#395: Understanding Loyalty in Czech Republic & Key Take-Outs from The European White Paper

Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m Paula Thomas, the Founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty. Today’s episode is hosted by Charlie Hills, Managing Director of Mando-Connect, a UK based agency that uses smart data to create brilliant partnerships and rewards that really work.

If you work in loyalty marketing, make sure to join Let’s Talk Loyalty every Tuesday, every Wednesday, and every Thursday to learn the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.

Capillary’s loyalty solutions offer AI powered next generational technology. Making them a catalyst for enabling meaningful human connections across the globe. The platform is deep and wide, yet flexible enough to meet the needs of any company looking to take its customer loyalty to new heights. Visit capillarytech.com now to see how they can transform your loyalty future.

Charlie: Hello and welcome to episode 395 of Let’s Talk Loyalty. I’m Charlie Hills, the Managing Director and Head of Strategy for Mando-Connect, WPP’s loyalty specialist partnerships and rewards agency. We have created a new white paper in partnership with YouGov that explores loyalty, membership appeal, and impact across 24 European markets.

And I’m delighted to be hosting a series of six podcasts with some of the experts featured in the paper to help listeners better understand loyalty across Europe. Today, I am delighted to welcome Radek from Voxwise. Radek has dedicated the last 20 years of his professional life to loyalty programs and direct marketing, and is one of the most skilled practitioners in central Europe.

He’s a partner of the Voxwise Company, which delivers loyalty programs, pricing, and direct marketing solutions, and he has provided the expert commentary on the Czech Republic in the white paper. Today we will be learning about reddick’s favorite loyalty programs, what the loyalty landscape looks like in the Czech Republic, and which are the programs to watch.

I hope you enjoy our conversation today.

Hello Reddick. Welcome to today. We’re absolutely thrilled to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been such a pleasure to work on the white paper with you and I’m really excited to talk to you about it today. I’m gonna dive straight in really with Paula’s favorite question. What is your favorite loyalty program?

Radek: Currently, I’m really delighted to be here cause I’m listening to lesser loyalty since inception. And I think that this question is very well set because it tells a lot about the person answering. It’s Paula’s secret. Cause you know, you have various people from around the world and most of them, you know, willing to share their world class knowledge.

So there are sharing their, the biggest ones and, especially from travel industry where the size matters. But I think and personally myself, I’m a little bit contrarian to, to the others. So, so I was thinking about this question, and I was trying to persuade myself not to say this, but I can’t help myself.

You know, my favorite local program is a local pizza shop. 

Radek: It’s a paper card. So after, you know, buying seven pizzas and receiving seven stamps, you get one for free. It can be more, it can be simpler. It’s, it’s so simple. It’s so nice from him because I know him personally. He is, I live in a very small town, not far away from Prague.

So, he is a local entrepreneur. He does pizza, nothing else. So, his view about the world, about the possibilities in marketing. He doesn’t have website. Why maybe some basic one and still, he is taking care of his customers and giving away something for the loyal ones. So I take this as a big learning because, most of my time, I spend the time thinking about big loyalty efforts and, managing millions of clients and helping big companies to do complicated schemes, trying to be on budget and trying to calculate ROI. And we often, and myself too, often forget that there are some basics in the loyalty industry and that we shouldn’t forget the reward. Customers, they love to be rewarded. And what’s the better reward than free pizza? 

Charlie: Yes. Do you get through seven? 

Radek: Yes. Seven, seven and eight is three. Actually I think that this program, gives us also also big learning about the thinking of entrepreneurs because, I think that he is aware that there is no competition around, there are no another competitors close to.

But, I don’t think that only having a great product is the only way to long-term success people, cause people get bored. You know, we can’t eat pizza every second day and, and not everybody’s fun of this, meal. So even if you are very local and when very small and you have the personal touch to your customers, you have to accept that some of them forget.

And they you know, less you are involved, less you, less, you maybe don’t pass the shop you just forget more often. So anyway, how to get some engagement, some attraction, some message to the customer’s brain. It’s valid.

