How to Train Staff on Your Loyalty Programme: 5 Methods That Work
Feb 12, 2026
You've spent time choosing the right loyalty platform. You've designed the card, set the reward rules, and you're ready to launch. Everything looks great on screen.
Then a customer asks your newest team member about it, and they shrug and say "I think we have a loyalty thing? Let me ask someone."
That's where most loyalty programmes quietly fail. Not in the design. Not in the technology. In the handoff between the system and the humans who are supposed to use it every day.
Your staff are the front line of your loyalty programme. They're the ones offering the card at the till, scanning stamps, answering questions, and — most importantly — making the programme feel like a natural, valued part of the customer experience rather than an awkward sales pitch bolted onto the end of a transaction. Even the simplest digital loyalty card for a small business becomes dead weight if the person handing it out can't explain what it does in ten seconds flat.
If your team doesn't understand the programme, doesn't believe in it, or simply forgets to mention it, your sign-up rate drops, your engagement stalls, and the programme dies a quiet death regardless of how well it's designed.
This guide covers five practical ways to train your team on your loyalty programme — whether you have two staff members or twenty, whether they've been with you for years or started last week.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Let's put some numbers around it.
The difference between a well-trained team and an untrained one typically shows up in sign-up rates. Businesses where staff actively offer the loyalty card to every customer see sign-up rates of 40–60% of eligible transactions. Businesses where staff mention it occasionally (or not at all) hover around 5–10%.
That gap isn't subtle. Over a year, it's the difference between hundreds of engaged loyalty members generating repeat visits and a handful of cardholders who signed up once and forgot about it. If you're struggling with that gap, the issue often isn't the programme itself — it's that you haven't built a systematic approach to getting customers to join your loyalty programme at the point of interaction.
And it's not just about sign-ups. Trained staff can explain the programme's benefits clearly, which affects how customers perceive it. A customer who's told "You're three stamps away from a free coffee, by the way" has a very different experience from one who's told "Do you want a stamp?" The first creates anticipation and a reason to return. The second feels transactional and forgettable. And if customers are signing up but never coming back to claim their reward, you've got a loyalty programme redemption rate problem that trained staff are uniquely positioned to fix — because they're the ones who can remind customers how close they are.
For small businesses especially — cafés, salons, barbershops, fitness studios, restaurants — staff interactions are the brand. There's no marketing department to run campaigns. There's no corporate training programme. Your team's ability to communicate the loyalty programme naturally and confidently is the single biggest factor in whether it succeeds.
The Real Barrier: It's Not Ability, It's Priority
Before jumping into training methods, it's worth understanding why staff often don't engage with loyalty programmes — because it's rarely a lack of capability.
They don't see it as their job. A barista's priority is making good coffee quickly. A receptionist's priority is managing bookings. A retail assistant's priority is helping customers find what they need. The loyalty programme feels like an extra task added to an already full workload. If you haven't explicitly made it part of the role, don't be surprised when it falls to the bottom of the list.
They haven't experienced it themselves. It's hard to enthusiastically explain something you've never used. If your team hasn't gone through the sign-up process, scanned a card, or seen how a stamp appears on a customer's phone, they're selling something abstract rather than something they understand first-hand.
They're worried about being pushy. Good service staff have strong instincts about customer experience. Many avoid mentioning the loyalty programme because they don't want to feel like they're upselling or interrupting the interaction. This is actually a healthy instinct — the solution isn't to override it, but to give staff language that feels natural rather than scripted.
High turnover means constant retraining. This is the reality for most small businesses in hospitality and retail. This problem compounds if you've recently switched from paper punch cards to digital — staff who were comfortable with the old system may resist the new one not because it's harder, but because it's unfamiliar. When staff leave every few months, loyalty programme knowledge walks out the door with them. Your training approach needs to be quick to deliver, easy to repeat, and simple enough that a new starter can pick it up in one shift.
Understanding these barriers shapes how you train. It's not about giving staff more information — it's about making the programme feel like a natural, low-effort part of their existing routine.
