We have met various offer rules while developing software for loyalty programs management.
Designing our system we wanted it to support any kinds of bonus calculation rules depending on the current purchase and the history of previous customer behavior. Sometimes people say they don’t need such universal approach and their rules are simple and straightforward. We tried to recall the most complicated rule we had to support according to customer requirements:
Assign N% from purchase sum as bonus points
- if customer is from category “X”
- if the purchased item belongs to subcategories “A” and “B” (2 rules in fact)
- if the purchase is made during certain timeframe
- if there were purchases of goods from “Z” category (during certain timeframe)
- the sum of previous purchases were less then M (during certain timeframe)
And only if all of these conditions are met we add N% to customer’s account.
We don’t actually know how such complex rule was explained to customers – this is not our business – at present time we support even more complex rules. As to questions on whether to use complex rules – the client is always right 