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 and also Loyalty TV. If you work in loyalty marketing, you can watch our video interviews every Thursday on www. loyalty. tv. And of course you can listen to our podcasts every Tuesday, every Wednesday, and every Thursday to learn the latest ideas from loyalty experts around the world.
Today’s episode is part of The Wiser Loyalty Series, which is hosted by our partners, The Wise Marketer Group. The Wise Marketer Group is a media education and advisory services company providing resources for loyalty marketeers through the Wise Marketer digital publication and The Loyalty Academy program that offers the certified loyalty marketing professional or CLMP designation. I hope you enjoy this weekly podcast, The Wiser Loyalty Series, brought to you by Let’s Talk Loyalty and The Wise Marketer Group.
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Bill: Welcome everyone. We’re here with Let’s Talk Loyalty, Wiser Loyalty Series, and, Aaron Dauphinee and I are back again. We’re talking about constructs from The Loyalty Academy Curriculum. We’re teasing out some of the finer points of the curriculum that you may not have heard about. And some of them are brand new because we’re refreshing the curriculum.
So we’re, we’re examining. We’re challenging and we’re, we’re looking at. Really coming up with some new perspectives on some of these very familiar topics. So I think, you know, this month that we are talking about loyalty operations, and we’re basing our discussion around course number 111, which is a brand new course that we’ve had created by an outside expert, which we talked about last time, Nadine Rubin.
So you might come back and talk about that again, but this is an interesting area to talk about. I think and last week we started. I’m emphasizing that the operations team is really in kind of a quarterback role. Now Canadian American here on the line that we’re talking about American football, of course, but think about it as though the quarterback, they’re proactively establishing plays.
Think about that, like processes and procedures, and we’re trying to win. We’re trying to achieve victory. So while. Everyone’s reacting to solve problems like, you know, you can imagine you call a play and then you have to audible because the other team blitzes and suddenly things change. You’ve got to make a shift and do something different.
Maybe throw instead of run or something like that. This is the way the operations team has to be. Things are quote written in stone, but. They don’t really play out that way in a day to day operating kind of basis. So, last time we both used examples from our specific experience and loyalty marketing journeys, and we hope they were helpful to reinforce these key step changes in view to a higher order view and increased importance placed on the role of operations and driving your programs to success.
But this week, we wanted to touch briefly on some very intuitive items that typically fall into the operations basket that. No, they’re not always the most fun to deal with. They’re what we call, you know, less than sexy for sure and probably falling into somewhat of a gray zone. So, think about the gray zone.
Is that that that area that, you know, is important, but somehow or another, you keep pushing it down your priority list and don’t go over there and touch it. It’s a pile of papers on the edge of your desk that you just don’t seem to get to. But this could encompass in the way of loyalty program operations.
Website terms and conditions privacy policies and compliance and risk management. So when you think about terms and conditions, you got to ask yourself, is this an I. T. Digital kind of responsibility. Is it a marketing responsibility? Who should create it? Who should oversee it? Who should make sure that it’s all compliant with the way you’ve mapped it out with compliance?
Is this a client success team responsibility? Is it something that should go with product management, maybe legal or even finance with risk management? Of course, we’d say, oh, it should be with the legal team, but it’s Some have a very strong influence from their finance team as well. So, you know, the point is, I guess there there is uncertainty that this is the gray zone that we’re talking about.
A lot of enterprises handle these things in different ways. And so. What we do know is that operations is a glue that combine the organization. It can bring the right individuals together to make things happen in the right way. And in some instances, operations even owns these items. They have responsibility, maybe with some metric.
Matrix type of support. But in others, they are the leads that coordinate, gather, articulate and work to get consensus across the team. So there are different ways to approach it. Aaron’s had a lot of experience in this area, and I think he’s going to get it started and give us some kind of perspective on on 2 or 3 of these topics.
And then we’ll continue from there.
Aaron: Yeah, well, yeah, I’m happy to I think that’s a key thing to note again that this idea for the operations is being about really ensuring that there’s alignment to get to a decision and some go forward on some of these topics and and often they are fairly complex or or the very least multifaceted issues and problems that you need to overcome in the organization.
And so. You know, when I think about the area that I’m more familiar with on the list that you kind of gave at the onset there, you know, privacy and website T’s and C’s come to the forefront for me coming from a bit of a marketing angle, and I’ve been doing and dealing with this for the past 15 years in various roles and organizations, you know, including being a privacy officer in a couple of businesses that have operated and as much as our, as you and I on our own.
