Extraordinary Rewards Experience

[BeautyInsiderBT]

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to take a moment to let you know that we are hearing your feedback regarding today’s Extraordinary Rewards experience. If we haven’t been able to respond to you personally yet, please know that we have read your feedback and definitely understand your frustration. The rewards sold out much quicker than we anticipated, so we were unable to send out the planned email or post to our social channels. We’re sorry if you missed out on these exciting rewards. The response has been overwhelming and we are happy to announce that there will be more extraordinary rewards coming this year.

If you have specific questions or need assistance, please PM a moderator for help. We appreciate your understanding and value the helpful feedback you’ve provided here on BeautyTalk.

[dreambean]

  I'm really scratching my head over this statement.While I'm glad that it's being addressed (kind of addressed?),this is really not an explanation,nor an apology,which is what we've all been waiting for.The fairly dismissive tone of this post has left a bad taste in my mouth,as well.

 Besides which,how quickly the perks sold out,while very disappointing,is not really the issue ._.;;;  Certainly not the main complaint,at least.

[playingdressup]

Dear Sephora,

If you want to be able to claim "the rewards sold out much quicker than we anticipated," you can't have a rewards event that is based on points that you, Sephora, keep the tally of. You can look at how many customer have 1000+ points and order enough rewards to accommodate them.  

Also, in order to reasonably claim "we’re sorry if you missed out on these exciting rewards," you can't have an extensive history of repeatedly creating situations where most customers miss out on rewards. Lets see, didn't extraordinary rewards sell out immediately last year, hot items sell out the first day of the 20% and 15% sales, emailed promo codes are gone before all customers have received an email, you don't event bother to send all customer's emails, you send different promotions to different customers (when one is more valuable than others -i.e. full sized dior lipstiick). I am sure there are many others.

This is a repeat offense to your customers. If you are sorry, make it up to customers NOW. Get an amount of today's perks to meet demand and post them asap. Disclose how many of each perk you started out with at 4am today. Taking this moment to tell customers that there will be more "extraordinary rewards" this year is NOT making it up to customers. Especially considering the fact that you are not honest about what has gone wrong today.

[KateLovesYSL]

Just checked to see if the CEO of Sephora said anything on Twitter today...NOPE!!!! not one apology, not a peep!

Here's his twitter address for those of you who use twitter and my have a few things to ask/say to him.

Twitter: @calvin_sephora

[etscore1]

Not surprising given they apparently gave the BT mods and entire social media department the day off as well. 

[heartsmyface]

Technically, our beloved mods would've been fed to the wolves today, so I'm glad they're not here. 

[jbana]

^ That's a really good point. They'd have been a byproduct of most of us just trying to find someone who will actually listen, and failing to get a proper answer from anyone about all of this

[bunnymasseuse]

Let's play devils advocate here for a second folks, to really get a better grasp of the situation...

Lets say, for a rough estimate that Sephora has 500,000 customers total.  I just needed to come up with a number that I can manipulate for some rough estimations.  This is a statistical numbers scenario, I don't do this for a living but I'm trying to come at this from a different angle to highlight something I'm logically concerned about.

Ok, let's say of that number maybe 2% are Rouge, 58% are VIB and 40% are BI.

Continuing, let's say of my Rouge, maybe 10% of my 2% Rouge had 10k points, maybe 3% of my VIB did and 1% of my BI had that many points they could have purchased the Mega reward.  How many 10k rewards was there? Less than 10? Less than 5?  So that's 200 Rouge, 8700 VIB and 2000 BI individuals in my "fake scenario" that could have spent the points on those rewards.  So a total of approx 11000 individuals could have purchased, but there was only enough rewards for less than .05% of them?  I mean sure, I get it, you want to make them exclusive, but let's get realistic, are you really providing a legitimate percentage of rewards for more than 10% of those who would qualify to use their points for?

