Incentives in the main stream

Change is inevitable and it seems like the start of a tipping point has arrived within the cluttered Loyalty scheme space. There has been much good work done in the quest to embrace and build a customer community around adding a values based basket, clustered around a brand. However these typical “me to” loyalty schemes are seemingly losing the plot. Brands are failing in their ability to innovate and bring a fresh dynamic product of their own to the customer community and failing to deliver an enhanced customer experience.

Buried under providing more and more so called benefits, of gym memberships, discounted flights, and so called cheap and easy access to other people’s products, brands get deeper into the mist of believing that what they are doing that is good for their customer base.

It’s time to challenge this thinking. 

Costs for administrating this foggy cloud of benefits to customers are spiraling into the hundreds of millions and not producing the results key stakeholders are expecting to see.

So do we propose throwing it all in or is it time to innovate and evolve?

I believe it’s time to evolve and innovate, get back to the core and slim down on the heavy weight admin bills that are only borne by the customer in the end. Let’s ask questions like, what can be done to help businesses and brands leverage the customer experiences to keep innovating, redesigning and revolutionizing in order to keep serving and engaging the customer in a dynamic and sustainable way.

The customer experience is alive in the brand’s products and services itself but also delivered by people in various outlets, channels and business units. This is where more dynamic, motivated and engaged sales and service teams can make a world of difference in delivery and experiential performance to the customer.

In today’s digital incentive world there are ways of not only inspiring channel sales to connect with customer needs at a totally higher level. But also the opportunity at the moment of truth to develop ongoing customer centric relationships that are not dripped in the sweet syrupy BS offers of free stuff and discounts, but in genuine care based dialogue with customers that will help in the cross sell of other products, repeat purchase desires and the acid test referral customer development.

These are the outcomes that brand leaders most aspire to:

• ·       Other products or services in the value chain being considered and purchased
• ·       Repetitive consumption
• ·       Positive referrals of products and services to other potential customers
• ·     Feedback that will assist business innovate and develop additional products and services to meet an evolving customer need.

Motivate your customer to stay connected, engaged and loyal to your brand, not someone else’s gym or low cost airline. Enter the incentive professionals please.