Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in loyalty marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.
Paula: Welcome to episode 45 of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Paula: Delighted to be with you all today.
Paula: And today, I am really happy to be bringing on a gentleman who is a colleague of mine based in India by the name of Kunal Mohiuddin.
Paula: Now, Kunal is a colleague within the Customer Strategy Network.
Paula: And many of you listening, certainly since the beginning, will already know that Kunal is now the fifth member of the Customer Strategy Network that I have invited to come onto the show to talk about his loyalty career.
Paula: Now, what I love about the Customer Strategy Network, actually, is literally that all of us that work in this way, which is essentially a collaborative global network of loyalty consultants, we’re all people who practice loyalty and have practiced it for many, many years.
Paula: And certainly Kunal is no exception.
Paula: I believe he has in excess of 20 years, mainly on the technology side, in fact, within the loyalty industry.
Paula: So without further ado, I would first like to welcome Kunal Mohiuddin to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Kunal: Thanks a lot, Paula.
Kunal: It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
Kunal: You know, I’ve been listening to your podcasts now for quite a while and very excited to be here.
Kunal: So thank you.
Paula: Great, great, great.
Paula: Excellent.
Paula: And as you know, I work a lot, for example, with The Wise Marketeer as well, Kunal.
Paula: And their subtitle is Global Voices of Loyalty.
Paula: And when I started recording, I really did make a commitment to myself, if nobody else, that we would have global perspective.
Paula: So really excited to hear all about your career.
Paula: And you’re based in New Delhi, isn’t that right?
Kunal: Absolutely, yes, in New Delhi.
Paula: Okay, fantastic.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: Okay, well, listen, before we get into your fantastic career, Kunal, I’m going to start the show the way I always do, by asking you about your favorite loyalty statistic.
Paula: So please tell the listeners of Let’s Talk Loyalty, what is your favorite loyalty statistic?
Kunal: Yes, Paula, I was actually thinking about this when you, of course, first asked me that, Kunal, would you participate in my show?
Kunal: And I was like, okay.
Kunal: So there are so many such statistics, right?
Kunal: It’s always difficult to nail one down.
Kunal: But however, I’ve always found one metric to be really, really, really useful, especially when one is evaluating your own customer base in terms of value and engagement levels across the organization.
Kunal: And of course, you would be familiar with what is called the RFM.
Kunal: And what we have done is we have done a twist to it, and we’ve added a V to it as well.
Kunal: So of course, a lot of our listeners, I’m sure your listeners would be familiar with RFM, which stands for recency, frequency, and monetary value, where recency tells us about how recent was the last transaction of your customer, how frequently are the number of transactions in terms of how frequently are they buying from you, and of course, monetary value indicating the amount of spend which is with you.
Kunal: Where I like to come in is to also add this V, which stands for variety.
Kunal: And it’s very interesting, especially if your company is in a multi-category or a multi-brand environment, where you like to additionally also gauge the extent of involvement of a customer across your categories on brands.
Kunal: And this actually, I think, becomes really an interesting and additional parameter to actually gauge and see customers.
Kunal: And we’ve really seen it do really wonders for some of our clients who are especially in a multi-brand environment, where we’ve actually looked at a lot of data because, like you mentioned, so being on, let’s say, the client, on the delivery side to clients for over 20 years, having experienced over 50, 60 different loyalty programs.
Kunal: And, of course, you always love seeing the data, right?
Kunal: I mean, that’s really where the fruit of the pudding is to actually see what is working and what is not.
Kunal: And when we looked at the variety, right?
Kunal: And we see that customers who are, for example, in one of our engagements, this was a multi-brand category.
Kunal: They had over six brands in the retail sector.
Kunal: And we saw customers who were transacting with three or more brands.
Kunal: They were actually spending more than 78% than customers who were just transacting with a single brand.
Kunal: And with customers who were transacting with just two brands, they were spending more than 32 to 33% more than that.
Kunal: So the value of the customer itself was really, really increasing in multiple times.
Kunal: As soon as customers were engaging with more brands.
Kunal: So that really showed us a lot of in terms of engagement levels and also really loyalty to the brand or to the organization as a whole itself.
Kunal: So that’s something which really, of course, as a marketer, you always look at cross-selling to customers and everything else.
