How do you know if your program is missing the mark? Telltale signs include diminishing returns on your loyalty investment, unsustainable and undifferentiating discounting mechanisms, and a misaligned brand and loyalty program experience.
Likelihood to spend, likelihood to say positive things about your brand and likelihood to stay with a loyalty program are other good indicators of your program’s performance. To stay current, many brands elect to focus on tiers, status, communications and ease of redemption.
All are critically important; however, the same brands tend to under-index on the experience a member has not just in the loyalty program, but as the most loyal customer of the brand.
Listening to consumers
Brands must also ensure that they are delivering on changing customer expectations. Brands need to find new ways to recognized members, as 64 percent are interested in being rewarded for non-purchase activities like completing surveys or referring friends into a program.
A consistent program experience is also a must for brands today, yet only 25 percent of members strongly agree that their program experience is consistent across all touch points — whether physical, human or digital. This highlights a tremendous opportunity for brands as program satisfaction is 2.9 times higher when the experience is consistent.
As you evaluate your loyalty ecosystem and consider a program renovation, keep customer experience at the forefront of your redesign.
Making a connection
Internal and external changes in your approach will also be beneficial; consider converging your customer relationship management, loyalty and customer experience to ensure that they are aligned, and consider including your members in the redesign of your program through customer co-creation sessions.
With technology playing a role in nearly all that consumers do, it’s easy to miss the moments in which human-to-human interaction can reinforce and catapult the success of your program.
Members report 2.7 times greater satisfaction when they’re made to feel special and recognized by a brand representative, so use this emotional response as a catalyst for the redesign of both the digital and the human touch points. When you are ready to renovate your program, make customer experience the hero to ensure you continue to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of your most loyal and valuable customers.