I'm really starting to have some concerns your analytical and projections team isn't being given the weight and considerations they should regarding legitimate percentage chances and realistic potential customers that would have been viable candidates to redeem for any of these rewards.

If that wasn't enough, let's say of the number of customers you have, you gave away 500point gifts to appease the masses to, say only 5% of all your customers?   Now take that and recalculate what percentage of that 5% now just became eligible for the next tier of reward level for points redeeming.  Congratulations, problem just got even more difficult to calculate.

[etscore1]

"There's enough to go around" should never have been said. It was never meant to be taken literally. It's never been about rewarding customers, it's been about creating hype and anticipation with extremely limited quantities to create urgency. 

[bunnymasseuse]

Agree, at least when I gamble I know what my odds are of winning.  Here, I have no idea the number of those other customers that could spend the points I have, no idea when it would be released on the website and no idea how many they would even make available for redemption.  

[Samtian]

You would also have to take out those who don't live in the US.

[bunnymasseuse]

Yep, another potential calculation, though legitimately they could have been recipients of the 500point "oops" gifts that were given out like candy today.

[Lunality]

Usually large companies have complicated algorithms to calculated this type of thing, but I feel like Sephora didn't use any type of calculations! They just said ohhh, let's just put out random ## of this and that reward because it sounds good and they feel like it. Overall, everything was poorly planned and poorly executed. I would expect this type of problem from a tiny low end maybe drugstore brand, not a fricking huge corporation like Sephora. 

[bunnymasseuse]

Agree, my numbers I used was huge, but I do believe the problem still remains.  Let's say 5000 people had 10k in points today, still, barely .05% of those had a chance to get the largest reward.  

[mtrika]

Ok! What rewards were offered? I like everyone else on here is pissed! I've been saving up my points, (which is easy to do given the 100/250/500 point rewards are crappy) for these events. 

[Lunality]

Go to this link for all the rewards posted:

http://community.sephora.com/t5/Beauty-Insider/EXTRAORDINARY-REWARDS-RECAP/m-p/1988496#M44004 

[katief241981]

This is crazy! "The rewards sold out much quicker than we anticipated".... UMMMMMMMM. The SAME thing happened last year!!!!! Makes no sense

[EvieDew]

While I wasn't going to cash in any of points for the extraordinary rewards rewards initially ( I had already spent quite a bit during the sale), I can understand people's frustration. I didn't get a email. However it's not uncommon for sephora to release products before they are announce. it happens everyday with the new arrivals. That's pretty standard so I'm not upset about this, since it's a recurring thing that happens, it's expected. I knew the rewards were going to sell out, so I didn't even bother. May I suggest some changes you might consider making in the future to keep customers happy. 1) I get teasers, and yes you can continue making them, but before an event like this happens I suggest that a date is release at least 3 days before hand, that way people are prepared 2) email system? What's faulty that some aren't getting emails? I get my emails, but I didn't get one today about extraordinary rewards, instead I receive an email around 2:30ish p.m. About 100pt rewards ( well after the xtraordinary were sold out) (I actually like the 100pt rewards, let's me try out individual products) 3) maybe you can test out a lottery system, were you could release a list of the items which will be up to redeem and all levels of beauty insiders will enter into a lottery for particular pt sets for first bids. 4) you can make a couple of sets exclusive for VIB and VIB Rouge members to redeem. That way costumers who spend a lot of money, feel happy.  I don't know it this will work but maybe you can test it out small scale initially. Cool dudes 

[sravanthi]

Are these extraordinary rewards only for BT members? Then y this apology (not so actually) on BT, it should be on Sephora website and on Sephora FB page Top

[fatimamummy]

This is not an apology considering the text. It is just an awful effort to make us think nothing was done wrong and Rewards gone OOS so fast was actually success of this event. I can't find a signal apologetic word or gesture in this OP.

[Blackwhiskey]

Sephora.. pls. pls.

 

[lylysa]

I can't tell you how much I adore this derp gif