Kunal: But this was fantastic that we could see it actually across various brands.
Kunal: And we’ve seen this actually, you know, fructify and across even in other industries, where it’s just a multi-category industry as well.
Paula: That’s amazing, Kunal.
Paula: So recency, frequency, monetary value, and now variety.
Paula: So adding in that sweet spot of cross-sell, and I can only imagine the amount of data that you had access to, because for listeners, I will mention that you founded NetCarrots as a loyalty platform, and co-founded, I know, Loyalty Prime out of India.
Paula: So you do have an extraordinary career, and as you said, you’ve worked across 50 or 60 programs then on the back of those platforms.
Paula: So to have insights in terms of where that sweet spot is across multiple brands, that’s incredible.
Kunal: Yes, it’s been a great journey, you know, and when you were talking about your global perspective as well, so I was fortunate to, of course, have co-founded Netcarrots and then also, of course, Loyalty Prime, and in Loyalty Prime, we were actually mainly focusing on the Europe and the American market, so also a lot of exposure to international clients and international businesses as well.
Kunal: So it’s been actually, of course, fantastic 20 years, you know, for me personally.
Paula: And I’m sure there’s plenty more ahead, Kunal.
Paula: With that, I suppose, global perspective, something I always love to understand as well is favorite loyalty programs.
Paula: And I guess, again, a lot of listeners may never have looked at the Indian market, for example, in terms of what’s going on there and also internationally.
Paula: So maybe just tell us a little bit about some of the programs that you admire around the world or domestically in your own country.
Kunal: Sure.
Kunal: So of course, there are lots of loyalty programs across the globe.
Kunal: And as a practitioner, one is always investigating, enrolling in whatever program.
Kunal: So as a frequent traveler, one of my favorite guest programs used to be, of course, the erstwhile SPG program, the Star Wars Profile Guest.
Kunal: And I thought it was really a very, very neat program.
Kunal: I had fantastic experiences with them.
Kunal: They used to really, really look at engaging and creating memorable experiences for especially the top level of members.
Kunal: And I think that was really a great program.
Kunal: And of course, it’s now merged into the Marriott and what they call now the Marriott Bonvoy program, which I think has kind of diluted a lot of what the SPG program used to be.
Kunal: On the other side, I think in terms of retail programs, I really admire and always admire the Tesco Club Card program as well, which is, of course, very popular in the UK.
Kunal: And of course, in terms of the kind of case studies and what they always did with data in terms of starting with micro segmentation and then one is to one kind of offering.
Kunal: So really, really fantastic work which they’ve done.
Kunal: And that’s, again, a really, really great program, which I really, really like.
Kunal: Coming to programs in India itself, I think in India, of course, the loyalty journey has been there for quite some time.
Kunal: And my company Netcarrots, well, I should say, of course, Netcarrots is still there.
Kunal: So we did a lot of cutting edge work with a lot of clients.
Kunal: And one of my favorite programs is the Titan program, which we run for them at Netcarrots.
Kunal: It’s, again, a very holistic program.
Kunal: It runs across multiple retail avenues.
Kunal: It’s online, offline.
Kunal: Really, really engages with customers at the personal level.
Kunal: So it’s really, really a fascinating program.
Kunal: Another one, which is in the credit card space, which I really like, is the HDFC Bank, which is one of India’s largest private banks.
Kunal: And they run a program called Infinia for their credit cards.
Kunal: And that’s also very, very interesting because they’ve used a lot of affiliate marketing.
Kunal: So if you shop through them to, let’s say, for example, Amazon and Sites, you get like 5X points on your credit card.
Kunal: They have their own travel booking engine.
Kunal: So you can redeem.
Kunal: And they have a huge variety of redemption options.
Kunal: And I think that’s what makes it very, very exciting and easy for customers.
Kunal: So on the earning side, you have a lot of multipliers.
Kunal: So you really end up earning 5X points in a lot of areas, for example, even booking with them.
Kunal: And then they have a huge area in terms of redemptions across travel.
Kunal: I mean, of course, right now, not too many people are traveling.
Kunal: But otherwise, it’s pretty exciting.
Kunal: Besides this, Paula, in my experience, as you’re aware, I’ve also been part of a lot of B2B programs as well.
Kunal: So besides, of course, B2C programs.
