Introduction
Those more eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the addition of a status bar to both the Home Page of this site, as well as the Community Page - bearing the legend ’Affino Automated Customer Ladder - updating in real-time’. You see a sequence of User avatars overlapped by badge icons; if you watch long enough you might witness a real-time update of user activity. In essence, you can assign a points value and follow-on activity for pretty much every type of user activity and interaction on your Affino website. The purpose of the status bar is both to inform and gauge current activity levels, as well as motivate other users into activity such that they themselves might gain those badges. We currently have 42 badges you can attain on Comrz.com - most for good deeds, but we do reserve some for repremands for careless or reckless Social behaviour.
Gaming Methodology - awards and rewards in the scheme of things
For those who are familiar with geo-location activity badge reward sites Foursquare and Gowalla, we bring you the same basic idea, which is as old as wars! Probably the earliest rewards / awards systems were tribal badges (tattoos and painted symbols) awarded for valor and deeds in battle. These evolved into the familiar medals and stripes we see on soldiers today. If you played well for a public school team, you would be awarded your ’Team Colours’ for sporting endeavours - these would decorate your blazer and single you out as a person of accomplishments and sporting prowess. The Boy Scout Movement / Scouts similarly has numerous badges which can be gained for good deeds and specific task completion. This is the essential fundamental incentives mechanic of the Affino Automated Customer Ladder.
Humankind’s fundamental need to be acknowledged and rewarded
Read any book on motivational psyhcology, and you will see that it holds to the same tenets of recognition and reward. All humans have an innate need to be acknowledged by their peers and gain visible rewards for their positive actions. This is the fundamental psychology and driver behind the Affino Automated Customer Ladder.
The Principal of the Customer Ladder
Suspect > Prospect > Customer > Regular > Advocate
The Customer Ladder is a marketing terminology / device for the process of advancing a cusomer from potential to actual, onto repeat purchase and long term brand-loyalty and brand advocacy. It is every company’s secret mission to transition customers along the Customer Ladder to the highest echelongs of Evangelism and Advocacy. The Customer Ladder is often no more than an academic and analytical term, but at Comrz, we have turned it into a dynamic methodology and an actual live, automated customer engagement system.
The Affino Automated Customer Ladder
We would really have liked to call it the ’Customer Escalator’ as this is more indicative of the automation in what it does; however, no one would have any frame of reference for our new terminology, and so we are compelled to use existing terms, and apply them to what we do.
The Social Commerce System - Affino, is a complete customer engagement platform which combines all essential community, interactive and transactional capabilities in one seamless single system. Everything happens in and through Affino, and thus we can track and monitor everything that goes on. ONLY Affino has the capabilities to tie together so many different types of technologies and activities, for only Affino has this magnitude of integrated and inter-related functionality and feature set. As we see in the Affino Automated Customer Ladder components below, there are currently 30 different Conversion Event Trigger Types, each of which can be assigned to dozens of different activities and limits and thresholds. As customer earn and accrue badges, they also earn and accrue points accumulatively, as well as individual rewards for different stages of achievement. Current rewards can include further points, assignment to new Security Group/s and additional privileges such as enhanced access rights, coupons and incremental discounts. We have even further and more far reaching plans as you can read below.
Affino Automated Customer Ladder Components
Firstly, to be eligible for this functionality, you must have bought into the complete Marketplace suite, and have upgraded to Affino Version 6. If you are, and have done, then the following components are what you are eligible for:
- Customer Ladder Profile - The mechanic by which you enable an Automated Customer Ladder on a particular Site / Zone
- Conversion Event - The essential Conversion Event Triggers (30 + 1 x Manual Selection)
- Commenting
- Content Subscriptions
- Downloads
- Facebook / Twitter Connection Added
- Form Entry (Dynamic Form)
- Forum Answer
- Forum Post
- Friend Invite
- Friend Registered from Invite
- Item added to a Wishlist
- Joining a Group
- Logging In
- Manual Assign (for assigning Qualitative Badges)
- Media Added to a Channel
- Message Board Post
- My Messages Despatches
- Newsletter Signup
- Purchase
- Registration
- Site Search
- Specific Channel Viewed
- Specific Media Viewed
- Specific Section Viewed
- Specific Standard Item Viewed
- Standard Content Added to a Channel
- Status Update
- Taking a Test
- Total Content Views
- Total Points
- Updating Profile
- eCard
- Customer Ladder Analysis - Unique, dynamic analysis screen, as represented in part in above visual
- Badges Highlights - On Public Profile and My Information Screens
- Customer Ladder Badges Design Element - As seen on ’My Home’ page
- Customer Ladder Badge Highlights Design Element - As seen on the Home Page and Community Page of this site
What we’re currently working on
We’re of course adding some recent customer feature requests, as well as adding the main analytics elements to the pop-up Analytics Dashboard. We have some further additions to do to the main Customer Ladder Analytics, including a Funnel Analysis Chart. Keep subscribed to our Blogs for further updates.
What is Yet to Come
Even though the Affino Automated Customer Ladder is already fully formed and fully functional as you can see on this very website, we still have lots more plans for it:
- Cash Redeemable Points - In a similar way to Nectar Points, Airmiles and any dozens of loyalty cards, the ability to convert points into actual Cash Value
- Vouchers - The ability to earn and transact points converted Vouchers and even gift vouchers to other users
- Affiliate Points - We already have a system of points for ’Friend Registered from Invite’ we will enhance this with more cash-value redeemable rewards also