And, I learned during my career, one important thing, people never buy exclusively from one brand. This is my lifetime topic, the share of wallet, but probably I’ll talk about it with you a little bit because. And the share of wallet is something you need to accept that people, they just simply don’t buy from one brand.

They don’t eat pizza every day. And any, any additional purchase, any additional order you can somehow influence and maybe through loyalty program, is counted as is your future. So that’s it. But, of course there are also some good examples of great programs, which are absolutely, let’s say updated.

So I’d like to also share with you another one, which is Sweetgreen. It’s a salad bars chain in states, and their approach to loyalty is absolutely different. And they have two tiers, etcetera. But for the basic free tier, the reward proposition is not set. It’s based on challenges.

So you don’t know exactly what you get next week. You have to complete a challenge. And this is great because it rewards your changes in behavior. And I think this is very underestimated that in the loyalty industry, in our efforts, what is our aim? Increase the probability of the next purchase, but how? We need to translate this to customer’s behavior. And we need to give him or her some motivation and some infament to see the information in the brain that if I do this, I get this. And these short term challenges are so powerful. Okay, so two examples. 

Charlie: I think those are brilliant examples. 

Radek: Thank you. 

Charlie: And I love that blend of the small and independent business because I think we’re all very familiar with those loyalty programs and I really enjoy seeing the big brands as well, who’ve taken that insight in that simplicity and brought it to life for their programs.

So, you know, famously in the British market at the moment, we’ve got big programs moving from points to milestone models. So Costa Club was one of the first ones to do it. And then interestingly, this week we’ve seen some going  back to kind of more of a points model. And, and then I think that second point you’ve made there about gamification and rewarding brand appropriate behavior with brand appropriate reward is a big trend that we are seeing in loyalty at the moment.

Do you have any other sort of key thoughts of other big trends that you are seeing coming through in loyalty? Because I think simplicity definitely, gamification, definitely. What are the other big areas that you’re seeing come in? 

Radek: In UK the same approach, is taken by ASDA and the guy from ASDA was at Let’s Talk Loyalty recently. So everybody can listen to him and try to understand.

I think but the gamification approach is the main trend. But what is very underestimated is how difficult it is to execute it long term. Because it sounds great. You know, we have challenges, we have games there. But you know, you have to be fresh to the audience and not audience of one, but audience of many. 

You have to work on the program every day. This is forgotten that such  approaches very, you know, work intensive and people, you know, they think that one, one template is enough, but it is not. Cause you know, what people tell you, about long-term loyalty that after some time, they get bored.

They simply, it’s the same, you know, it’s rewarding. But you know, nothing’s happening. And, we have to fight for that. 

Charlie: Yeah, I think that. 

Radek: Another big trend is communication. It’s not a trend because David Ogilvy started direct communication 70 years ago about. And I think people companies are still missing the message that we, in direct communication, we should be direct. It means direct, it means not me as a company, as a corporation. I’m communicating with you, Charlie our customer. But, direct is on personal level. We’re talking about personalization, forgetting to use the right words.

So I’ve. It’s not that, it’s not very surprising, but I think that words, and copyrighting is going back from the basement where it was put. So anyway.

Charlie: No, and I think the rise of AI is really interesting in that space as well. So we’re already starting to test it to see, you know, with copywriting capabilities, and I think that’s going to be the next kind of big challenge in direct and personalization.

How do you make the best of it, but not, you know, dip into perhaps the worst of it. 

Radek: Exactly.

Charlie: Do you have any clients looking at that in terms of what’s coming and the future exploring those kind of new technologies in this space? Are you looking at it? 

Radek: I am looking at it. I  do watch the trend very carefully. Clients are, they are not so eager to it because they think it’s a toy. And at the moment, it’s a nice, very intelligent toy. But, it’s gonna change the industry and, communication in industry for sure. And we think that we will challenge big problems in terms of management of the communication because you know, personalization sounds great, but if you don’t, you can’t control the machine when it’s creating communication for millions of people in real time.

So actually in front of us. And, I think we are gonna manage it as, as, as usually.

