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“The Butler did it, in the Service Bay, with unmatched listening skills”

While you may not have played the board game Clue recently, there is compelling evidence that great consumer experience begins with an insight followed by clear and sometimes surprising action. An insight, in our opinion is a fact married to intuition. We used this insight to tackle the need for improved hospitality in the automotive sector and offer an experience that would lead to a higher rate of satisfaction and therefore greater advocacy.

In fact, loyalty increased by 17% for consumers who were completely satisfied with the service on their previous vehicle while under warranty, according to the Maritz New Vehicle Customer Survey.

It’s that time of the year again! Summer is coming to a close and that can only mean back to school and back to campus. While this can be an exciting time of the year for students, with total spending on back-to-school items expected to reach $74.9 billion, it's also a huge time for retail brands. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) report that breaks down into $26.5 billion for back to school (BTS) and $48.4 billion for back to campus (BTC) shoppers.

Experience matters. Every action in a relationship either builds or erodes trust. We see this in the staggering number of divorces that occur every day—over 6,000 in America alone. The same can be said for consumers and their relationships to brands and products. How many times have we “broken up” with a brand because they didn’t deliver the experience the brand had promised, failed to communicate well or even did or said something that was a deal breaker—remember the backlash from Lululemon brand fans when founder Chip Wilson said that some women’s bodies weren’t “right” for their pants?

Last month a Sobeys Urban Fresh location on busy Bloor St in Toronto closed its doors. Sobeys reported that they are closing 15 of their smaller format locations in addition to 35 other larger stores across the country.

There is more to engaging customers than points, discounts and rebates.

According to the 2014 Loyalty Report, the average American is enrolled in 10.9 loyalty programs, but are only active in 7.8 of them.

Something is getting in the way of a higher level of engagement among program Members. The answer lies in values alignment.

Fast Food or rather Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) are ubiquitous and in a time when consumers eat out an average of four meals a week, are a huge part of the dining industry. Many consumers, especially the ever important Millennial segment, are looking for a fast and healthy way to feed themselves and their families. As Millennials are the consumer demographic that are most influenced by loyalty and rewards programs and control 1.3 trillion in spending power, it’s clear why these QSRs are targeting them in their marketing efforts. Papa John’s, a QSR that gained top scores in both the ACSI Restaurant Report and The Loyalty Report, had a high customer satisfaction score with regards to both their product and their popular loyalty program Papa Rewards. But other than offering discounts and deals, how can brands in the crowded category of quick dining cultivate customer loyalty? As we see with Papa John’s, the recipe for getting customers to keep coming back is to offer them ways to connect with your brand on more than a "take out" level.

Increased mobile presence is one of the most important shifts in the brand loyalty market right now, other than millennials, which we’ll talk about later! In fact, 65% of Americans want to engage with their loyalty programs through their mobile device (2014 Loyalty Report).

As people interact with brands more intimately, we are seeing a hunger for personalization—a step away from mass production and a movement towards agency and relevancy. This desire for engagement supports the 4-Drive Model of human motivation approach to brand loyalty, with regards to the drives to create and to bond—both of which in turn foster a deeper emotional connection between consumer and brand. 

Your organization has come to the conclusion that a brand loyalty program would provide a marketable differentiator and strategic advantage for your business and now it’s up to you to make it happen.

The first steps are to assess your in-house capabilities, determine the operating model you would like to move forward with and how figure out how much expertise you need to hire on. You definitely don't want to start from scratch!

Perhaps not the ones you were thinking of, rather it’s the likes you acknowledge every moment of the day: the car you eyed on the way to work, the way your barista translated your request into the perfect coffee, the phone in your hand as you glance away from this post or maybe it’s the sign on the building that reminds you why you come to work each day. The reality is that likes are a core part of what we do every day and what we like has a huge impact where we invest our time, energy and money.

Let’s begin with a difficult truth; it is increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself in the marketplace by product alone.  Chances are, if you have a product that someone else makes just as well, a consumer could choose your product or your competitor’s and not make a bad decision either way.