Method 1: Give Staff the Five-Minute Version (and Nothing More)
Most loyalty programme training fails because it tries to cover everything. The full feature set. The analytics dashboard. The push notification strategy. The referral mechanics. The business case for retention.
Your staff don't need any of that. They need to know three things:
What is it? "We have a free digital loyalty card that customers add to their phone wallet."
How does it work? "I scan their card after each purchase. After [X] stamps, they get [reward]."
What do I say? "Would you like to join our free loyalty card? It takes five seconds and goes straight in your phone."
That's it. Five minutes. Everything else is context they can pick up over time. If you haven't nailed those fundamentals yet — the reward, the stamp count, the sign-up flow — sort those out first by creating a digital punch card that actually works before you put anything in front of your team.
Write these three points on a card and pin it by the till. Include the QR code so staff can practise signing themselves up. Make it the first thing a new starter learns on their first day — before the coffee machine, before the booking system, before the fire exits.
With Perkstar, the process is genuinely this simple. Staff download the scanner app to their phone, scan the customer's card (which the customer adds to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet in one tap), and the stamp appears instantly. There's no complicated POS integration, no account management, no multi-step process to explain. The simpler the system, the easier the training.
Method 2: Let Every Staff Member Experience It as a Customer
This is the single most effective thing you can do, and it takes about two minutes per person.
Have every team member go through the exact process a customer would:
Scan the QR code or tap the sign-up link
Add the card to their phone wallet
Get their first stamp scanned by a colleague
Look at the card on their phone and see the stamp appear
That's the moment it clicks. When someone sees the stamp land on their own phone, they understand the experience they're asking customers to try. They can speak about it from genuine familiarity rather than reciting instructions.
If you want to go further, create a staff-only card in Perkstar that your team can use to earn their own rewards — a free coffee after a shift, a small bonus for hitting a sign-up target, or entry into a monthly draw. This does two things: it gives your team ongoing hands-on experience with the platform, and it shows them first-hand that loyalty rewards are motivating. If they feel the pull of being "two stamps away from a reward," they'll understand exactly why customers do too.
Perkstar lets you create multiple card designs from a single account, so running a separate staff card alongside your customer-facing programme is straightforward.
Method 3: Give Staff a Script That Doesn't Sound Like a Script
The number one reason staff avoid mentioning the loyalty programme is that they don't know how to bring it up without it feeling awkward. Solve this by giving them two or three natural conversation starters — phrased in the way your team actually talks, not in marketing language.
At the point of purchase: "Have you got your loyalty card? No? It's free — takes five seconds to add to your phone. Want me to set you up?"
For returning customers without a card: "I've seen you in here a few times — have you joined our loyalty card yet? You'd already be close to a free [reward] by now."
For customers who already have the card: "You're only [X] away from your free [reward], by the way."
That last one is important. It's not a sign-up pitch — it's a retention nudge. And it takes almost no effort, but it transforms a routine transaction into a moment of anticipation. The customer leaves thinking about coming back, not just about what they bought today. You can even encourage staff to occasionally go off-script entirely — a spontaneous "this one's on us" for a long-time regular is a surprise and delight moment that no scripted line can replicate.
The key is making these feel optional, not mandatory. Staff should offer the card in the same way they'd offer a receipt — naturally, as part of the service, without pressure. If a customer says no, that's fine. Move on. But if nobody asks, the sign-up rate defaults to near zero.
Print the conversation starters and stick them where staff can glance at them during quiet moments. After a few days, the language becomes instinctive and the cue card becomes unnecessary.
Method 4: Make Loyalty a Visible Part of the Daily Routine
If the loyalty programme exists only as a system your staff occasionally remember to use, it won't gain traction. It needs to be woven into the rhythm of the working day.
Start-of-shift check-in: A quick 30-second mention at the start of each shift. "Yesterday we signed up 12 new members. Let's see if we can beat that today." It doesn't need to be formal — just a brief acknowledgement that keeps the programme visible.
