Katarzyna Nawrocka on loyalty schemes at night. Modern loyalty schemes are based on mobile apps. Research shows that the proportion of people using mobile apps for loyalty schemes is growing rapidly. My guest – and yours – is Mr Tomasz Witt, CEO of Norbsoft, a company which develops precisely such apps.
Good evening, everyone.
Tomasz, perhaps we could start by talking about what your company does.
Norbsoft is a developer of mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. We started out with simple games and apps for standard mobile phones. It was back in 2003 when we developed our first apps. Today, we are most often referred to as a software house, as we develop software.
We all remember – or perhaps not all of us, because if our viewers are younger than us, they might not remember – that the Internet first arrived in Poland in the 1990s. And when did mobile apps first start to appear?
The first mobile apps appeared in 2002 with the launch of the Nokia 3410. It was the first mobile phone to allow the installation of Java apps, which could simply be downloaded using the WAP internet protocol and paid for via premium SMS. That was when the market for apps and games – which could be downloaded onto your phone to personalise it to some extent – really took off. From that moment on, we have been referring to the mobile app market.
And I’m smiling because – sorry, I’ve got to ask – I remember that Nokia, and I find it hard to imagine mobile apps on a phone like that, especially as we can compare it to the phones we use now.
That’s right, it was tough, especially as there were restrictions on the available size. We had, for example, 64 kilobytes. These days, we wouldn’t even be able to create graphics for a mobile app in that amount of space, let alone an entire programme. But we managed it – our first app was ‘Dzień Ucznia’ (Student’s Day), which was developed in 2003 and was mainly intended for my business partners Robert and Krzysztof, who had created the Norbsoft brand to help them with their day-to-day studies at the sixth-form college they were attending at the time.
So it was an app for your business partners, who were still pupils at the time?
That’s exactly right – they created the Norbsoft brand when they were 17, whilst still at secondary school, developing this product specifically for the Nokia 3410 they had at the time and using their own app themselves. A few years later, I came across the lads and their products. We distributed them via mobile network operators directly to end users, and that’s how we came to the conclusion that it was worth setting up a company, transforming the brand into a business entity and starting to operate dynamically on the market. That’s exactly what we did in 2008.
And now, just a little personal aside – they must have caused quite a stir at school.
I suppose so. To this day, I reckon there are plenty of people kicking themselves for not having joined them back then, because we’ve been working together for 18 years now and we’re really making a success of it.
Speaking as someone who takes part in loyalty schemes, I know that I have several ways of contacting the organiser. I can send an email, get in touch via the website, or ring the helpline. And how do you see the role of a mobile app within these very channels of communication?.
A mobile app is the closest thing to the user – in other words, we have it on our smartphone at all times, and the smartphone has become an integral part of our lives. In fact, a smartphone is now a wallet, an ID card, a shop, a payment card and, amongst other things, a loyalty programme, thanks to which the distance between the loyalty programme organiser and the participant is practically reduced to a minimum. We have access to everything. From knowing our points balance to the amount of money we’ve accumulated in a given programme. We can browse the catalogue of products available as rewards in the loyalty programme, check our balance history, and see where we can spend or earn these points. There are countless possibilities. We must also bear in mind that loyalty programmes can actually take various forms, because we started by replacing plastic cards with virtual ones, and that was the first fundamental feature to appear in mobile apps.
And here we’re talking about a mobile app that we can simply use to make payments.
Paying, but also, in effect, collecting points – that is, when we make a transaction, a code is scanned and points are credited to our account. And that was the first method: it meant we no longer had to carry plastic cards from various loyalty schemes. Now, however, at a time when e-commerce sales are growing rapidly – meaning transactions are being made directly via mobile phones – we’re talking about integrating a loyalty scheme directly into the shop itself. This means there’s no need for us to physically visit the shop or show a loyalty card anywhere. We shop in the store and the points are credited to us within that very shop. So this programme is an integral part of the app. It’s no longer just a loyalty app, but a more comprehensive product – comprising the loyalty programme, the e-commerce shop, customer service, and the returns and complaints process. Essentially, the user has no need to communicate in any other way – by phone or email – because they can sort everything out directly from their mobile app. They can do this quickly and efficiently, whilst also receiving a response just as quickly – they even get a notification, so we know straight away when a reply or any form of communication from the loyalty programme reaches us.
And here we have the opportunity to reach any target audience, because, of course, most of us have our phones with us all the time. However, other channels of reach are still available for those who do not use smartphones.
That’s right, there will probably always be a group like that, because there are users who still want to use their phone solely for making calls, and for other forms of communication – such as the internet or using their phone to access a loyalty scheme – so of course, absolutely. However, the number of app users is increasing because the market as a whole is actually educating its users. Banks are doing a good job of this, particularly in convincing older users that it’s worth installing the app. Why stand in a queue at a branch? There’s no need to go to the branch at all; there are even whole programmes designed to help users install the app and show them how to use it on the spot. So let’s say an older person comes to the bank and, at the counter, is able to receive full instructions; this kind of guidance from various institutions ensures that retention rates are also rising in loyalty schemes, and the number of users of mobile apps is growing all the time.
