Engage People CTO Discusses E-Commerce Redemption Platform



 

 


What if, as a brand, you could tap into the loyalty currency in your customers’ pockets? What if you could add use of that currency to your best customers’ journeys? What if you could give customers even more value, exceed their expectations, and expand their spending power at your brand?
 
Now you can do just that with Engage People’s Access, an e-commerce redemption solution. To learn more about what this could mean to your brand, your customer, and how the solution can expand your share of customer wallet, Loyalty360 recently spoke with Len Covello, Chief Technology Officer for Engage People.
 
As a loyalty provider, Engage People takes a tech-forward approach. Covello said, “We bring technology solutions to help brands both grow their loyalty programs and execute all aspects of that, from setup and managing the day-to-day operations and the rewards portion of it, right down to managing redemption, which is really where our technology is evolving with the industry.” 
 
When asked what challenges he currently faces in driving customer loyalty for his clients, Covello noted that there are several. He emphasized limited availability of and access to technology solutions as a persistent issue. He also expressed that program administrators should be enabled to use the solutions presently on the market.
 
Asked how a brand might address these challenges, Covello replied, “I think I’d recommend that they start with the member first. You want to create engagements with customers by going through the user-experience in all aspects of how that program is run. How they earn should be unique and tailored specifically to what that customer is looking for, to ultimately, the rewards—how they ‘burn.’”
 
This recommendation reflects Covello’s belief that creating emotional engagement with customers should be the end goal of every loyalty strategy. Therefore, all aspects of a program or initiative should work towards it. Ultimately, he thinks this strategy will enable what he believes is the next big thing in the customer loyalty space, which is frictionless, limitless redemption experiences. In other words, points will become like currency, and customers will use them to purchase anything they want.
 
Covello admitted that, while many brands are excelling, others will need to catch up if they want to offer these frictionless redemption experiences. He said, “We’ve seen fairly large organizations operating out of the cards department or marketing department with a small team. With that small team comes limited capabilities.”
 
However, Covello believes Engage People can benefit such brands by reducing friction in their relationships with customers. He said, “We brought some products to the market that allow consumers to redeem, really, limitlessly on any e-commerce site, anywhere in the world.” The points serve as a currency, and any intermediaries, such as rewards cards, are eliminated so that the focus is on the relationship between brand and consumer.
 
This capability is quite amazing, and it brings a whole new meaning to the word “personalization.” If customers have essentially every e-commerce option available to them for redemption purposes, then they do have, as Covello said, a “frictionless, limitless” experience. In addition, this seems like a way to reach true personalization while also sidestepping the problem of sending the wrong recommendations to the wrong people at the wrong time. Paying attention to what Engage People is doing seems like a necessity moving forward.

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