July 13, 2015

Loyalty is No Longer Just a Points Scheme

Jonathan Pritchard, Managing Partner at Tangent Snowball, explains why it’s important to understand loyalty as customer management rather than a point scheme, and how you can build this with data and insight
Last week we learnt that House of Fraser is restructuring its business with customer insight at its heart. A few weeks ago, Waitrose said that from now on the customer can choose which products to have a discount on.

These events are linked. They are linked by data. They are linked by an understanding of customers that has come from the use of data and the insight they have. These insights have become actionable in fundamental ways for their businesses.

Loyalty needs to be defined—we define it as customer management. Loyalty is not a point scheme that causes no end of headaches for management as they struggle with the incremental value and the levers they have to affect their business for the good.

What every business needs is the opportunity to understand their customers and respond to those customers. In order to do this you need to think about the customer journey, how you enrich that experience and how you measure your effectiveness.

• A value platform for your customers
• A dialogue platform with your customers
• A visibility platform for your business

This article also appears on Tangent Snowball’s blog page.