Kunal: And one of my experiences, of course, not personally, but someone who’s been delivering was with a cement manufacturing company.
Kunal: So one of the largest brands in India.
Kunal: And this is, of course, quite some time back, almost, you know, 12 or 14 years back when they had come to us with a very, very unique problem, right?
Kunal: Because it’s a commoditized business.
Kunal: How do you differentiate, you know, selling bags of cement?
Kunal: They were facing a lot of stagnation, a lot of defection in sales.
Kunal: They were running, you know, typical how people normally think, right?
Kunal: Let’s throw cash at dealerships and dealers, and they will just sell our product, right?
Kunal: So how do we kind of stand out?
Kunal: How do we kind of differentiate?
Kunal: And our client had come to do like said that, okay, let’s take a certain region within it, because India being, you know, a huge country, as you’re aware.
Kunal: So let’s do this pilot in a region and see if we can make it a success.
Kunal: And during those days, you know, where mobile penetration was not like what it is right now in India, where, you know, it’s very, very high in the…
Kunal: Yes, it was still very low.
Kunal: And even digital and internet penetration was even lower.
Kunal: So there it was, you know, this company trying to do a mostly online based program, right?
Kunal: Getting dealerships to come online and participate on this web based program.
Kunal: So it was going to be something which was really unique and fun.
Kunal: And what was beautiful was that, you know, with the client, we really looked at seeing how we could actually differentiate from your typical run of the mill cash programs.
Kunal: So what we did was we actually looked at mapping out the life of a dealer, right?
Kunal: How does this dealer who’s so critical to this B2B channel, who’s really driving all their sales, how do we kind of become an integral part of his life?
Kunal: So we created a framework called the 4Ms, where we map it out across what we call me, what is in it for me, myself, personally, for my family, for my business, and what can you do for my community?
Kunal: So typically, the dealers were in smaller towns, where it’s also in India, from a social factor, it’s very important that what was his own standing in the community, right?
Kunal: So he’s looked upon by his peers, looked upon by the people in his rural community.
Kunal: So we looked at building a whole bouquet of benefits across this entire set.
Kunal: And one of the insights that we also got when we were actually serving and looking at discussing with these dealerships was that the family and especially the lady of the house had a lot of say.
Kunal: So we wanted to make sure that we treated her very well, because again, this was a very male-dominant industry in India, especially very, very traditional, very male-dominated.
Kunal: So we said that, okay, so she’s special, so we should make sure that we have a lot of benefits, which she would enjoy because we saw a lot of times the lady of the house actually redeeming the gifts, right?
Kunal: So the husband would come and say, okay, this is what it is.
Kunal: What would you like?
Kunal: So it was very, very interesting.
Kunal: And the results spoke for itself.
Kunal: We were able to beat sales targets by 14% in a very, very short time.
Kunal: Yeah, brilliant.
Kunal: One of the major factors which they wanted to give incentives for was to drive electronic payments.
Kunal: At that time, most of the payments were non-digital in nature.
Kunal: So they had a lot of hassles in terms of paperwork, payments not getting through, like check payments not getting through.
Kunal: So they had to follow up with dealers.
Kunal: So it was a huge overhead.
Kunal: And can you believe it through this one major effort, we were able to drive electronic payments from 20% to greater than 95%.
Kunal: So it was fantastic.
Kunal: And of course, the program was rolled out across the country.
Kunal: And afterwards, it became a case study internally.
Kunal: And the cement manufacturing company was part of one of the largest global networks, global organizations in cement.
Kunal: And they then rolled it out as a case study and as an exercise in other markets as well.
Kunal: So yeah, that was one program which was really, really a huge, huge learning for us as loyalty practitioners, as someone who looks and studies loyalty to see how different markets and how different people behave.
Kunal: So it was a fantastic experience.
Paula: And something, I love that case study, Kunal.
Paula: You had literally just talked me through those incredible results before we came online.
Paula: So we always talk about loyalty is specifically about driving behavior.
Paula: And I love when it’s something as laser focused like you’ve just done, which is electronic payments is a huge operational issue.
Paula: So to go from 20 to 95 percent is amazing.
Paula: And can I just ask, how did you communicate, given, as you said, the size of the country?
Paula: Even starting in one city, I’m sure, was it by post or was it SMS at the time?
Paula: Or how did you even tell them?
