Inspiring a memorable customer experience is an admirable goal for any loyalty marketer.
Just ask Arby’s.
Loyalty360 caught up with Navin Sharma, VP, Marketing Analysis & Consumer Insights, Arby’s Restaurant Group to learn more about the company’s approach to customer data.
Can you give us a high level overview of your customer philosophy and share how this perspective helps drive more effective engagement and therefore better marketing outcomes?
Sharma: Our guest philosophy is to Serve, Refresh, and Delight our guests when they visit our restaurants. Our brand purpose is Inspiring Smiles Through Delicious Experiences. When we deliver on this purpose, our guests will be more likely to visit us again in the future.
What are the biggest benefits brands can receive and challenges they face with surveying/listening to customers?
Sharma: Our goal is to serve, refresh, and delight our guests when they visit our restaurants so that they leave with a smile. Listening to our guests is key for us to achieve this, so we invest heavily in research and listening capabilities. One challenge that we do face is hearing multiple or conflicting opinions. In this case we make a decision aligned with our brand’s positioning.
What are the challenges brands face with data, analytics, and creating insight today and how has that changed over the past 18 months?
Sharma: Big data is certainly a popular topic these days. For us, the amount of data we collect and questions that we can answer with data are both growing rapidly. This trend is likely to continue in the future. The challenge is to be objective driven in how we collect, organize, and analyze our data. Otherwise, we face a high cost and time spent on data gathering and analysis, and the quality of the answers will also suffer.
How do you define loyalty and what does it mean to your organization?
Sharma: We strive to fulfill our purpose of Inspiring Smiles Through Delicious Experiences. When we deliver on this promise, we believe we gain loyalty from our guests. We measure our guest’s experience with our brand both inside and outside of our restaurants to understand whether we are delivering on this brand purpose.