As the world is set to begin its slow stride into recovery post the pandemic fiasco, it is very obvious to see that the needs and requirements of customers have rapidly shifted towards a more personalized and empathetic touch. The current market buzzword is customer experience which draws upon not only the way participants in loyalty programs view loyalty programs but the way in which companies are treating customers, particularly their expectations and desires.
It is clear to see that over a number of years many businesses who created loyalty programs used them as an acquisition strategy where customers were viewed as commodities that needed to be mined; rather than individuals with tensions to solve. This style of thinking is at the very core of failures in such programs as they struggle to truly address the fundamentals of building loyalty. These are of course brand trust, personalization, appreciation and more so having a reciprocal relationship with the company, brand, or business. Once again to reiterate, these all fall into that cheeky buzzword: Customer experience.Buzzwords aside there has been a paradigm shift in the perception and the way in which companies act out their intentions towards their customer base. This change can be rationalized by the following argument:
By adopting a very basic conceptualization of cartesian dualism and adapting it to a method in which we can describe loyalty programs - or at least borrow a few ideas - we can create an axis where both the realms of mental and physical loyalty meet.
The emotional state of customers is very much separate from the physical interaction of loyalty program operation. What I mean by this is that for example, if we are to say that the mental realm is customer experience, then the physical realm is definitely the method in which the customer interacts with the program, they are then in fact, separate entities. Simply put, what is the emotional experience of the customer versus how can they utilize your loyalty program.
As customers in themselves are strident on having an omnichannel experience during challenging times, they are also looking to have a sense of exclusivity and appreciation for showing favor to your business. The intersectional point where both of these realms or realities meet is extremely important in the upcoming years as more and more companies are beginning to value their loyal customers and see the potential that loyalty programs bring.
So how is this union achieved? The answer, as all complicated things are, well, complicated.
Many factors need to be taken into consideration when trying to take in the requirements of the customer’s needs and align them with the financial goals of a company. This balancing act seldom is easy to achieve as there are numerous examples of companies over-investing in various technology, experience, and personalization modalities that hardly show any ROI. The inverse can be said the same as various companies fail to keep up with modern options, which leave their loyalty programs feeling antiquated and lackluster. Furthermore, it is important to consider that the initial success of a loyalty program shouldn’t only be measured by bottom-line returns. If you are able to use the tools you have and provide products and services where your customer feels valued and experiences trust in your brand, then conversion of opposing customers to your brand via word of mouth is of even more value than creating an entirely new one (which can cost up to 7x more than retaining/converting one).
“The complications that many businesses seem to have when trying to create or revamp a loyalty program is that they lose sight of who they are truly creating the program for and for what purpose” - Alexander Kubicki, Marketing Director at Sparta Loyalty - “Humans are complicated and in troubled times, they always seek familiarity and comfort, especially when they consider branding. The key to successful courtship between the experience of a customer and their participation in a loyalty program is to make it feel seamless and habitual, but also by reinforcing a consistent positive feedback loop.”
To truly achieve a connecting duality with your customers the following points need to be taken into consideration:
In short, finding the synergistic balance between the mental and physical realm of your customers is the sure way to achieve success for your loyalty program not only in 2022 but in the future. By employing some of the points outlined, finding the balance between customer experience and utility will bring forth only continued loyalty.