Charlie: It’s exciting times, isn’t it? 

Radek: Yes, it is.

Charlie: And, and that’s sort of looking ahead, you know, let’s look back, how did you get into loyalty? What’s your loyalty background? And then we’ll come onto talk about the kind of the check market in particular.

But, but how did you get in? What’s your, what’s your background in the industry?

Radek: It’s such a boring story, Charlie. 

Charlie: Short version then, short version. 

Radek: Short version. It’s such a boring story because I was studying university and during internship, that was my first official internship in, 1999. It’s good to remember, I love these numbers. 

I was asked to do a research around loyalty because, the chairman, the CEO of the company, it was a retail company, in fashion. He thought it would be nice to have some kind of club, you know? See, 20 plus years ago, I’m not using the exact number because I’m frightened.

So, in 1992 before finishing the school, I did the research and I told the board, you know, I was very young and told them. You just must launch it. It’s important. Didn’t know exactly what database means, but I was very, you know, I was very serious. And they just gave me the chance to launch it. So I was, I launched the Baťa Klub in year 2000. And I spent with the company another 10 years managing the club, and also being CMO for Central Europe. 

And then I left marketing, I left branding, I left communication. And I solely focused on loyalty because I love it. Because I think it’s meaningful and what I hate on advertising, is the thing that you work on something for six months and then it’s gone in 30 seconds. You know, the concentration of the ad work to the time span is so frustrating. So because, and when you design a loyalty program in can last for 20 years. So Bat’a Klub is still alive after 23 years it is there, it’s running. And well, I love it.

Charlie: I, it’s something to be so proud of, isn’t it? I feel the same way about the programs that I’ve worked on as well. Yes. And then obviously we’ve worked together on the white papers and I still get really excited, you know, when we have the limited edition prints and actually the research lives on and, and people can, can use it. Tell us a little bit about.

Radek: What happened after? I left the company. And I started my freelance career because focusing on loyalty and we’ll see. And very recently, I met two guys, who are now my partners in Voxwise. And we created a perfect trio because I’m in loyalty, and, my another partner Peter is in pricing. So we do pricing, consulting, pricing projects. And my third partner, Milan, is expert in analytics and direct communication engagement. So we together, joined the forces. We, on the beginning, were free. You know, doing consultancy, doing project. Now we are close to 40 people and we’ve, we are mainly focused on data analytics and engagement.

And I bring to the team the knowledge of loyalty. We do loyalty designs. Mostly internationally because actually we don’t do so much in Czechoslovakia. Because I’m coming from Czech Republic, I’ll tell you later how small but beautiful country it is. 

Charlie: Well no, I think we’re excited to hear. Tell us more about the Czech Republic and what loyalty looks like in that market, because I know that was the expert commentary that you brought into the white paper and actually an overview of that market.

You know, what does membership look like, what do checks think about loyalty programs and the I, I’m always interested, particularly as we talk about, about the similarities and differences to the other markets. I know you have some strong points of view on that. So tell us, what does loyalty look like in the Czech Republic?

Radek: First Czech Republic, you know, less of loyalty has international audience, so I have to do some PR to my beloved home country. We are something like hidden gem in the century of Europe, but nobody really knows exactly where Czech Republic lies. So I say just in the middle of Europe, 10 million people.

So it’s not a big country, but we are not very invited to people because Czech Republic is beautiful, green, healthy, you know, surroundings, not too many people. So, we are really protective and we have very cheap beer, and the best beer in the world. Cause Pilsen is coming from a city in Czech Republic.

So we have, can say, you know, all the treasures and is beautiful city. So come to Prague and you will come back. I’m absolutely sure. It’s as lovely as Venice and, not so crowded, Czech Republic. 

Thanks to your work, discovering landscape of loyalty around Europe. I had a chance to see how do Czechs behave in comparison to other European countries. 

And I was surprised that we are not below average as I thought, but we are in most metrics above average. For example, the percentage of people who are members of loyalty program, is close to 70, 60, 67%, as a lot in comparison to, to the other European countries. I think the study is great.

