Smile: Loyalty Rewards Program

Final Update: I have given them one star, because even though they didnt know I was leaving they responded quicker. It seems though there were so many people I had to deal with to get a good answer. It was much better when the owner was assisting and even called me after my review. After I was customer he never responded to me every again; AND that alone is worth taking away oooooo about all the stars. So if you are looking for just an online option there are other better loyalty programs out there; this was is a bit pricey as mentioned by other reviewers.

Another Update: So I have been emailing them for the past week with 0 responses from Eli or Steve. 0. How do you expect to run a company successfully if you dont even fulfill your end of the bargain. You said by the end of August will be the feature of having multiple coupons (for different collections) so the customers dont get confused. Guess what....NOPE. Now im hearing later in Sept. I have customers pissed because my old loyalty system I offered them coupons for a certain collection at a lower rate. I cant do this now because the names are the same. Extremely agitated at this company. 1 star!

Update: Ok so here I AM AGAIN, AGAIN with the same problem. I speak to an Eli and i keep being told that things are being worked on. How do you expect someone to go to enterprise if you dont do anything for the people even on the middle plan? I HAVE been asking TO CHANGE THE NAME of the coupons that have the same type style $10 off for X amount of points says the same thing for certain collections with $10 off. Its misleading to customers. I AM VERY upset with this application. Something so simple ive been asking for, and they arrent doing anything about it. NOTHING. The only reason why I am giving them a second star and third star is because they app is good if you want very very very very basic coupons. Let me know that Steve spoke to me on the phone and cleared it up this is officially being worked on.

Update: So here we are again, first off let me say they didnt fix the coupon issue; and its been several days. I ported over from SLOYALTY so when they issued points they did online and in store but people could only use it online. So there were people getting coupons they already used in store, this isnt ST fault its mine for not checking. However, I will say this. THEY need to make a back end where it lists the people not with just 10 entries and have to go thru pages. Should be sortable and more options to see on the screen. Also why is the coupon NAME still not fixed? This could be so easily fixed.

Another issue is I wanted to remove AppCard and go full blown with ST but I cant because even though it says custom reward system you cannot do multiple locations, so I cant remove my point system for in store. Shame too cause they would be getting 400 a month from me. Also another issue I have is with the COUPON names, didnt I mention this already? Such a huge big deal. Also the next issue we have is that if THEY ISSUE the coupon they should be able to set an X amount of time before issuing another. People can take advantage of the system by doing this over and over. I mean you earned it, you earned it right? You shouldnt be able to do 10 orders back to back with coupons. Set a time limit, x amount of coupons before X amount of day. Once the coupon name gets fixed ill fix thsi rating

Update: Ok so only one issue; they added smart collections but when you create a coupon that has same name then it shows as the other coupons. This is the only gripe I have with the coupon names. Be cool if they added DAILY options of sharing but the REVIEWS part is really really cool.

Ok so this is going to be a pretty through review. First off I am coming from SLoyalty for a multitude of reasons. The biggest reason is sloyalty although cheap is NOT an option if you have a POS. People will double dip and SLoyalty instead of fixing it chose to tell me ohwell or goodbye in so many words.

So here we go, Sweet Tooth has a good amount of configurations. A lot of sharing features, needs to add Pinterest and tumblr, and the sharing of the tweet shouldnt be a one time thing. Should be every 3 days or something. I get the follow being a one time thing just not the sharing part.

A huge one star take away is the option of CSS on the actual pop up AND the fact it doesnt show the points people have in the tab. The tab is very configurable if you have some CSS knowledge. Love that. I do NOT like that you cant change any verbage or the color of some of the CSS on the backend via stylesheets. I can ONLY use the fonts they choose for the pop up. Not a bad deal but it could be improved. Also another improvement is I should be able to select smart collections. Silly NOT to have this.

Customer support is FAST. Very. I am only going to use it for online but for both options its great.

The app seems fairly easy to use but I noticed that rewarding someone for "sharing" on social media is pointless. It only requires them to click on the "share to facebook" or whatever and does not actually require the person to share. Its a way to rack up false points.

