When you ask any Penangnite about Ban Hin Bee or better known as BHB, they would have known that it is one of the oldest and most trustable consumer electronics stores in Penang.
Ban Hin Bee (BHB) is founded in 1961 by Jimmy Yeoh when he was 20 years old with a humble beginning. It started off as a family-owned bicycle repair shop in Anson Road, Penang which is also the very first BHB outlet that is currently still operating. It shifted into a car stereo and accessories business, then went into black-and-white televisions and radios.
Fast forward to 59 years later, BHB has expanded into retail chain stores with 6 outlets in Penang and has a team of more than 90 employees. Some of them have even worked there for more than 45 years. BHB has served the Penangites for 3 generations in a family. “I always come back to buy from you because my grandfather used to.” said one of their customers. This shows trust and loyalty BHB has for its employees and also customers.
We sat down and spoke to Edwin Yeoh, the Marketing Manager of BHB. For a company that has been in the industry for close to 6 decades now, it has faced many challenges growing its brand in the past as it is now including stiff competition from its rivals.
What are the biggest challenges faced by BHB?
The biggest challenge is to retain customers, it’s not easy to draw the same customers back for the second or third purchase. Even our salesperson faced the same challenges of keeping the relationship good enough for retention. Nowadays, customers are smart to look around for the same product with different pricing and expecting more services.
Cashback has helped us a lot with that. We have seen that customers come back within 3 - 6 months to purchase another item to utilize the Cashback.
What encourages you to accept cashless payment?
For many years, people have been using credit and debit cards, more than 50% of our customers now prefer cashless payment. It’s actually a good thing for us as a merchant because it’s a risk to store cash. Not only that, but it also helped us to cut down a lot of time in banking in the cash by the end of the day.
If we can go 100% cashless, it’ll be better.
Apart from the benefit of Cashback from FavePay, it helped us to reduce the cost too. The rates are more economical in comparison to many cashless payment providers in the market.
Does BHB have its own loyalty program and how does it help the business?
Building an app from scratch for smaller businesses like us will cost a lot more, we’ve calculated the activation cost per user and its margin doesn’t justify it. Fave is the best loyalty program for us so far because of its Cashback and its large customer base. It’s easier for us to convert the current customers to use FavePay and retain them after that.
There’s a definite improvement before and after issuing Cashback.
In most cases, customers will purchase only 1 item. However, it’s effortless to convince them to purchase another item by utilizing the instant Cashback. It’s not just a loyalty program, we’ve also used it as a marketing tool by offering additional Cashback rates at a certain period of time, making it enticing for them to purchase from us again.
Which data in FaveBiz Insights did you found most useful?
Knowing the number of customers visited my shop every month. Usually in retail businesses, unable to track this sort of data, the only way we will know is by asking the customer but there are no actual facts or data to support it.
With a report that shows which day and outlets brought me the most customers and sales, it also helps make decision making faster & easier.
Learn more about Fave's mobile payments and how it complements so well with its customer loyalty program.