It’s, it’s like validation. What I found really interesting is that you have some metrics and when you see them based on countries and you see the differences, you can better understand your home market. 

Because in comparison you see, okay, Poland, oh, polls are really different to us. That’s true. But Germans are very similar. Yes, but that’s true. 

Charlie: Yeah, exactly. 

Radek: So it’s really, it’s really the studying material. And I think that we as an expert maybe, appreciate it even more than the general public. So I’d like to invite all the people who are keen on loyalty. Please read and think about it. Not only, you know, the first two pages as we usually do in every white paper, but, think about the graphs and think about the differences.

In Czech Republic, 50% of people said that they are attending, being in loyalty  program that makes them more loyal. That’s a very sound message. You know, 50 half  of the population say we are more loyal and one third exactly 31% say we shop more often.

We spend more in Great Britain. It is 37%. 37% say they shop more. And it’s such a great data point. You know, I wish to have these data years before because I spend years of, yeah, arguing and defending business cases on various load programs. And in every business case, if you plan the future, you have to put some conversion rates.

How many people will leave our company, our brand? How many people will spend more? How many people will spend less? And these conversions are  the heart of any business case. And now in the study in the white paper, thanks to you Charlie, you have a European benchmark. You know that at least one third of people will definitely spend more.

And by the way, when I look at my analysis of my past work and my clients, I think the number vary from, from 20 to 50, but around 30 is very say that, so that’s most interesting outcome of the study. And it’s good to see the variances, you know, close to 40 in very Britain. You are such of fans of the programs. I help myself.

Charlie:  I think that has been one of the most interesting things in the podcast. And then in talking to the different market experts and program leads about the white paper actually, it’s what can you learn about your own market, but then who can you look and see is doing it better or having a stronger emotional impact, for example, and what are they doing?

Better in that market than we are doing in ours. And I think that’s almost the hidden gem of the research. You know, we started out just wanting to provide the kind of benchmarks for everybody, for those business cases to get loyalty back up on the agenda. But actually I think the case studies that we’ve brought in, you know, from the program leads that are in the paper, but also from the market experts is yourself, really help kind of identify that insight.

Like it’s really interesting. When you look at it, that recommendation is so high in the Czech Republic. If 46% of Czechs will recommend a brand, you know, if they’re a member of its loyalty program and that’s versus a 36% sort of European average. So there’s obviously a lot happening in that market and culturally and can contextually and in the broader scheme of everything that brands are doing that are actually driving, you know, recommendations so strongly in your market.

In the paper you talked about sort of some case studies of some programs that were, you know, performing well in the Czech Republic. I’m sure our readers, it’s one of the questions we always get asked, you know, talk to us about what’s the programs to look at in the Czech market, you know, which programs would you recommend our listeners go and have a look at?

Radek: In the paper you can find three of them, and I will highlight Da and Bulgaria, which is a drug store chain, very similar to Boots. They do exactly the same offering. The program is very old. It’s about 20 years, and it evolved through the time. So it is, the new version is since 2018.

It’s called Active Beauty. And, why I highlight that one? First, it’s a huge one. You know, more than half of women in Czech Republic are members. It’s a big company. It’s  number one, but they’re active. It’s not like members in the database. People are tend, you know, tend to present themselves that we have millions of people, but we are professionals, so we don’t care how many rows are in the database.

But how many are with some activities, sign of life and they are active. They are they, and that’s the, in their official presentation. What is important that’s, through the independent measurements, they are really number one in loyalty among bigger companies. And, why is it the offering is aimed to women, and women tend to go to drugstore very often.

So the earn burn mechanic, the collection of points is necessary when you have frequency you can’t play a game every second day, you know, that’s too much. So, and but besides that, there is a big role of personalized vouchers, which they deliver through mail, through mobile application, through email, If the vouchers are in drugstore, the variety of brands and things you buy as a  woman, it’s quite vast. It’s not one brand store. 

So, the personalization effort is quite successful. And when I interview women, they very often tell me that in their am they know me. So they are sending me relevant offers. That’s like, you know when the bell is ringing, you know? You’ve finally noted someone is successful. 