End-of-week review: Share one number from your loyalty dashboard. Total sign-ups this week. Number of rewards redeemed. Most active day. Perkstar's analytics make this easy to pull — pick one stat, share it with the team, and let it create a sense of collective progress. The trick is keeping these rituals lightweight — if you've set up the programme properly, managing your loyalty programme without wasting time means the data is already there waiting for you, and sharing it takes seconds rather than a spreadsheet session.
Celebrate milestones. When you hit 100 cardholders, mention it. When a customer redeems their first reward, point it out. When a team member consistently gets the most sign-ups, recognise it — publicly, not just privately. These small moments of acknowledgement keep the programme alive in your team's consciousness.
Physical reminders. A counter sign with the QR code positioned where staff can see it serves a dual purpose: it prompts customers to ask about the card, and it reminds staff to offer it. If the sign is visible, the programme is visible.
The goal isn't to create extra work. It's to make the loyalty programme feel like a natural part of how the business operates — as routine as opening the till or restocking the shelves.
Method 5: Address the Turnover Problem Directly
If your business has regular staff turnover (and most small hospitality and retail businesses do), building loyalty programme training into your onboarding process is non-negotiable.
Create a one-page loyalty programme guide that every new starter reads on their first day. Keep it to a single side of A4 with the essentials:
What the programme is (one sentence)
How to scan a customer's card (three steps)
What to say when offering the card (two example phrases)
What the reward is (so they can explain it)
Who to ask if they have questions This is also where your choice of platform matters — loyalty software built for small teams should be intuitive enough that a new hire can scan their first card within minutes of reading that one-pager, without needing you to walk them through it.
Laminate it. Pin it in the staff area. Include a copy in your onboarding folder. This isn't about creating a training manual — it's about ensuring that no new team member ever goes onto the floor without knowing the basics.
For businesses with very high turnover, consider recording a two-minute video walkthrough on your phone. Show the sign-up process, the scanning process, and demonstrate the customer conversation. New starters can watch it during their first break. It's not polished corporate training — it's practical, it's quick, and it means you don't have to personally repeat the same training every time someone new starts.
Perkstar's help centre includes guides and walkthroughs that you can share directly with your team, so you don't have to build everything from scratch. But the most effective training materials are always the ones that reflect your specific business — your card, your rewards, your customers, your language.
Modern Take: Why Staff Training Is a Retention Tool — for Staff, Not Just Customers
Here's an angle that most loyalty programme discussions miss entirely: training your team on the loyalty programme doesn't just improve customer retention. It can improve staff retention too.
Small business employees — especially in hospitality — often feel disconnected from the business outcomes their work creates. They serve customers, complete tasks, and go home. There's limited visibility into whether the business is growing, whether customers are coming back, or whether their effort is making a difference.
A loyalty programme gives staff something tangible to point to. "We signed up 40 new members this week." "That customer just redeemed their 10th reward." "Our repeat visit rate is up 15% since we launched." These aren't abstract metrics — they're visible, human-scale indicators of the impact their work is having.
When you share dashboard data with your team, you're doing something bigger than training. You're giving them ownership. You're saying "this programme is yours to build, and here's the evidence that it's working." For a team member who's deciding whether to stick around or look for another job, that sense of involvement and visible impact matters more than most business owners realise. In practice, the benefits of a loyalty card programme extend well beyond the customer-facing metrics — they give your team a shared project with visible results, which is surprisingly rare in small business roles.
Combine this with small incentives — a monthly draw for the team member with the most sign-ups, a group target that unlocks a team reward — and you've turned the loyalty programme into something that benefits your staff culture, not just your customer metrics.
Getting Started
The best training is the simplest training. Don't wait until you've built a comprehensive programme with manuals, modules, and role-play exercises. Start with this:
Show your team the card and let them sign up themselves
Give them one sentence to say at the till
Pin the QR code where everyone can see it
Mention the sign-up numbers once a week
That's enough to launch. Refinement comes with time and data. The important thing is that your team starts offering the card today — not after a training programme that takes weeks to develop and never quite happens.
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