Given the plethora of talk about customer-centricity in the loyalty industry, that term can mean many different things to different brands according to Dennis Armbruster, LoyaltyOne Consulting Managing Partner.
“Clearly, everyone is searching for an answer as to what customer-centricity means to them,” Armbruster told Loyalty 360. “We have all of this data and what do we do with it. It comes down to a customer-centricity approach. What does that mean for your business and how will you define your business as far as expected business outcomes.”
Armbruster said some companies get confused talking about the culture aspect and how they’re going to marginalize against it.
“Companies who do win have that culture at the top and successfully bite it off in manageable chunks,” Armbruster said. “This notion of loyalty gets compartmentalized into this business program.”
Armbruster said there is more receptivity to enterprise loyalty.
“The program database really is a marketable asset used internally to prove out customer-centricity,” he said. “I’d say that concept is evolving. From a financial point of view, loyalty programs have given visibility into customers.”
Big data has been a hot topic in recent years, but many companies either don’t fully understand it or use it in ineffective ways.
“The key message there is how do companies extract more out of their customer data,” Armbruster said. “Some companies are saying we can do this as an independent effort, but some companies are saying they’re optimizing customer strategies, and some companies are using Big data to capture a more holistic view of their customers.”
Armbruster said brands make investments to “move behaviors”, but are they “optimizing that behavior across lanes?”
Another hot industry topic involves content.
“Brand content can come in a lot of different flavors,” Armbruster said. “User-generated content is a huge part of social media and how can brands leverage that to move the needle.”
Besides social media, content can come from brands and third parties.
“The key thing is the intersection between emotional loyalty and behavioral loyalty,” Armbruster said. “From an emotional loyalty perspective, you can have a high degree of affinity for a brand, but have low behavioral degree. And with a high behavioral loyalty and low affinity, you’re at risk of switching. If I’m not emotionally attached to a brand, I may switch.”
Armbruster said brands have to figure out how to use content to move people up the emotional attachment curve.
Armbruster said brands that are just getting started along a customer-centric path need to conduct a readiness assessment.
“The most important aspect of that is executive alignment,” he said. “It goes back to what good looks like to them. Change is about being successful in the long term. If you make sure your company is aligned regarding what good looks like, that change can occur.”
If a brand has already embarked on its customer-centricity journey, a key aspect then becomes how well is it socializing the impact and measuring the successes.
“There can be pockets of great things occurring at a company, but they’re not known to other departments,” he said. “Are you optimizing successes that are widely understood by the company? There needs to be a culture of experimentation along with and testing and learning. Make low-risk bets and seek quick wins you can prove out and get them noted.”