Paula: Or did you have a roadshow, like a team going around educating them?
Kunal: Yeah, absolutely.
Kunal: So of course, in such a huge kind of a sales network, they have, of course, an extensive sales channel.
Kunal: So we use a lot of their own internal team members.
Kunal: So the sales teams itself, so of course, they were brought in at central locations.
Kunal: There was a lot of trainings which happened.
Kunal: The entire leadership team was brought in into the entire foray.
Kunal: So let’s say the business heads, from the business heads to the sales network, to the sales managers, to the district level.
Kunal: So it was really, really a top bottom grassroots involvement program.
Kunal: And this is something which I’ve seen is so critical to a success of the program.
Kunal: Because I’ve seen a lot of programs where the top leadership says, great, yes, we’re all on for it, but you don’t have the buy in at the ground level.
Kunal: And then the program completely fails because eventually, really the program has to succeed at the ground level where you’re engaging with the customer.
Kunal: When you have the engagement with the customers, what do they buy in?
Kunal: Do they believe in the program?
Kunal: Are they conveying the right message to the customers?
Kunal: So it was fantastic to see the way the entire organization believed in the program, went behind the program.
Kunal: And yes, we used them to enroll the dealerships and the entire families into the program.
Kunal: They had road shows.
Kunal: And of course, we then built a lot of databases as well.
Kunal: So we actually collected e-mail addresses.
Kunal: So let’s say when we started the program, they had an e-mail database of 3%.
Kunal: We brought that up to about 65, 70%.
Kunal: And of course, mobile numbers.
Kunal: SMS was of course frequently used.
Kunal: And I think again, we brought the mobile number database to almost, I think, 98 or 99% from something which was at about 50, 55%.
Kunal: And of course, we use SMS a lot.
Kunal: And yeah, and then we used to also have websites.
Kunal: So we used to give incentives for the dealer to come and log in on a monthly basis as well to the website.
Kunal: And we drove a lot of web usage as well.
Kunal: And you won’t believe it, a lot of the redemptions initially on the rewards catalog were for these internet Wi-Fi, what we call these dongles, which were these USB kind of dongles, which you could put in into your laptop or into your PC, and it would then help you connect to the internet.
Kunal: So a lot of them were used for things like that.
Kunal: So yes, it was very, very interesting.
Paula: Well, truly transforming their life, Kunal.
Paula: I mean, I wouldn’t have thought a concrete company would be the sexiest industry in the world, let’s say, from a marketing perspective.
Paula: But I like the holistic approach, like the fact that you said you did the, you know, what can you do for me, my family, my business, and my community?
Paula: And I could hear the passion coming through in your voice.
Paula: So it sounds like the whole company was completely bought into it, like, and super excited.
Paula: So that alone, I think the momentum builds a huge amount in terms of the energy and those performance results.
Paula: So well done on that.
Paula: That’s an incredible case study.
Paula: And I know frameworks are something that you seem very passionate about.
Paula: And you talked to me about another one as well that you developed, Kunal, your 3E framework.
Paula: So we’ve had your 4M.
Paula: So tell us about your 3E framework, because I think we can all learn from that one as well.
Kunal: Yes, so we were talking about the RFMV concept, right?
Kunal: And that always leads me to think about Burrito’s principle, right?
Kunal: The 80-20 rule, right?
Kunal: So where 20% of your customers are bringing 80% of your business, right?
Kunal: And it’s always beautiful to see loyalty programs always exhibiting that, right?
Kunal: I mean, if it’s not 20-80, it could be 15-80, or it could be 25-82, and so on and so forth.
Kunal: And then when you kind of look at even going into even deeper levels, you kind of end up seeing, let’s say, that your top 4-5% of your customers are really contributing upwards of 35-40-50% of your business, and maybe almost 70-80% of your company’s profits as well, right?
Kunal: So it then becomes really, really important for a business to make sure that they secure this customer base, right?
Kunal: Because this is really the creme de la creme of your company, right?
Kunal: And your company’s literally survival base is based on securing and locking these customers in.
Kunal: And so, you know, me and, of course, my co-founders, really, we were racking our brains and saying that, okay, we need a fantastic model, right, to build around this.
Kunal: And how do we kind of build something which is easy for us to explain to our clients so that they can understand that?