But I’d like to point out another thing, which I admire and highlight. This brand  don’tsave money on communication. They do prepare and print very nice magazine. They send a magazine via mail. The, all the content is available and, very nicely put on the website, in the mobile application.

And, it’s all about health and beauty. So, their audience is engaged, they like it. So communication, very good basic scheme. Very good let’s say management of the scheme and in the end, you have a brilliant example of grade loyalty program. 

Charlie: Yeah. And I think that propensity for women to engage with loyalty programs, perhaps more than their male counterparts is, is something really interesting that we need to look at that, in that European level, we’ve certainly got, we see that very strongly, in the British market.

Significant difference between the two in terms of, you know, their propensity to engage, their membership, their activity levels, their appeal, their impact. And we’re actually just starting the work, to look at that at a pan-European level. We’re also gonna be looking at age as well and how that affects loyalty engagement.

And I think those are again, very interesting things that we need to think about as loyalty marketers to tailor the program to the audience. What about your other favorite programs? I know you did three in the paper, so who would you, who would you put, who’s number two? Talk to me that, talk to our listeners about another one.

Radek: Let me say a few words, about something what is not visible on the first sight. This is regarding the drugstore chain. They don’t do a classical actionable price discounting. What they do, they collect the money from vendors. And they transfer this money through points multipliers. But don’t look at points multiplied by two or three, they use 10, 20 times more points for certain brand of product.

And all this money, they end up in the most low customer accounts. So it’s a nice game and I think it should be emphasized. I, you know, all the retailers around the world, you are this decreasing prices. You are playing with the price. But what about, you know, give your loyal customers something from that game. They will appreciate it.  Let’s go to another two examples. 

Second example, and I think very good for inspiration, is a pharmacy chain Dr.Max, it’s a European brand. It’s I think it’s seven, eight countries and their proposition is focused on elderly people because they go to pharmacies with prescription and their topic is you know, saving money.

So any prescription, almost, almost any, has some additional charge. And what they offer is decreasing the charge by 50% or a hundred percent. So, they move the value which can, which all the other pharmacists collect to their loyal customers. And in the end, this pharma chain is number one on the market, have more than half of total population in the database, is far leading the market. It’s profitable because of the size.  Sometimes when you give away, you get even more back. So that’s, that’s second example. 

And third one, my very favorite one is from leisure industry. It’s Gopass. It’s the program for ski resorts, for aquaparks, for hotel chains, for hotels and golf resorts. It sounds boring you know, people go, ski and, and, and get back home.

And what has achieved Gopass was total transformation of the business.

At the moment, the GoPass is the gate where you buy your tickets, where you exchange tickets, where you see the prices because of course they are capacity industry. So the dynamic pricing is the place where you collect points, where you collect rewards on various activities.

And I’d like to highlight something I really love and admire. And it was idea of one of my partners in company, the ski challenge. It’s a different kind of gamification. It’s the challenge. 

So you, Charlie, as a skier? You set a challenge in on the beginning of ski season. You fun, nice way. You say, okay, this season a hundred miles. And the game is that we are counting, they are counting the miles you ski through the season and they are constantly reminding you that you are so close to your milestone. The ski challenge is such a, you know such a brilliant and simple idea that people are self controlling themselves.

And going to, to get  black bomb or some different sticker and put it on the helmet, you know, going to be loyal for the sticker. That’s, that’s really, that’s amazing. And dozens of thousands of people are engaged because at the moment, Gopass and I didn’t say sorry, is not something local. It’s in, I think, seven ski resorts and aqua parks, at least three. And it is also, expanding to Alps, to to Austrian and Switzerland, ski resorts as a platform because now they are offering that as a platform which we can, rent. 

Charlie: Yeah, I think it’s fantastic. It was one of my favorite case studies in the paper actually, because it made me really think like, gosh, we don’t have anything like that in Britain.