And so when I think about this topic, I break it down into two kind of lines of thinking and. The 1st is within your own organization, ensuring that 1st of all, you have to have T’s T’s and C’s and a privacy policy. That’s the 1st step of just making sure that that’s in place. And it’s no longer a nice to have those, like, every business that has a website property really needs to come into the forefront of having terms and conditions at a minimum.
And maybe with privacy, it’s a bit different in terms of the degree to it, because you may not have personally identifiable information. P. I. I it might be more simpler. So, but if you have a digital property, you’re probably thinking about these things. Things and the point of why I’m getting this from an operations perspective is really when you’re doing this yourself, you know, someone needs to craft these at the onset and make sure the entire organization understands them and identifies the impacts of these policies on how the organization conducts business.
And so, for these to be made in the land of the marketing world, as is a starting point, that’s certainly fine. But but really, they need to be passed through the eyes of every other functional area. With a consideration for how this will impact the business, like how will impact my role? How will it impact impact my team’s day to day?
We’re not just looking to catch the major problems that come up here. So we’re looking at a daily impact when we talk about an operations team and to create those processes that are recurring to mitigate the elements of risk or uncertainty and fear. Friction that a customer might have in interactions with your organization.
So an operations leader or the team itself is really, I use the hockey term, you know, you use the football one stick handling through an organization to give that, you know, what the marketing team really started with more clout. And I think oftentimes an operations team has more clout in influencing through the organization because they.
They speak the language of all these different stakeholders. They come through and understand their lens versus marketing may be a bit biased in some regard, in terms of how they put it into place. So I think of the operations team is really the, the, the team that has a decoder ring and can translate things and put it into.
Effective of the stakeholders, so and that’s within your own organization, right? That’s number 1. the 2nd way of thinking of it is, of course, more of the same, but at a higher level of complexity, because when you’re doing this in the, say, of a partnership type of a structure, or or key vendors that might be more integrated, you know, you’re taking the same.
Things that you’re dealing with and organizing and gaining consensus and alignment, and now you’re doing it amongst multiple organizations. So, it becomes much more complex and success is really, really driven by trying to get alignment and get consensus. And so when you’re doing that, you know, and 1 organization, if it comes from the marketing team, and you’re talking to the other marketing team of a 2nd organization.
You know, it’s, they’re probably going to speak the same language and check the boxes off real quick and say, Oh, yeah, it’s covered off. But an operations lead will come into play and say, Hey, oh, no, no, let me talk because I understand the vibe of how this interacts with my team. Let me talk to the people in your organization to make sure that we’re all on the same vibe across all the functional areas and all the stakeholders.
And so that’s, that’s really the 2nd part of this from an importance around operations is that they really are taking it and acting as the best. Benefactor of the organization irrespective of what functional area you might be coming from. And I know we mentioned a couple of different ideas there, but Bill, I mean, I came at this from a bit of the quasi marketing lead kind of construct.
You’re savvy on financial constructs. Maybe you can give us a quick commentary about the role of ops when dealing with compliance and risk management to some degree.
Bill: Sure. Yeah, yeah. You know, what I see a lot of times is that you think about typical organization structure, and you’ll see that in a business, you have one team that’s tasked with implementing rules, processes like a tech team or finance team.
But. There has to be another layer of governance, I think, and in a lot of cases, I think, regarding loyalty, it’s the operations team that really brings together what rules or processes are needed. They’re the ones that really have to gather them, submit them, confirm them, maybe across different groups.
And then how about maintaining them, keeping them up to date, in some instances, getting the organization certified around them. They might be going through some sort of an ISO process or something like that. And so, you know, we talked in 1 of the other courses about the loyalty steering committee, but it’s 1 of the functions of a steering committee that I think could be really helpful.
They may designate the operations team to take on this sort of governance responsibility, but they need the input of the individual areas of business to be able to speak to their own needs. And so, like, here’s an example for you, like, service level agreements, you get into the final stages of negotiation with a new client.
Thank you very much. You have technology, you have other types of services being provided. And so, of course, you’re going to write a really comprehensive and strong service level agreement to keep things online and ensure both parties are in line, you know, and and make sure that it’s not a complete juggling act for eggs can hit the ground.
But the question is, it’s 1 thing, you know, who’s responsibility to write them? Is there a division of responsibility? It might be the. The client success team or the client service managers that are close to the client that are writing them possibly, but there has to be oversight. There has to be some I would say reconciliation between what the client success people are talking about and what standard for the business.
