Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.
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.
This is episode 18 of Let’s Talk Loyalty.
And today, I’m talking about loyalty trends and consumer trends and my predictions for 2020 and beyond.
In this episode, I’m taking the opportunity to reflect back on some of the ideas and insights that have emerged from all of the interviews I’ve conducted, the articles I’ve written, loyalty conferences I’ve attended, and of course, my own ongoing reading and research about consumers, their needs and how we as brands and consultants are evolving our approach to keep up with these needs and truly earn our customers’ attention, trust and loyalty.
I’ve chosen three big ideas that I believe are relevant in the context of driving customer loyalty, whether that’s as an emotional bond with a brand or through the use of structured loyalty programs that I typically focus on here on the show.
From all of my work as a Loyalty Marketing Consultant over the last 10 years, I hear a number of key themes coming up repeatedly.
And therefore, those seem to me to be already very well covered, so I won’t discuss them here today.
Those themes include personalization and the well-worn phrase that data is the new oil.
Secondly, the increasing interest from both consumers and brands for paid for loyalty or subscription programs.
And finally, the ongoing global environmental emergency that needs increasing attention and focus from all of us, both as individuals and as responsible companies.
Beyond those ideas, there are other trends that are appealing to me personally and seem to have less focus and attention.
So today, I’ll tell you why I think these are relevant for you as leaders in loyalty.
I’ve chosen these three predictions for the year ahead, and I hope you find them interesting and inspiring as you plan your own projects for 2020.
And of course, the references I mention here, you’ll find in the show notes on Apple podcasts where most of you are listening.
So without further ado, here are my predictions for emerging trends in loyalty for 2020 and beyond.
Number one, the role of CX or customer experience.
The two letters CX stand for customer experience and describe an emerging discipline in businesses that truly have customers’ needs as their clear priority.
With this structured focus around the intention to delight customers, I predict that loyalty directors and managers will increasingly take on roles of CX managers and directors.
I have recently completed a professional certificate in customer experience, which was an excellent online program run by an organization called The CX Academy in my home city in Dublin.
Having done lots of online courses, this one was excellent, so I can highly recommend it.
And of course, it was a great experience to learn about this emerging discipline from experts.
To explain a little more about the whole field of customer experience, I’ll use the definition I learned as part of my studies.
The CX Academy defines customer experience as how a customer feels as a result of every interaction they have with a company.
The program and the concept includes lots of ideas that are very familiar to those of us running loyalty programs, such as the importance of advocacy from customers, as well as the need for the focus on customer loyalty to begin at the very top with the CEO.
However, because CX measures customer experience from every interaction with the company, it definitely has the potential to have an even more powerful effect on your business than we as loyalty managers might traditionally be seen to have.
It’s a complementary mindset and one I believe that loyalty managers can truly take ownership of.
The program helped me understand a comprehensive framework to manage your overall customer experience, as well as the emotional drivers that are essential to manage in order to ensure we deliver the best possible customer experience across every possible touchpoint.
I also really liked a key insight and statistic from Gartner, which was from a 2018 Global Chief Executive Survey, in which they predicted that by 2020, this year, 90% of global businesses will differentiate themselves by customer experience rather than by price or product.
My own experience seems that that’s falling very far short, but hopefully we’ll see an increasing focus on CX as the year progresses.
So, if your company doesn’t already have a Chief Customer Officer or a Chief Experience Officer reporting to the CEO, I firmly believe that this is something that you, as Loyalty Managers, can embrace and lead.
My second prediction for this year was really clarified in two ways in 2019.
Firstly, I attended the Loyalty Surgery Conference in London, and almost every single speaker highlighted the importance of focus on connecting with customers emotionally, not just transactionally.
I really believe this focus has come from our evolution as human beings as we increasingly experience the challenges of a complex global world and struggle to know who to trust.
From my own studies with the Loyalty Academy, as well as the loyalty programs I have managed over the last 10 years, I know that great brands do understand the equal importance of rewarding customers directly for their purchases, as well as creating emotional connections with them.
