Officials at Caesars Entertainment might have to consider building a dedicated wing for their impressive awards haul from Loyalty360 conferences.
After Caesars walked off with the prestigious 360-Degree Award at the Loyalty360 Customer Loyalty Awards in May, the company repeated that feat at the Loyalty360 Customer Awards Tuesday night at the inaugural Customer Expo.
Besides taking home the Brand 360-Degree Award, Caesars also secured the following awards: The Gold Award in the Loyalty & Advocacy category; the Silver Award in the Operational Excellence category; the Gold Award in the Organizational Commitment category; and to top off its highly impressive performance, Caesars earned the 2017 Loyalty360 Honors Award in Operational Innovation and was also named Company of the Year.
“The commitment there is amazing,” Loyalty360 CEO and CMO Mark Johnson said of Caesars.
As the largest casino operator and among the largest hotel operators in North America, Caesars Entertainment has built an empire on customer experience.
Caesars Entertainment has been a powerhouse in the customer loyalty space for years and the cornerstone of its loyalty focus is its Total Rewards program, which has more than 50 million members.
Total Rewards leverages gamification to engage customers and incent interactivity with the brand.
For example, players were tasked with earning badges by playing in each Caesars property. With each badge earned out of a possible 36, players earned progress toward higher tiers within the Total Rewards program. The promotion was a success as Caesars saw increased engagement and play revenue when measured year-over-year.
Michael Marino, Chief Experience Officer at Caesars, posed the following question:
How does a company with 35 locations, multiple brands, and 65,000 employees create alignment around customer experience goals?
“Align the rewards for everyone around the single most powerful measure,” he said.
Improving service creates value, Marino noted.
“When we serve guests well, we capture more gaming and hospitality spend on their current visit,” he said. “Guests more satisfied year-over-year spend 3-13 percent more on gaming in the second year. Guests less satisfied year-over-year spend 4-14 percent less on gaming in the second year.”
Frequent recognition, Marino noted, is a key experience/engagement tactic.
“Align with mission, vision, and values,” he said.
By offering (non-redeemable) tier status points, the brand created strong incentives for guests, while avoiding costs often associated with similar promotions.
Another crucial piece of the brand’s CX initiative is Ivy, the brand’s chatbot concierge available to guests at select locations. This staple of the Caesars customer experience has the power to respond naturally to guest inquiries, including information on amenities and checkout assistance, allowing front-desk associates to focus entirely on providing memorable experiences for customers. Ivy is a proven success, improving guest engagement, service satisfaction, and likelihood to recommend at locations offering the technology.
Another advantage of the Ivy platform is its scalability: From its largest resorts to its smallest properties, Caesars can significantly improve the customer experience through the automation provided by Ivy.
Beyond its technological advancements, the strength of the Caesars customer experience is largely thanks to its frontline associates. To ensure that each guest receives the best possible experience, Caesars has created a philosophy it calls Delight and Deliver.
Delight encompasses the behavior of people at all levels and includes the skill, ability, attitude, and empathy presented daily by staff. Deliver covers everything in the quality space such as speed of service, process, clean and safe environments, the functionality of equipment and technology, and product presentation. By delighting the customer with engaged employees and delivering with its CX process in place, Caesars has established operational protocol designed to create guest experiences that are both effective and, perhaps even more importantly, unique to the brand.
Building this kind of differentiating commitment to the customer takes more than theoretical research, however, and that’s where Caesars Circle comes in. An exclusive group of both current and potential Total Rewards members, Caesars Circle serves as a constant source of feedback for the brand. A great example of the effectiveness of the Caesars Circle program is the improvement in customer reaction to the Caesars Entertainment loyalty app, Play by Total Rewards.
After the first release of the app, the company commissioned a study of Caesars Circle customers to see how it could improve the app in its next iteration. The brand gathered precise metrics regarding app usage and shaped future updates of the program.