Demo: Looping taps into customer loyalty with everyday phones

Looping, which provides businesses with a phone-based loyal customer tracking program, launched today at the DEMO Fall 2011 conference.

Most of a business’ revenue comes from repeat customers. So it is typically in a business’s best interest to create a loyalty program that generates repeat customers. But instead of issuing a punch card or some other physical loyalty program, customers just have to dial a number and then record a sound generated by a business to register as a “loyal customer.”

A customer just has to dial a number given by Looping and then hold a phone up to a businesses’ microphone. That business then has a unique “sound token” that fires off through the phone back to Looping’s servers. The servers validate that sound and register the customer — like punching a loyalty card, but customers don’t have to carry around those physical cards.

“With this simple dial and tap action we can identify the customerʼs presence, authenticate the transaction and instantly close the loop between both channels,” Looping spokesperson Dani Alyamour told VentureBeat. “Operating through audio coupling, with just a phone call, a secure channel is established between the customer and our processing platform.”

Looping has four employees and was founded earlier this year. It is based in San Francisco, Calif., and is self-funded by the founders.

Looping is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.