So that’s where the operations team comes in and. And can add their level of wisdom, like a different perspective and say, great, I understand you’re trying to do this for the client, but this is this is the way we should create this. And this is our standard. This is what we typically deliver. This has been vetted by the attorneys and the legal team and things like that.
And so sometimes I think you can have a bit of a unintended conflict between the client success teams and the rest of the organizations, because naturally. You know, we both been in these roles, sales service, all of that. It’s, it’s irresistible to start becoming so much in love with your client and wanting to support them and give them the right kind of support that you can become an advocate for them almost You know, beyond what, right.
Beyond what’s probably warranted, let’s just say. So we can go a bit overboard, right?
Aaron: A hundred percent. I’ve seen that many times, bill. That’s where, you know, the client success team and the biz dev, they get kind of compensated to some degree for keeping the client happy. But, you know, who’s the sober, sober Second thought, so to speak, is, is the operations team.
Yeah. So making sure what’s the best interest for the organization and, and keeping people you know, a bit honest engine to some degree. Not to say that client service is not, but that we all have different things that motivate us. So I, I like that. Mm-Hmm. . In terms of a frame up of an important component for sure.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely. And I think risk risk management is one of those as well. Yeah, of course, you’ve got to have you’ve got to have a few different eyes and a few different lenses looking at this. And so organizations, you know, you have to think about your own, but you have to also think about how you manage risk with partners, suppliers, vendors.
Even external agencies, regulatory agencies, law enforcement, just about anything. And the question is, when you, when you put a solution in place, you know, how do you manage it? How do you elevate or escalate issues with it? And then ultimately, who’s going to be the, the 1 who has some kind of authority over making decisions with it?
So, again, it might be something that the operations team. Is, is the, sort of the, the caretaker for the entire process. But it doesn’t mean they’re always gonna make the final decision, I think, but they’re, they’re sure to keep something on track and not let something slip.
Aaron: No, I think that’s absolutely right.
And you know, some of the things that I’ve learned in talking with our social matter expert, NA Dean is, is mm-Hmm, , they’re focusing is an operations team typically on, on the how and the why? They’re less concerned, or they certainly don’t wanna, you know, emphasize any blame on the who or what that caused a particular event, particularly if it’s.
It’s important aspects to know the who or what, but really it’s the, okay, how did this happen? Why did it happen? What can we do about it? And it’s that now and go forward mentality that I really love about you know, successfully operating and prominent operations team to come together. And in the course curriculum, we talk about ways in which you can get assessed to this and then some benefits.
Like, you know, through cause we talked about that a little bit last week. And there’s a five wise assessment that in the introduces as well. That’s a, that’s a good methodology that people can pick up. So I hope that you know, others will find that useful if they take on the course when we will launch it in weeks.
But yeah, I think that’s, I
Bill: have a thought for you, you know, just listening to you talk about this. It just occurs to me that I would say maybe I have, and maybe a lot of our listeners have thought about operations as being those that manage the backroom. So think about it. Hey, just I don’t want to hear your voice in particular.
You’re running everything in the back. I’m talking to the client So you just take care and, you know, I think what we’re describing here is much, much different. It’s a different organizational construct where we’re saying, you know, what operations has a really important role that almost hold hands with strategy and client success and, and, and talks to the different areas of the company.
Right. And in that way, you’re sure that you have somebody who’s bringing all these areas of the business together and making sure that, you know, what are we talking about? Flawless execution. Well, it’s not going to happen unless you maybe look at operations a little bit differently.
Aaron: No, I love that. And that’s probably a great way to capstone this particular episode of of wiser loyalty.
So next week, we’re going to frame up a conversation around member care to close off this month’s topic. And then we’ll hope you join us for that again. As always, if you want to join our community of about 1000 around the world and 54 different countries certainly do check out. Our website, multi academy.
org or let’s talk multi. com. And you can listen to this podcast again, if you so choose or other podcasts that we have that we published on both of those properties. So with that, I’ll, we’ll cut it short and keep things moving and wish everyone a happy, healthy week. So stay low, everyone.
Bill: Thanks everyone.
Paula: This show is sponsored by Wise Marketer Group, publisher of the Wise Marketer, the premier digital customer loyalty marketing resource for industry relevant news, insights, and research. Wise Marketer Group also offers loyalty education and training globally through its Loyalty Academy, which has certified nearly 900 marketers and executives in 49 countries as certified loyalty marketing professionals.
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