Delta Sonic Carwashes, Buffalo, NY

Multi-profit center chain

SiteWatch® Helps Chain Run the Same Loyalty Promotion At 19 Locations Without Getting Buried in Paperwork

Challenge: To make it easier to manage and control a popular club plan at multiple locations.

Solution: Use the Replication Logic feature in SiteWatch to ensure that customer history files are updated every 30 minutes at all sites throughout the day.

The Delta Sonic Super Kiss carwash logo is about as famous in western New York as the area’s mouthwatering “Buffalo (chicken) wings.” No wonder -- with 19 locations in the Buffalo/Rochester area, Delta Sonic Carwashes are hard to miss. If you don’t have time to visit the Delta Sonic site near work during your lunch hour, you can always stop by one of the company’s other locations on the way home in the afternoon.

Having so many carwashes all over town may be convenient for customers, but in the past, it made running loyalty promotions more difficult for Delta Sonic. Then the company installed SiteWatch from DRB Systems.

“Before SiteWatch, we were never able to maintain current customer histories from location to location,” said Tom Noonan, Corporate Retail MIS Manager at Delta Sonic. “If a customer bought a wash at one location on Monday, then visited another site on Wednesday, our computer files couldn’t keep up. This caused some real headaches when we wanted to run loyalty promotions chain-wide.”

SiteWatch has freed Delta Sonic from these “headaches.” Using the powerful replication logic feature in SiteWatch, Delta Sonic sends updated customer history information to all sites every 30 minutes over a secure Internet line. This chain-wide communication has made it possible for Delta Sonic to tighten control over the popular “Super Kiss” promotion it runs at its 19 Buffalo-area locations.

“The Super Kiss promotion has always been very popular, so we ran it chain-wide, even before we had SiteWatch, but back then it was very difficult to control,” said Noonan. “Under our old system, we couldn’t track customers chain-wide, so we required that they bring their receipts to whichever Delta Sonic wash they chose. Our cashiers would have to look at the receipt, and manually make sure that the vehicle’s license plate number matched the plate number on the receipt itself. Then they’d have to verify that the date of the last visit that was printed on the receipt actually entitled the customer to a discount.”

Aside from taking extra time and slowing down sales transactions, this procedure involved a great deal of paperwork, since the receipts had to be counted at the end of the day and matched with the discounts. It also reduced the company’s control over the promotion, creating opportunities for “beating” the system. For example, when a customer returned to Delta Sonic within 10 days and paid half-price ($5.25) for a Super Kiss wash, some cashiers would enter the transaction as a free, “five day sale,” and pocket the money. Since all discounts were entered manually from the receipt, it was difficult to stop and identify this abuse.

Fortunately, SiteWatch has brought the same level of control to Delta Sonic’s chain-wide loyalty promotions that DRB Systems’ other products have brought to single-site promotions. When Super Kiss customers return to any Delta Sonic location within five or ten days of their previous visit, SiteWatch will automatically invoke the proper discount. This will be done regardless of whether customers return to the same Delta Sonic site or a different site than the one they originally visited.

In addition to tightening control over the chain-wide Super Kiss promotion, SiteWatch has reduced back office paperwork, since there are no longer receipts to reconcile. The new system is also more convenient for customers, because they no longer have to remember to bring their receipts back to the wash.

Although SiteWatch can send information to all locations in a chain more often than every 30 minutes, Noonan says that replicating customer histories every half-hour has worked out well for Delta Sonic. “Customers visit all of our locations very frequently, but we’ve never had a problem with anyone coming to a second location within a halfhour,” he remarked. “In every situation that we deal with, the SiteWatch replication feature has worked extremely well.”

Bottom line: By ensuring the flow of information between all sites and the home office, SiteWatch helps Delta Sonic increase the impact of its promotions by allowing them to be run chain-wide without compromising control.