Kunal: How do we build a framework of rewards that what should we and how much should we allocate rewards to which kind?
Kunal: What to which case of customers?
Kunal: Sure.
Kunal: And that’s where the three E came up.
Kunal: And the three E stand for ECO, EGO and Evo.
Kunal: So ECO stands for economic.
Kunal: So the economic part of your benefits of your of your entire loyalty or rewards program, where you know, which is the hard benefit.
Kunal: So typically, of course, like the points that a person collects whenever he transacts, for example.
Kunal: So that’s what we call the standard, the base layer, which is typically there for all your customers.
Kunal: Then we have the second E, which is EGO, which is really about pampering your customers with, let’s say, special privileges or benefits.
Kunal: So like, for example, in the hospitality programs, you have, you know, elite benefits, like a free room upgrade.
Kunal: So an elite guest comes in, you have availability, so the customer automatically gets upgraded to the next level or to a suite or so on and so forth.
Kunal: So typically making him feel a bit special, pampering him, you know, is really the ego.
Kunal: And then the third E stands for Emo, which is the emotional link, right?
Kunal: So really kind of build an emotional connect with your customers.
Kunal: Of course, this is this we all know is the most difficult to do.
Kunal: And of course, is the I would say also the most typically the most expensive to actually deliver, right?
Kunal: Because this is really about personalizing and really, really making the customer feel special.
Kunal: And trying to build that special bond with the customer where it’s not just a transactional relationship.
Kunal: And you’re trying to take the relationship really to the next level where the customer really becomes more of a brand adequate and has that linkage with the brand.
Kunal: And the way we used to actually look at segregating this was that we see it that, of course, for your really top cream customers, you need to have, besides, of course, your economic and ego benefits, you need to really also build an emotional level.
Kunal: And you’re not talking about just sending, let’s say, a birthday card or a greeting or something like that.
Kunal: Of course, that everyone does to all the customers normally.
Kunal: And customers, that just devalues it.
Kunal: So here is something where you really want to do something special, where the customer, you do something either for the family or something special.
Kunal: So, for example, in my B2B case with our cement, we did a kind of a scholarship program, right?
Kunal: Where we looked at students of our dealership who were really top performing, and we gave them like a college scholarship, right?
Kunal: And that’s something which, you know, that dealers booked in for life, right?
Kunal: I mean, because you’ve done something for that child, right?
Kunal: Giving them a scholarship and everything else.
Kunal: So things like that where you can actually look at, you know, taking that relationship, taking that thing really forward and building something really special, a special bond with your dealers.
Kunal: And they become really advocates for you, right?
Kunal: They really do.
Paula: And I love that one actually, Kunal.
Paula: It’s not something that I thought a lot about, but education is life changing.
Paula: It certainly was for me when I finally got around to going to the university.
Paula: So as an adult, let’s say.
Paula: But you already talked about you transformed some of the lives of those dealers essentially through your loyalty program, which again is just so rewarding when you’re running a program like that and you’re giving them internet access, but now giving them, as you said, an education for a child as well.
Paula: I think that’s a rewards category that certainly takes the emotional box, but also I think particularly at the moment, I think what I’m hearing, Kunal, I don’t know about you, but it’s all about what really matters.
Paula: Particularly, I think the pandemic has changed people’s values at a fundamental level.
Paula: And lots of brands are kind of going, great, yes, I have a transactional loyalty program and we need to be fair and reward people.
Paula: But what can I do that genuinely shows that I want to do something significant?
Paula: And there are loads of ways of doing that, but you’ve nailed one there.
Paula: So well done.
Paula: And I know that was a long time ago, so hugely relevant.
Paula: And I really think it’s one everybody will be excited to hear more about.
Paula: So the other piece then, I guess I just wanted to move on, Kunal, was really just to ask you really about what trends are you seeing now?
Paula: I know you’re an entrepreneur.
Paula: I know you love obviously technology.
Paula: We’ve already talked about your background in terms of setting up, you know, those underlying platforms.
Paula: But I get super excited about things like voice technology, about, you know, things like communications tools, like WhatsApp we’ve talked about.
Paula: What are you seeing as opportunities, I suppose, for loyalty managers in terms of maybe just doing something cool using tech?
Kunal: Yes, absolutely.