Too Expensive, they charging 60 USD for nothing even they are not allowing to add points automiatcally, will be canceling their subscription...

The loyalty and referral programs are great, and their support is fantastic! Mackenzie was really prompt in answering all our queries. EDIT: 2022-01-14
After using Smile for a few months, I've reduced our ratings to 2 stars. Two of our biggest complaints are: 1. Terrible UX for discount code redemption: The user "applies" a discount code on the cart page via the Smile nudge, but there is no user visible feedback whatsoever that the code has been applied. About 75% of our customers that create discount codes don't actually end up redeeming them because of this, and we think our conversion rates have actually *reduced*. Our tech team spent significant amount of time trying to fix this on our end, but because Smile runs within an "iframe" there is absolutely nothing you can do. Be prepared for customer complaints that their points redemption isn't working. 2. Mediocre functionality to handle customer refund abuse: A customer can place an order, redeem their earned points and then return their original order. Effectively, they've gotten "free" points. There's nothing you can do to address this, other than manually inspect the points dashboard in Smile and address these cases. Not at all feasible if you deal with a large quantity of orders and operate on thin margins. There are easy tech solutions to this (e.g. Smile could let us delay awarding points by x days), but Smile doesn't support them. Unfortunately we can't really disable the program once we've launched it without aggravating our loyal customers. So we're stuck dealing with these issues while we look for an alternate program to migrate to. Regardless of the app issues, their support team is stellar in their responsiveness.

Does not integrate well with POS and other channels like ebay. Can't merge accounts or delete them either. I have some customers that have as many as 7 different entries as customers all with accumulated points because they used a different method of payment. It works fine with the online store but then I'll get people messaging me on ebay saying they received an email about points, signed up and the points aren't there...because they now have two customer profiles in the system. One as a member and one as a guest and the guest account has the points. I thought by adding them as a customer at check out in store on my POS that the points would be awarded to them but nope I have to manually adjust their points. Like I said it works fine if using online store only but if you have multiple channels, good luck because it's a flawed system.

If your focusing on your SEO this app has many Javascript issues. With a new site Google page insights was giving me a 38 score. With smile.io being the major contributor. I reach out to support to let them know of the details of the Google issues and the app issues Google was able to provide detailed information about and they immediately brushed it off saying it was not them and instead other apps. I did a support video, recorded it in there help chat with an agent to show them what the code issues where on the mobile and desktop analysis. They knew and didnt care and or denied it was them, despite proof. So I deleted smile.io and my mobile speed score went from 39 to 75 instantly! Load spead it one of the number one areas Google looks at to rank your site high in Google searches and improve users from clicking away. With smile my full load time was 10sec after deleting it it went to 3.5sec. Sad to have deleted it but it was the best for my business to rank on google and measurable improve customer experience. Run your page insights before and after and you'll see the load time drop. Even with disabling the button on mobile. Hope they will finally address there code performance issues, this is a much have for shop owner.

This app could be great with a few modifications.

1. The launcher icon is obtrusive and is on every screen of every page. There needs to be an option to choose what pages it displays on and for how long or have the "X" icon that will let customers dismiss it so its no longer on the screen.
2. There needs top be a way to disable the launcher button, but still allow customers to sign up and view/redeem rewards using a link or web address instead. It needs a link that can be set to a landing page instead of the launcher widget.
3. If the widget is set to the right side of the screen, my customers can't checkout because the launcher widget stays on top blocking the checkout button.

Love the concept of the app, but fairly frustrated with the customer support and troubleshooting thus far.

Pros: The Concept & Easy to set up.

Cons: Zero troubleshooting, no customer support over the weekend

We have had 2 major hurdles with our app since starting it earlier this week. We reached out on Thursday evening for help with an issue and had moderate help throughout the day via chat on Friday, but the issue was not solved, and we were told we had to wait until Monday for this issue to be fixed when another rep would be back who could better assist me. Not a major issue, but still frustrating.