Why don’t we have anything like that? You know, we have the sports apps, we have the running apps, we have the psyching apps. You know, that industry has done a fantastic job of driving activity level. We learned about board riders when we were out in Zurich, didn’t we? At the loyalty summit. I was like, again, all these brilliant sort of sports specific apps, but we don’t have that kind of, that equivalent leisure app over here.

And I was like, oh, actually that’s such an interesting opportunity to think about. And I think those similarities between programs are so interesting as well, you know.

Boots is obviously very similar to the case studies that you’ve talked about. I think actually, you know, they’ve now introduced variable pricing. They’re actually reducing the points that they give away. And you know, I wonder what they could learn from looking at those other programs to see actually, you know, what new ideas can it bring. I think it’s the best bit about the research, sort of understanding how others are doing it and you know what, can you be inspired by?

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in loyalty marketing? And that’s tricky for somebody who started off by founding a program and then running it for 10 years. I’m sure there’s many, many lessons. But for the listeners, what are the sort of key, what key lesson would you like to share? 

Radek:  I think you’ll be surprised it’s not about customers. My approach to design a scheme to do the work is to go, see and listen to people. So I do deep dive interviews myself, not through agency. I’m really keen on to see the people, what they, how they use the product, etcetera. But my biggest learning is different one. 

Loyalty program can cultivate company, let me explain it. Every company is a product oriented machine because the founder, her or him, he was focused. He developed something, you know? Whether it’s service or product, etcetera. But, it’s a product orientation and, that’s important because when you are small entrepreneur, you have to survive. You have to focus on the product. And, and deliver the product.

But only a few companies while they’re growing, they put customers at the center. Because normal way of growth is that you are such a fall in love with the product. So you polish it and you grow. You are bored with bought by someone or you buy your competitors and you grow to a corporation.

And in the corporation there are so many stakeholders. It’s not about customers. Customers is only one of them. And my learning through all these years, seeing, watching, talking to my clients companies, is that when a company have a strong loyalty program, there is no escape. They simply, you know, it doesn’t, it don’t allow you to not to talk about customers.

They are on the table. They’re, they’re around the table in the boardroom. You can’t ignore them and it cultivates people because they at least have to talk and discuss all the problems which are created by the big database of people. So you can’t ignore the voice when you have strong loyalty program. And that’s my biggest lesson.

So I’m always telling my clients, it will change your organization. You don’t, believe it now, but by your metrics, what you are discussing in the board will be added by metrics related to your loyal customers. And you finally will see that your life, your bonuses, your future profit is enhanced of such a little group of loyal customers.

Cause the part of Princip 2018, it’s valid. You have a hundred million customers, but only two to five to 10 million are the most important one who will buy, go, next year again and will not leave you, even in bad times. So that’s it. 

Charlie: I think that’s a great insight. I think it’s very closely linked to one of mine, which is to see the power of that insight that the loyalty program brings about who those customers actually are, and then how it can change things across the business and it can make businesses reprioritize and understand better.

You know, I can think of quite a few loyalty programs who post-launch have actually sort of changed the whole customer segmentation of a business because they understood where that value was. And I think that power of that insight is, is so key to, to marketing as a whole, you know, of which loyalty marketing is such an important part.

Where do you get your sort of inspiration and updates from? You know, what resources do you look to to find out what’s happening in the industry and how we can kind of build and, and freshen up that insight. It’s one of the questions we always get asked. Everybody always wants the top tips on where they should be looking. Where do you look, Radek? 

Radek: Well, I’ve found out that there’s a little application called Chat GPT. 

Charlie: Yes. It’s fantastic. 

Radek: No, no, no. Let’s be serious. It is important and it will be even more important in the future. But, I don’t want to talk to the machine. I am listening to people, so Let’s Talk Loyalty. And they, this is, you know,  my source of inspiration. And I’ve, and I don’t listen to people to steal their ideas but very often they say something, by the way, some important information for me. But they just mention it like, okay, let’s go. So, I listen to people. 

My, the biggest source of knowledge is I’m judge at International Loyalty Awards. And to be honest with you, reading these, all these dozens of applications every year, discussing with other judges and you know, being in the position of selecting the winners, it is not very pleasant job. 