Kunal: So, of course, I mean, you know, we’ve been seeing a trend, of course, in terms of, you know, making the customer experience really the center, right, of a business.
Kunal: So, you’re making sure that the experience of a customer is on the channel.
Kunal: It’s completely seamless and integrated across all touch points.
Kunal: And, you know, so it’s not just that it’s, you know, that you have a different experience.
Kunal: The data is not interlinked.
Kunal: Of course, this is completely very, very obvious to, I think, all businesses and a lot of businesses have already moved towards it.
Kunal: And we see a complete trend towards that.
Kunal: And, of course, underlying in this, I think, is something which is being, of course, stomped on and talked about a lot, which is artificial intelligence and AI.
Kunal: And I see AI really, really bringing another dimension and adding a completely different dimension to this entire experience of customers, right?
Kunal: Where we can actually look at delivering what I call, you know, really extreme or hyper personalization, right?
Kunal: So it can be really, really personalized in terms of offers, your rewards to customers or even experiences, you know, to customers.
Kunal: In fact, you know, one of the companies that I’m currently consulting and working with is an AI company, and they’re really, really doing some cutting edge work and, you know, be it a bit in customer experience, but also something which really excites me and something which is really, really exciting is in what is called visual AI.
Kunal: And so to explain it, I think it’s best done as an example.
Kunal: So one of the applications which they’ve kind of developed is, for example, in the fashion space.
Kunal: So, you know, so I’ve always wondered, like, you know, you’re walking, you know, my wife sees, you know, she sees a friend wearing a lovely dress, or she sees someone, you know, on the streets wearing something nice.
Kunal: You always have to then go up or you ask the person, the person doesn’t want to tell you typically where they bought it or whatever.
Kunal: So it’s always that, you know, so you just take a, you know, a photograph from the back or something like that.
Kunal: And simply, you know, the app will automatically basis the database of your fashion, your fashion company or your own parallel database will automatically match that and give you recommendations, right, which are visually similar.
Kunal: Wow.
Kunal: So this is something which I thought really, really is fantastic.
Kunal: And these kind of applications are then being done in terms of experiences in, you know, in insurance where you as a customer can take a video whenever, let’s say, for example, you’ve had, you have a claim, your car has unfortunately had an accident.
Kunal: You could take a video of your car and automatically it would assess the damages on that as well.
Kunal: So these are fantastic experiences which I think are being brought and delivered, you know, which will actually build in into the entire customer experience.
Kunal: And of course, this all builds in into the story of contactless, right?
Kunal: Which is where we are moving towards in this post-COVID-19 world, right?
Kunal: Where we have to learn to live with social distancing space as much as we can.
Kunal: And I think AI will really, really help deliver a lot of these superior experiences to customers.
Paula: Yeah, and I know for a fact that I don’t understand AI, Kunal, for example, it comes up, as you said, as a term in so many conversations, and I don’t really know what it’s doing behind the scenes.
Paula: But I like that visual AI example.
Paula: Is it already in operation?
Paula: Is it built in and already out and about?
Paula: Is that working, that one you’re talking about?
Kunal: Yes, absolutely.
Kunal: So we have it ready right now.
Kunal: And yes, and the marketing and everything else has started.
Kunal: So it’s something which is live.
Kunal: And in fact, this is something which I will be sharing with some of our CSM colleagues as well very soon.
Paula: Well, well done, you, Kunal.
Paula: I think that is incredible because again, I think we all just crave education.
Paula: And most people listening know that’s exactly why I do a podcast.
Paula: I can have these kinds of conversations.
Paula: Otherwise, genuinely, it would never come up in my day to day consulting work.
Paula: So I feel like there’s an opportunity for us to be using these opportunities to think ahead and go, yes, I know that a solution exists somewhere, if I have a problem that Visual AI could fix.
Kunal: Right.
Kunal: And in fact, just going back to what you talked about, CSN, and I think it’s been one of my go-to resources to learn so much because we have such a fantastic member base across the globe, with a fantastic community doing such amazing work, from really cutting out stuff in terms of mobile apps to really analytic stuff and across industries, right Paula?
Kunal: So it’s really amazing to always, whenever I get to engage and interact with you or some of the other guys, it’s just fantastic.
Kunal: It’s always a great learning for me as well.
Paula: Wonderful.