What you’re referring to is very well illustrated by one of our previous episodes, which I had the pleasure of recording with a representative from the ARC Rynek i Opinia research agency; we’ll post a link to that episode for you at the bottom, below today’s episode. The point is that the proportion of people using mobile apps is indeed the fastest-growing figure, and these days we can’t imagine not having a mobile phone or not using it. In loyalty schemes, but not only there. Tell me, do you think mobile apps will drive websites out of the market, just as email, for example, has replaced faxes?.
I don’t think websites will disappear, because they serve two slightly different purposes. We always have our mobile phones with us wherever we go – whether we’re at work, at home, travelling, and so on. At home, however, we can easily use websites – and indeed we do, as research shows. It’s often the case that, whilst out and about or using our mobile phones, we browse the contents of an online shop, select products we like, and then often complete the purchase on the website, using the same user account. It’s just that we’re using a larger screen, where we can see more details and view the product properly. This is particularly true for more expensive items, such as electronics, where we want to look for reviews and read up on a particular product. So, websites are definitely here to stay. When it comes to loyalty schemes, I also think that the website and mobile app will remain, because it’s often more convenient to browse, for example, the rewards catalogue in a loyalty scheme via the website.
But we also have this option on the app.
Of course, in principle, every loyalty programme app currently includes the benefits described in the programme in question, allowing users to view them, make use of them, order them, and so on.
In response to the previous questions, you mentioned that our mobile phone – or smartphone – has, in a sense, become our wallet. We can pay using a mobile app, but we can also pay using points from a loyalty scheme we’re currently enrolled in. Could you tell us about how this mobile app payment system works?
That’s right, we can. Using the loyalty programme app, we can pay with our points for products from the catalogue available on the mobile app. It basically involves selecting a product that falls within our points balance and ordering it by providing our home address. This is actually the simplest form of loyalty scheme, and it’s been around for quite some time. However, a new way of linking payments to a loyalty scheme has emerged, namely Retail chains are introducing the option to link a credit card to their loyalty programme, and the moment we make a payment via that chain’s system, loyalty points are credited to us immediately, meaning we skip the stage where we have to show the loyalty programme code at the till and then make the payment by phone; instead, we reduce it to a single action – simply paying by phone – and in this way, points are credited to us straight away. This significantly speeds up and simplifies the process itself. I therefore think this feature will be adopted more and more frequently by various types of businesses – not just retail chains, but shops in general and retailers of all kinds – in order to make the process easier and quicker for the user. And in this way, we won’t lose customers who, for whatever reason, might forget that a loyalty scheme exists or that they can make use of it.
We’ve already discussed mobile apps that we also use for making payments on our programme, and you’ll find a link to that episode below as well. Tomasz, some loyalty schemes are only accessible via a mobile app. Is this a new trend, or is the loyalty programme market moving in this direction?
I don’t think so. I mean, in my view, it depends on what the rewards are in a given loyalty scheme. If the rewards are of little value – small items that we can quickly and easily obtain with the points we earn whilst making other purchases – then I suppose so. There’s no need to set up a website or a product catalogue. However, if we have a loyalty programme with a large product catalogue containing high-value items that require points to be collected over a longer period of time, then, in my opinion, a website featuring such a catalogue will still be useful, and the programme will be more than just a mobile app.
At i360, we take security particularly seriously. How is information security ensured and monitored in mobile applications?.
Firstly, we have our own QA department, which tests and verifies all the products we develop for our clients; and secondly, we develop them in accordance with global standards and the applicable requirements of app stores such as the App Store and Google Play. This ensures that our apps are secured in the same way that our smartphones are. We utilise all available technologies for this purpose and, depending on the nature of the product and the information it contains, we secure it as thoroughly as possible.
And how, in your opinion, has blockchain changed the way mobile apps are developed?.
So far, it hasn’t changed, and it’s unclear whether it actually will. Generally speaking, mobile app development still involves keeping track of what the manufacturer of a given operating system is doing and what capabilities it provides through its SDKs – that is, the development kits it provides for developers to create mobile apps. Blockchain involves distributed systems, whereas mobile apps are not distributed by their very nature; they reside on a single user’s device. It’s my app; my product is meant to be confined to my phone, where it is completely secure. As for blockchain, it may well be used in solutions where a mobile app forms part of such a distributed system – that is, the entire solution will rely on blockchain to function, and the mobile app will be one of its components. In that case, I think it will be possible.
Well then, Tomasz, just to round things off, I wanted to ask you how you see the future of mobile apps.
The future is clear: there will be more and more of these products, including smartphones. There are still parts of the world where smartphone penetration is not particularly high – such as Africa or South America – so there is scope for significant growth, and I think it will be a natural progression; the natural direction for the development of mobile apps will be to port them to other types of devices, because I hope that before long we’ll be able to run mobile apps on, for example, chips implanted in our bodies. Commercial trials of precisely such solutions are already underway in Poland, enabling payments by simply touching a hand in which a chip is implanted. There is nothing to prevent us from also having an app on that chip which would record, for example, our points in a loyalty scheme, so apps certainly won’t disappear; at most, they may change the form in which they appear and the product on which they are installed.
Thank you very much for our conversation today. We talked about the future, because mobile apps are the future.
That’s right, thank you very much too.
I hope to see you in the next episode.
See you later.