Because you have to, you know, you see that all applicants were trying their best and they are maybe three, sometimes four, who are you know, who are, who could be the winners. So the selection process is very painful. 

But, for me it’s the biggest learning I can get and, I’m very honored to be there. So, my blog is perfect source of information if you speak Czech. 

Charlie: So that’s all right. There’s loads of translation out there. I think that’s been such an exciting part of the European paper. You know, we, we, we can translate it so quickly between, between languages. Yes. Everyone must check out the blog. It’s great. 

Radek: And of course LinkedIn, when you want to know what is going on in the industry, there are always people on LinkedIn who are sharing the best.

So, and there are not too many, I think some loyalty industry I watch about 20, maybe 15, 20 people. And, and I know everything, what’s happening.

Charlie: Yeah, and I think that CLMP community that we’re both part of through the Loyalty Academy is a great network as well and really kind of growing in terms of insight and inspiration.

As we move to the end, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners as my sort of final question? Any other big thoughts you want to leave case studies, you want to direct them to look at, innovations that you’ve seen? Any sort of last, last thought?

Radek: What we struggle with is metrics. In the white paper, you uncovered a lot of information through exact metrics. And, you know, the, the biggest question I’ve faced during all the years, it was, ah, my customers loyal or not.

So you can’t find the answer inside transactions. In transactions, you see what happened, but you don’t see what don’t, what doesn’t happen. So, my message is that we should find some unified metrics and because I was struggling with answering the question whether my clients’ customers are loyal enough. Too much. 

So, we’ve developed some net load score. It’s a, it’s a metric where we can apply it on the database and see whether, according to benchmark the client’s database is, is loyal or not. And I think that what we should talk more about is really, how do we measure things, not report transactional behavior because that you can see in reports probably you and I got it.

But, what is the share of wallet? How the customers are spending outside? My world outside my brand. And, that’s why we invented net loyalty score because in combination with shared wallet, it gives you perfect picture, about where do your customers spend else of their wallets and do they feel loyalty, and do they appreciate your efforts or not?

So my very last message is, be loyal to your customers. Please measure the loyalty also outside your brand and be focused on signals. They you know, the loyal customers are always sending signals. They’re not always positive. They are the first who will tell you something’s going wrong.

So, have a big ear and, and listen to them and, take the message from most loyal customers very seriously. 

Charlie: That’s some great advice for program owners everywhere and everyone who works in the industry, I think, and obviously as a loyalty nerd, I particularly like to measure it and then learn from it and then do something different as a consequence of it.

Component of that, if people have further questions for you, Redek, where are you available? We’ll obviously include all the links and everything in the notes that go out with this podcast, but how is best for people to reach out to you? 

Radek: Radekhrachovec.com, voxwise.com, but the best way is to find me on LinkedIn and it’s very easy because Radek Hrachovec   is the only one person around the world working in loyalty and there are not so many other people, with the same name. So you will definitely find me on LinkedIn very easily, almost instantly. That’s fantastic. 

Charlie: And we’ll include that. We’ll include that bio. 

Radek: I’m happy to answer questions and, and talk to people. And, I’m very, regularly attend a fair where we have advisor zone and we do advising for free.

So anybody, you know, have a question related to how to measure load, how to, how to maybe evaluate an idea, buy me on LinkedIn, send me a message and I’ll try to help you. 

Charlie: Fantastic. Please do reach out to Radek everybody. He’s an absolute wealth of insight and information on loyalty, and he’s very quick to respond to as well.

So I can highly recommend reaching out with questions. So Radek from Voxwise, thank you so for your time today for sharing all your expertise and ideas. We hugely appreciate it. And that’s goodbye from Let’s Talk Loyalty.

Radek: Probably. It was a pleasure and thank you very much.

Paula: This show is brought to you by the Australian Loyalty Association, the leading organization for loyalty professionals in Asia Pacific. Visit their news and content hub for the latest loyalty insights from around the world. Or why not submit your own article for publication? For more information on their loyalty services and networking opportunities, visit australianloyaltyassociation.com.

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