Walgreens’ new loyalty program, Balance Rewards, is just a few weeks away from its rollout… but the rollout may not be a smooth one. Here’s an email I received this morning from a Walgreens employee regarding some of the challenges they’re facing:
Jill,
Just an FYI, the program launch has been delayed… They are having problems with the soft launch and right now week are 2 weeks behind schedule.
I am one of the [redacted] managers and the whole thing has become a disastrous situation.
Please feel free to post this on your site, but please leave my name and email address out of it.
in addition to the loyalty program that they are rolling out, they are implementing an entirely new cash register system that there has been little or no training on. If the store that you went into had a black monitor that the cashier was working with, that is the new system, if it is the old white IBM flag pole display, then it is the old point of sale system.
The new system did take a lot of control away from store personnel. They have also outsourced most of the support for their operations to India starting in November which should make the Christmas season an interesting one.
Rollout Schedule
· Chainwide store enrollment event – TBD
· eCommerce going live publically 8/30 9/6
· Social media efforts kick off 9/2 9/6
· Email marketing campaign begins 9/4 9/6
· Duane Reade Employee Enrollment begins 9/9
· Nationwide Customer Rollout Kickoff 9/16
The New York Times has a new article about Walgreens’ loyalty card rollout too.
hwendt12 says
who decided to ‘reorganize’ the McHenry store, while knee-deep in ‘Back-to-School’. WHAT? I couldn’t find my own ______ in that store, to save my life! Pity, I usually like some of the deals there, but I can surely live without them.
DanielTaylor says
This is really shocking and surprising. It might be loosing everything and this can discourage their business in future.