Businesses today are not wanting to be left behind without a loyalty program. The number of loyalty programs in the market is surging so fast that it appears to be becoming a rat-race showing no symptoms of slow-down. Given such a boisterous scenario, business leaders are concerned about two fundamental questions: • Will my program be worthwhile? • How to make it stand-out? The answers to the questions above lie in the ability to craft or design the program around your brand. It takes a tremendous amount of knowledge/expertise in the field, in addition to being sensitive, to cater to your exclusive needs. Putting oneself in customers shoes and visualizing their aspirations are critical. A well-implemented loyalty program should fulfill some or many of the following: • enrich customer takeaways (not just products/points) • transform brand perception in terms of availability, quality, and serviceability • inspire to attain higher brand-recall • trigger a strong word of mouth/referrals • consistent engagement with the brand • increase recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) factors • uphold customer’s values and preferences The design of a good loyalty program must provide for capitalizing on customer lifetime value (CLTV). The customer journey shall be smooth and a warm experience, as unique to your brand and your offerings. Use of appropriate technologies will further help making their touchpoints available on-demand, including loyalty-care operations. With high adoption rate of digital technologies today more than ever, loyalty programs are now easily accessible and understood even by people who are not so tech-savvy. Such innovative programs cut across different classes of society and, to a great extent, meet their expectations tangibly. To conclude, loyalty is a very powerful program. Progressive organizations look up to loyalty as the means, and not the end by itself. It makes complete sense to view loyalty as a mid/long-term strategic initiative rather than operational.
