Last year was a strong year for Connexions Loyalty, driven by more than 50 percent year-over-year growth in gross loyalty redemption transactional volume, which jumped from $2.1 billion to $3.2 billion.
Connexions Loyalty Chief Commercial Officer Chuck Christianson talked Loyalty360 about the company’s new 50,000-square-foot customer service facility in the Eastgate Metroplex in Tulsa, Okla., which provides employees easy access to restaurants, day care centers, credit unions, and a fitness center. To enhance each agent's ergonomically designed workspace, their desktops feature upgraded computers with large, dual monitors.
“We continue to see positive trends in the loyalty marketplace, and we are focused on capitalizing on the momentum we have built by continuing to make strategic investments in our leading loyalty platform, content, and servicing capabilities,” Christianson explained. “Based on our experience working with many visionary loyalty programs, we know that memorable rewards experiences create brand-bonding moments of emotional loyalty. To enable these moments, our clients are constantly looking to make customer experiences more frictionless through the use of technology. Additionally, omnichannel loyalty engagement requires customer service that is seamless across all channels. Our development of market-leading rewards call centers, such as our new facility in Tulsa, reflects this perspective and commitment to our clients and their customers. As customer lifetime value solutions continue to grow, we are increasing our employee footprint and call center capacity to meet the demand.”
Safeguarding the customer experience and securing customer data are top priorities at Connexions Loyalty, Christianson said.
“The design of the new facility echoes that focus; the building has 24/365 security, mobile detection security monitoring, state-of-the art surveillance, and dedicated power backup solutions,” he noted. “Our overall goal for the new call center was to create a space that generates positivity and well-being among employees. We know that if employees are happy, they are able to provide more memorable customer service experiences. Everything from the external location to the internal fixtures was selected with that philosophy in mind. Eastgate Metroplex offers convenient amenities for employees, which provides a balance between work and personal life. In addition, the upgraded workspace equipment helps improve employee efficiency.”
Connexions Loyalty services 200 million people worldwide and prides itself an award-winning customer service team that is dedicated to ensuring customer satisfaction.
“In an era where companies are leaning heavily on digital accessibility and self-service, Connexions takes a customer-first approach,” Christianson said. “The company offers personalized loyalty solutions with a human touch to create memorable customer experiences. The Tulsa facility’s location, infrastructure, and amenities were carefully designed to provide employee well-being, which translates into positive customer experiences.”
Christianson said that officials at Connexions Loyalty believe that emotional loyalty and loyalty are synonymous.
“We understand that loyalty has always been and always will be an emotional bond that causes a customer to advocate for a brand,” he explained. “To achieve customer loyalty and advocacy, you must create positive and memorable customer experiences. Our philosophy is not focusing on what we deliver to customers, but rather on how we make customers feel and how we engage with them emotionally. Brands should endeavor to deliver engaging and emotional experiences to their customers at every phase of the customer journey. We believe brands have to make those emotional ‘connections,’ one experience at a time. And brand advocacy drives business value. A customer who buys a product and likes it might buy it again, but a customer who becomes emotionally connected to the brand will become an advocate, driving incremental traffic to the brand.”
With technology evolving at an unprecedented rate, it is important to understand your customer and how they want to interact with your products and services.
“At Connexions Loyalty, we continuously explore the latest technologies with a customer-centric approach,” Christianson said. “We bring in customers to understand their intent and the context in which they use technology to solve problems in their lives. Specifically related to customer loyalty, there are many advances that will become important over the next few years. Artificial intelligence will play a key role in fine tuning fraud detection capabilities and in protection of partner and customer data. And, biometric authentication methods such as retina and finger print validation will help enable frictionless interactions. Natural language voice interaction is becoming the de facto search method and we expect that it will play an increasingly critical role in the customer experience. We are currently exploring and applying many of these technologies across our interaction channels. We believe it is important to take a customer-first approach in every phase of the customer journey, leveraging technology to gather customer data and delivering on personalization with a human touch.”