However, for me, this year, 2020, feels like the time when we, as companies, need to demonstrate our loyalty to our customers, rather than simply expecting it from them.
And that’s if we really want to build the relationships we say we want.
I also believe we have a role in helping customers connect with each other, so that we can all feel part of a community and something beyond ourselves.
I saw this idea coming through in a particularly good campaign run by the coffee brand McCafe as part of McDonald’s marketing activity in the United States last summer.
It’s a campaign I wrote about recently for liquid barcodes, so I’ll include the link to that full article in the show notes too.
The campaign was gorgeous.
It was called Brewing Good, and it simply consisted of some 500 gift cards given out at random by McDonald’s and McCafe across the country.
Each gift card was loaded with an unlimited number of coffees which were designed to be shared.
Those lucky enough to get a card were encouraged to claim their free coffee, then pass the gift card on to any friend or family member and essentially pay it forward.
We all know that sharing is caring.
So while this campaign ran for just three days, it really showed me how this global brand increasingly realizes the importance of connection beyond their traditional coffee program, which is simply based on collecting coffee bean stamps on the disposable cup on every coffee that you buy.
Finally, my favorite prediction is around the importance of audio as a new channel for marketeers.
Even with so much discussion around the concept of omni-channel marketing, the power and intimacy of voice, I believe, is completely unknown and underestimated.
So many consumers are now finding that the speed and simplicity of using their voice is so much easier than typing or texting.
Four years ago, in 2016, the chief executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, announced his belief that human language is the new human user interface.
And there are hundreds of reports now that already predict that within the next few years, we will no longer find that typing on touchscreens is the quickest way to have our needs met.
So whether it’s to search, inquire or order a product, instead we will simply ask Alexa or Siri or whatever home speaker or voice assistant you are likely to have installed to make your life easier.
I believe we have almost reached a tipping point.
With sales of Amazon devices alone, exceeding 100 million smart speakers and devices across 41 countries.
So while these are not yet being used globally, I have seen some brands already creating voice-activated solutions for customers, even in sectors such as banking, that traditionally avoids new ideas and technologies until they are very well proven.
Within our own loyalty industry, Avios is a great example of a brand that has experimented with voice-activated solutions.
Avios, as many of you know, is the points currency used by the International Airline Group, which includes British Airways, Iberia and several other global airlines.
Three years ago, Avios was the first major UK-based loyalty program to launch an Alexa skill, which essentially uses a voice assistant to answer members who can simply ask what their loyalty points balance is.
Members simply ask their assistant rather than needing to log in to a website by touching the screen or typing.
And I know from a personal perspective, I’ve probably had enough time and energy spent logging in to websites, so I would certainly be happy if I could simply speak to a speaker in order to get the information I’m looking for.
Now, at the time of that campaign, I expected the number of smart speakers in UK homes would have been tiny, so I doubt the trial was particularly successful.
But with so many clever people talking about the power of voice and for me now personally enjoying the great connection through this podcast, I firmly believe that more and more brands will begin to see the power and connection available by actually letting your customers talk to you.
In closing, I found another excellent report about voice from PWC, and it was called Prepare for the Voice Revolution.
And here is a great quote from that report.
There is no denying that voice is the future.
Search, advertising, content and commerce are being impacted.
Consumers are talking and it’s a good idea to listen.
So in closing, for today’s short episode, I’ll recap for you.
Poll as predictions for loyalty marketing in 2020.
Firstly, loyalty managers will become increasingly involved with or have much broader company-wide responsibilities for measuring and managing the overall customer experience in order to drive loyalty performance and advocacy.
Secondly, brands will increasingly realize that rewarding just product purchases with offers and more free products is simply not a powerful enough approach to drive engagement.
Brands need to notice their focus and step into their relationships fully if they want to achieve the level of emotional connection that customers are craving.
And finally, I talked about the importance of talking.
Whether it’s to simplify how customers access their loyalty points balance, hear the latest news from your brand, with so much content online competing for consumer attention, Voice is an exploding medium that you as loyalty managers and marketing managers can use to great effect to connect with your members.
So that’s it today from Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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