The good news is if you have a customer loyalty programme, you’re halfway to achieving this goal. Your loyalty programme data is a goldmine for tracking customer activity, anticipating attrition (or churn), and removing friction points from your customer experience journey. All the information is there, it just needs someone to analyse it and provide insights.
A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor
While scaling and accelerating what works for your customers is smart, truly sustainable growth requires you to also seek out what doesn’t. Friction is a leading cause of customer attrition. Take the technology space, for example; Clear Touch tells us 56% of consumers ditch an account or service due to sign-in issues, and 63% of consumers switch to a competitor as they find it difficult to authenticate their identity.
Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes
One of the best ways to identify customer pain points is to put yourself in their shoes and experience their journey for yourself. What are your customers trying to achieve? Which channels do they favour? And what does their experience look and feel like at each stage of their journey?
At Incentive Solutions, we offer a range of solutions to identify friction, mitigate attrition, and create long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships. Here’s how.
Keep it simple
The simplest way to gain feedback is to ask. And that’s exactly what we do at Incentive Solutions. Rather than send customers off to complete surveys, we take the time to ask them various questions when we speak to them on the phone. We score their feelings towards the programme’s owner and note down any comments they make. In this way, we build up both a macro and micro picture of a client’s customers, each and every month.
Keep it personal
Personalisation comes from knowing everything about your customer, and then being very careful about only sending them information that is relevant. This shows that you understand their requirements. It’s important to build in continuous tactics to understand more about customers, over time. This means playing a longer game and not bombarding them with surveys and questions. Instead, slowly build the picture, layer at a time.
While speed is an important factor in acquiring feedback, it’s certainly not the only one; personalisation is equally, if not more important. In fact, Research by McKinsey suggests that delivering a personal, targeted and relevant message is near-on essential, with a study showing 71% of consumers expect personalisation today and 76% of consumers feel frustrated when they don’t find it.
If someone prefers to communicate via phone, then sending emails is wasted on them and ignores their preferences. If a person is searching for electronic gear to spend their points on, then it is annoying to send them information on luggage, for instance.
Whilst we have systems that constantly watch and mine our data, we also have data specialists that interpret the data, and mine deeper when triggers are activated. This delivers a bespoke programme with real insights, as well as tactics that properly address the data.
Going beyond the data
When companies connect with customers on an emotional level, the payoff is often significant. According to the Harvard Business Review, emotionally connected consumers are 52% more valuable to a brand than those who are simply ‘satisfied’. It’s important to ask how customers are feeling as well as look at the data for what they are buying.
Stay one step ahead
Consumer needs are changing faster than ever, so staying ahead of them – and the competition – is critical to staying relevant. We use powerful computer modelling tools to predict future churn and allow your business to proactively mitigate the risk of losing a valued member.
By leveraging loyalty programme data, our analytics team can revolutionise the way you forge dynamic relationships with your members and significantly boost the ROI of your loyalty programme. In fact, research by McKinsey shows that companies that build predictive models based on customer data experience a 126% increase in profit margins. Knowledge is power, and never more so than in customer loyalty.
So, consider how much you think you know about your own customers and consider ways to understand more. Not only understand their buying behaviours but also their emotions. A good loyalty programme should deliver in-depth customer understanding of both their positive and negative feelings, as well as tactics that can be used to change behaviour and emotions.
We can help!
At Incentive Solutions, we specialise in bespoke loyalty programmes and data analytics. We have over 25 years’ experience in helping companies to grow, by managing their customers’ behaviours and buying habits. Our data insights team can review your loyalty programme using our state-of-the-art technology systems and identify new opportunities to enhance your customer experience. Get in touch today for a no-obligation appointment with one of our specialists and discover the true value of a modern and competitive bespoke loyalty programme.