Paula: Well, and again, I always say, none of us can get to all the conferences that we want to, or watch all the YouTube videos we want to, or whatever it might be, or read all the magazines.
Paula: So all the information is there, but it really does help when you have somebody you trust.
Paula: You can just say, what do you think about this particular problem or solution?
Paula: So at some point, what we should do, Kunal, is sit down and figure out how many loyalty programs between us we’ve all managed.
Kunal: Yes, absolutely.
Kunal: We need to do that.
Paula: We need to do it.
Paula: Brilliant.
Paula: Great.
Paula: Well, listen, I’m going to wrap up from my side now, Kunal.
Paula: I’ve actually asked all the questions I wanted to ask you.
Paula: So was there anything else you wanted to talk about in terms of the show?
Paula: Because I know you have this, as I said, incredible breadth of experience and starting to do consulting work now in lots of new areas.
Paula: So anything else that you think we should just chat about before we wrap up?
Kunal: I think you kind of covered almost, I guess, some most of the interesting parts.
Paula: The whirlwind tour.
Kunal: The whirlwind tour, right, right.
Kunal: It was, I think the only part which would be maybe, which I would like to add is, you know, when we’re looking at, of course, right now in terms of some of the troubled sectors, right, like especially hospitality and travel sectors, right, which are really, really troubled in this post-COVID scenario.
Kunal: I think one of the things which I have definitely seen as well as a trend and speaking to a lot of people in the industry as well, that the loyalty programs that they run actually become even more critical and more important for them, right?
Kunal: And what I really see out here is that they have to really look at their top customer base really, really well, right?
Kunal: And this is where I think that Ego Emo model comes in, where what is it that they can do to make it like really special, start getting back, start engaging with customers, especially at least their top customers again, right?
Kunal: And this always reminds me of one of the beautiful things that one of my clients used to do is for their top customers.
Kunal: And again, it was really, really special.
Kunal: And we had so many customers coming in, writing back to us after that experience.
Kunal: What they used to do was they used to, for their, for let’s say a member’s anniversary, they used to invite the member and his wife for a special dinner, which was with the head chef.
Kunal: And he would do, you know, like a seven course meal for them.
Kunal: And really, really, it would be really just pampering the guests and making them really, really feel special, like a memorable moment, which they would never forget in their life.
Kunal: And those were kind of moments and experiences which we would have guests coming back.
Kunal: And of course, this was only done for really the extremely, let’s say, top, top 0.5, 0.2% of the base, because you can only do it for a few.
Kunal: And these are the kind of benefits which I think, or experiences which, you know, I think in the hospitality and of course, even in the travel sector, they can kind of really look at building and pushing to guests and customers, right, during this time.
Kunal: Because you can always invite a guest.
Kunal: I mean, he may not be traveling, but there could be an experience or something which would actually deliver in his own city where he is.
Paula: Yeah, you’re right, actually.
Paula: And I think the more you do adapt and evolve, the more the customers realize the effort you’ve gone to, actually.
Paula: And the appreciation levels go completely up, because as you said earlier, Kunal, like you can easily send the birthday email out, but, you know, it’s kind of like, oh, that’s interesting, or that’s nice they sent me that.
Paula: But yes, if you go, OK, we realize you can’t fly with us or stay with us.
Paula: So let’s do something different, and we’re adapting to take care of you.
Paula: So I love your Pareto principle again.
Paula: It’s the foundation of our industry.
Paula: So I know everybody’s already familiar with it, but I think you’re totally right.
Paula: Now is the time to invest in those people.
Paula: None of us have businesses if we can’t recognize those key customers.
Paula: So I think it’s the perfect note to end on.
Paula: So really delighted we had this conversation.
Paula: So literally want to say thank you so much, Kunal Mohiuddin from Let’s Talk Loyalty, and it’s been fantastic talking to you.
Kunal: Thank you, Paula.
Kunal: It’s been a pleasure to be with you.
Paula: This show is sponsored by The Wise Marketeer, the world’s most popular source of loyalty marketing news, insights and research.
Paula: The Wise Marketeer also offers loyalty marketing training both online and in workshops around the world through its Loyalty Academy, which has already certified over 150 executives in 18 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
Paula: For more information, check out www.thewisemarketeer.com and www.loyaltyacademy.org Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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