The second issue seems to be a glitch in the app or something wrong with how we set it up for our VIP Tiers, not sure. This is causing our customers to not show up higher than the lowest tier, regardless of qualifiers achieved. We reached out on Friday for help, but their customer service was gone for the weekend, including the email listed for urgent requests. I handle a lot of apps, from a lot of developers and usually can find the solution to problems like this fairly quickly. However, the smile backend has zero troubleshooting help that I can find for this issue. It has very clear and defined info on how to set something up, but zero guides on how to troubleshoot any problems that arise.

I understand people don't want to work weekends, but for an app of this size, and this importance, I feel this is inexcusable. The internet never closes and having an app that literally requires direct customer engagement and involvement like this needs a support team that can help every day of the week. Regardless of the lack of support over the weekend, there is still a huge problem with no troubleshooting help, and it confuses me an app of this size can care so little for helping their customers through problems. Give us the power to solve problems ourselves if you aren't going to have a weekend shift.

We announced our rewards & VIP program, then immediately got hit with customer service questions from our customers who are angry, confused or frustrated that their VIP tiers are not showing up correctly. So our customers who were most excited to take advantage of this program, are getting an introduction to our rewards program in a negative way.

This simple error here has lead to a pileup of work for us, frustrated customers and a steady 5+ hours of work on my end within the app trying to fix it alone. I imagine my problem here is not that complicated to fix, but I am at a standstill.

Not a great start to an app we were excited about.

Lesson learned though, we should never launch a new app like this prior to the weekend if they don't have 7 days a week customer support.

Update: Raised review to 3 stars after being reached out to about this issue on Monday.

Update2: Back down to 2 stars. It does the basics, and we will continue to use it due to not having the time to set up a new plan on another platform until after the holidays. I have 3 new issues to share here.

Issue 1: VIP Program. We downgraded to the free plan because the VIP program did not go as intended. From the beginning, it simply was not clearly defined and caused a lot of confusion. As a result, I was having trouble getting people set up in the appropriate VIP tiers for past purchases, and I followed some advice from their CS team to temporarily change from a dollars VIP program to a points VIP program. I was not informed, nor smart enough to notice, that in doing so there are no safeguards in place to stop you from rewarding hundreds of customers with thousands of dollars in free merchandise.

As suggested, we changed to a point system temporarily to see if that would help get people to the proper tier, and due to the ratio of dollars to points being way off (1000 points is wayyyy easier to get then $1000 spent) hundreds of customers automatically qualified for our top tier VIP program without actually spending the money to do so. We made a huge mistake and had to cancel the program altogether - in addition we then had to honor many free gifts for our customers due to the mistake, and offer alternative prizes to those who qualified for a tier we simply couldn't afford to do (multiple people who $100+ value in products). This was largely my mistake, not theirs, but a simple warning somewhere along the way mentioning that the dollars to points ratio does not change automatically when you change the VIP qualifiers would have saved a major headache. Such a situation should have a warning in place prior to rewarding hundreds of people.

Issue 2: Referrals. We have free stickers on our website as a great first touch for new customers. However, the referrals program will still work for people who are referred to our website, but end up just purchasing free stickers, and nothing of value. Despite the "this coupon only works if the customer spends $X or more" the referrer still gets the referral bonus regardless of amount spent. Not an issue for companies that don't have free products on their site, but a major issue for us. We do have a note on our FAQ page that notes a referral where the customer spends under $10 will be automatically removed and then we manually remove any of these referrals on the back end. Seems like this would be an easy fix, but when confronted about it Smile was unable to help us.

Issue 3: Integration at the free level. The lack of any integration with the free plan is frustrating, especially when we want to simply integrate it with our customer service platform. As a result, any customer service related issues in regard to this app (a daily thing) have to be manually adjusted in the app itself, instead of the customer service app ticket. I do not want to upgrade to the $100+ a month just to integrate this app into our customer service app.

Alrighty, I am done rambling. Hope this helps.

Just set up the rewards program so I will give a 2 star for now and if it works good I will put 5 stars

Lacks some of the features that I want to offer my customers. Too inflexible for my needs.