundation, thereby making it possible for brands as well as customers to engage with one another across the ecosystem.

Ecosystem Overview

qiibee allows companies to develop their own loyalty program on the blockchain, provide a development kit and a platform based on the Ethereum blockchain. Where they can create their own cryptocurrencies (tokens), which can be exchanged by customers in other loyalty schemes by other brands working on the qiibee ecosystem. In this way, users associated with an airline loyalty program can use their tokens to pay for their stay in a hotel that is within the qiibee system.

In addition to this, the development kit will allow full control over the interface and the customers associated with the brand loyalty program (You will learn more about this a little later).

The qiibee ecosystem provides an app that will offer consumers a platform to manage all the loyalty schemes in which they are registered, in addition to exchanging or selling the tokens obtained as a reward for the same schemes (You will learn more about this a little later).

Offering brands and customers the possibility of interacting easily with Blockchain technology, directly and indirectly, without the need for costly integration for both companies and customers.

qiibee focuses on two perspectives: the brand and the customers.

Brand perspective

1 Plug & Play. Companies can create their own loyalty scheme and can convert the budget assigned to the program into tokens. qiibee will provide the necessary tools to create the tokens of the brand, in addition to this it will provide the tools for the development of the applications for the management of the loyalty schemes, allowing the company to have total control over the tokens and the way in which they will be rewarded and redeemed.

2 Engaged customers. The fact that the tokens can be exchanged in terms of real money, also positively affects the client's participation, this encourages them to keep them for a longer period. In addition, a brand can access a large community of existing customers in the qiibee ecosystem.

3 Remove liability. Since the tokens to be shared are exchangeable and have a "real" value, the tokens will not be counted as passive income.

4 Remove cost and risk. The development of loyalty programs in the platform will have low cost, in addition to this; the platform will improve the efficiency of the schemes by offering customers whose characteristics are consistent with the same programs. The risks of data theft are minimized, as each customer is responsible for their own information and their own wallet.

Customer perspective

1 Access them all. The qiibee ecosystem will allow consumers to gather all their tokens from different brands in one place.

2 Trade them all. The tokens can be exchanged between the consumers registered in the ecosystem and also participate in the exchange offers of the different brands.

3 Earn real value. All the tokens of the different brands registered in the ecosystem are linked to the qiibee token (QBX). In this way, they ensure a "real" value to all of them. In this way, it will offer the possibility of selling loyalty tokens for other cryptocurrencies or for real money.

4 Enjoy security. Being built under the blockchain technology, it will allow the transparency of transactions and the security of information.

Brand’s Loyalty program in qiibee

Brand loyalty schemes can be managed and developed in the qiibee ecosystem in two ways: by creating reward schemes and redemption schemes

Reward

Redemption

Promotions

Brands can boost their loyalty schemes by promoting them through the consumers' app. In this way they can reach new customers. Also, there are indirect promotions, which are made through the same clients, when they send loyalty tokens to friends or relatives, which increases the scope of the schemes.

Developer kit

The development kit is divided into three parts: the access interface, the connection API (which allows the connection between the app and the platform) and the tutorials (books, standards and support center). In addition to this, the kit is open source, which allows its constant evolution over time.

This set of tools allows companies and developers to create customized applications without having to think about the integration of the blockchain and the tokens.

You can find about the qiibee api at https://api.qiibee.com.

qiibee app

Overview of loyalty tokens

The qiibee app gathers all the tokens in a single wallet. Allowing all loyalty schemes connected to the platform to redeem their tokens in one place.

Eco-system information

Consumers will be able to navigate between the different loyalty schemes offered by the qiibee ecosystem, allowing them to compare programs and brands in this way.

Why blockchain technology

The qiibee ecosystem is developed on the Ethereum blockchain, since it represents the best solution over other decentralized platforms. The blockchain provides security, since it is a distributed database, incapable of being edited or deleted and its decentralized character eliminates the problems that the risks of failures of a central platform could present. Also, the transactions made in the blockchain are transparent. Another advantage of the blockchain is the cryptocurrencies, this allows the rewards and redemptions to have a real monetary value.

Current blockchain infrastructure

qiibee’s loyalty platform is currently a hybrid architecture where two chains coexist: The public Ethereum blockchain and qiibee’s own private blockchain, also based on Ethereum. The main reason for having this type of architecture are the current limitations of Ethereum. This blockchain not yet scalable. According to Coindesk, Ethereum can currently process around 15 transactions per second, while VISA does 65,000 per second.

We have designed a hybrid architecture, where we combine the public Ethereum chain with our own private chain based on Ethereum. By owning a private blockchain, we can provide and ensure high speed transactions and thereby achieve qiibee’s main objective of exchanges between loyalty tokens at high speed and almost zero costs.

The magic behind stage

The qiibee ecosystem has its own token called QBX, which is the one that allows transactions in the Ethereum blockchain, and is responsible for supporting the token created by the brands.

As you can see in the following image, when a brand creates a loyalty scheme, it must create a token (indicating its name, its symbol and its value in QBX) through the qiibee API. The API is responsible for generating the smart contract, which will freeze the QBX tokens within the Ethereum blockchain. In addition to this, it will create the brand tokens within the private qiibee blockchain. All these transactions will be reported back to the brand through the qiibee API

Brand creates loyalty tokens

All the smart contracts that have to do with the loyalty platform are arrange in the qiibee private chain. Each loyalty token is registered in this chain, along with their transactions. As you can see in the following images

* Brand rewards customer with loyalty tokens *

* Customer redeems his loyalty tokens *

* Customer exchanges loyalty token X for loyalty token Y *

However, when a customer decides to change their loyalty token for QBX tokens, then both blockchains are involved. This generate a fee from the Ethereum blockchain, which must be canceled by the customer. But, the qiibee platform has designed an alternative for these cases; letting the client choose to pay for each transaction or wait for a series of transactions to be grouped to execute them all together, paying this way a single fee. As you can see in the following images

* Customer exchanges loyalty tokens for QBX *

The team

Conclusion

qiibee represents the perfect solution for the loyalty schemes of companies, since it allows the use of a decentralized platform based on the blockchain, ensuring the transparency of indelible transactions and security. Presenting an ecosystem where points are no longer used to ensure loyalty programs but cryptocurrencies with "real" value are used, which can also be exchanged for other services or products offered by different companies that are part of the qiibee platform. They can even be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or for real money or fiat. qiibee creates a wallet for customers, where they can store all the tokens created by the different brands associated with the platform and thus keep a record of the rewards obtained from the loyalty schemes of the companies. This platform is in constant evolution backed by a highly qualified team.

Annexes

Product roadmap

Strategic Partnerships & Advisors

Gabriele Giancola, Co-Founder & CEO at Qiibee - Presentation at d10e Davos