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Albert had its loyalty app switched off for almost a month. And yet there was no big media scandal. Instead of sending customers an apology email, the company gave all of them the same discount. Today the app is back. And with it comes the hardest part of the whole crisis.
How did it start? Monday, 12 October, you are standing at a self-checkout in Albert. You scan your shopping, open your Můj Albert app, and all you see is an error message. The coupons won’t load and the credits can’t be used.
Anyone who has ever worked a till or sat on a customer service line knows what comes next. A queue, impatient people behind you, and a question nobody can answer: when will it work again? A loyalty app today is not a marketing toy. It is a wallet full of discounts. When it crashes, customers don’t care about the technology. What they really care about is that someone has touched their money.
What happened
On 11 October, the parent group Ahold Delhaize was hit by a cyberattack. The next day, the Czech Albert chose to switch the app off as a precaution, even though nothing had demonstrably gone down here. The outage lasted roughly 30 days.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 11 Oct | Cyber incident at the Ahold Delhaize group |
| 12 Oct | The Můj Albert app stops working. Discounts normally reserved for app users are given to all customers at the checkout |
| 15 Oct | Official announcement: the outage will last longer than usual |
| 18 Oct | Albert Heijn in the Netherlands has its website and app back |
| 19 Oct | Ahold confirms a deliberate attack and files a criminal complaint |
| 21 Oct | An extra 15% discount for everyone on non-discounted Nature’s Promise and Albert Bio products |
| 5 Nov | Albert announces the app’s return and compensation |
| 11 Nov | The app returns. Double discounts and credits until 17 Nov |
Ahold says it has so far found no evidence that sensitive customer data was stolen. That is the company’s statement, and the investigation is still ongoing.
What Albert got right
On day one, it applied the prices normally available only through the app to everyone. It didn’t worry about how to explain the outage. It made sure nobody paid more because of it.
That meant making a decision within a few hours and resetting prices at the checkouts in roughly 350 stores so that it worked the very same day. Anyone who has seen how long it takes a large company to change a single price tag knows this is no small thing. I’ll say it plainly: hats off. According to Albert, it cost the company over CZK 20 million a week.
It added further steps:
- A clear promise on day one. Communications Director Jiří Mareček assured customers that nobody would lose their points or credits.
- Information right in the store. Announcements over the store PA system and notices on the self-checkouts, not just a press release on the website.
- Safety before speed. By its own account, Albert relaunched the app only once it was sure the systems were running safely.
An apology email costs the company nothing and gives the customer nothing. A discount at the checkout is an apology people take home in their wallets.
Where it fell short
The blanket discount has a flaw: it helped most those who never had the app. Regular users, on the other hand, couldn’t use their credits or personal coupons, and points for new purchases weren’t being added. They could claim missing credits by email with a photo of the receipt, but those claims will only be processed after the outage. A loyalty program outage hurts most precisely the people the program exists for.
The second weak spot was waiting without a deadline. For almost a month, Albert didn’t say when the app would be back, even though in the Netherlands it was running again after a week. Why it took longer here is not clear from public statements. People fill silence on their own, and usually with something worse than reality.
Today, Albert puts its skin in the game
From this morning, the “with the app” prices once again apply only to those who have the app and scan it at the checkout. But in a month, people got used to them. And let’s be honest: losing something hurts more than never having had it, so many customers may well see the end of the special regime as a price increase.
Albert will sweeten the return for app users: until 17 November they get double discounts and credits, and each new digital collector card will start with four points instead of three. Compensation is finally aimed at the most loyal customers. A customer without the app, however, will see only a higher bill today. Whether they understand why depends mainly on the cashier.
The outage as the best advert for a loyalty program
It could still turn out well, though. Albert may have unintentionally run the best campaign for its app in a long time. For a month, everyone shopped at member prices. Those who didn’t have the app saw for the first time on their own bill how much they could save. No flyer, no advert. Just a receipt.
Now they face a simple choice: pay more, or download the app. It is quite possible that people who have so far shown little interest in the program will sign up. Nobody knows yet how many, but Albert should keep a close eye on it.
The best advert for a loyalty program is when people experience its benefits first-hand. But someone who downloads the app only to avoid paying more is not yet a loyal customer. They become one only once membership feels good. Registration should therefore take a minute, the app should immediately show how much they saved, and the cashier should be happy to help when they are unsure. If Albert manages this, it may come out of the crisis with more members than it had before.
And there is one more dimension. Ahold is buying Tesco’s Czech business and, after the takeover, wants to merge the loyalty programs as well. Today is therefore also a dress rehearsal for moving Clubcard customers across, though I believe we will take a closer look at that merger later.
What to take away
An outage can hit a loyalty program, an e-shop, a booking system or a customer portal. The only difference is whether you have a plan or you improvise.
- Decide in advance what happens to prices. Who approves discounts for everyone, and within how many hours.
- On day one, tell customers what they won’t lose. Points, credits, orders, money. Certainty calms them down, not explanations of the causes.
- Inform customers where they are standing. At the checkout, over the PA system, on the display, by text message.
- Prepare your checkout and helpline staff. Without clear answers, all they can say is “I don’t know”, and they take the anger for a problem that isn’t their fault.
- Think of your most loyal customers. A blanket solution helps them least. Have compensation for them ready straight away, not after the crisis.
- Give a timeline, even if it’s only an estimate.
- Plan the end of the special regime too. Returning to business as usual is often harder than the crisis itself.
- Measure. Helpline calls, complaints, and how many people return to the app or sign up for the first time.
A small request to finish
Albert bought its customers’ patience, quite literally, for tens of millions of crowns. Whether it pays off will only be clear from the number of people using the app in a few weeks.
Until then, be patient. If today at an Albert checkout you see someone in front of you frantically tapping at their phone, trying to remember the password to an account they set up three years ago, don’t laugh. You may be watching a frustrated customer turn into a loyal member. Or at least someone who will finally write down their password.
And what about your company? If your crisis plan is still just an email saying “we apologise for any inconvenience”, it’s high time to rewrite it. Ideally before someone switches it off for you.
