Day 1 at Loyalty Summit: Better engagement through multi-channel touchpoints

The first day started with a keynote address by Kelly Hlavinka, Partner, Colloquy, who spoke about "Enterprise Loyalty: How Leveraging Data for the Ultimate Customer Experience Delivers Three Rs". In her talk Hlavinka spoke of how all the companies should look at four major factors- insight, transformation, application and innovation to create better loyalty amongst its existing customers. "Brands should look at creating customer value and build loyalty amongst all the stakeholders including the employees. Brands today need to market it's relevance and further reinforce the consumer's perception about the brand," she added.

The key note address was followed by a panel discussion. The panel consisted of Suzy Cox, Senior Vice President and Managing Director- CPG & Retail Verticals, Carlson Marketing Worldwide; Vijay Bobba, Founding Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, i-mint; Shefali Sinha, Vice President, Aviva Life Insurance Company India Pvt Ltd and Subrat Pani, Executive Vice President and Business Head- Cards, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. The panel discussion was Akash Sahai, Managing Director-India, Groupe Aeroplan Inc.

Cox could not come personally so she sent across a video presentation, in which she spoke of how Pampers and Coco Cola tried to build brand loyalty by engaging customers through the web. Both the brands though benefitted to a huge extent in terms of creating engagment Cox pointed out that the consumers got bored after a point of time. Hence she said that the brands should optimise readiness, collect indepth consumer transactional data, know how to manage point liability, align the target consumers with the loyalty program and measure the program appropriately.

On the other hand Bobba said consumer segmentation should always be the first step while chalking out a loyalty program. The program thus can be further personalised depending on consumer segments and thus further delivering it through multi-channel platforms. According to Bobba the loyalty program cycle includes-

Collect indepth data

Use the data to tailor the offer

Plan a multi-channel communication

Pull customers

Build better Customer Engagement.

Sinha spoke of how price is not always the prime reason for a customer and more so for a customer the experience involved in the purchase and post the purchase matters more than anything else. She also pointed out from the Customer Experience Impact Report 2010 that the consumers are willing to pay more for better experiences. Sinha said that retaining the customers will pay off in the long run and thus brands should look at creating better engagment and better experiences for the consumers.

Pani however said that not many marketers understand the meaning of the word loyalty and that it should not categorised into a mere rewards program. He said that brands should look at creating trust, a sense of pride and most of excitement so as to win a customer's loyalty.

The second panel discussion for the day comprised of eminent personalities like Jayant Jain, Vice President, Head - Consumer Insights & Market Research, Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. and Ashok MS , Chief Operating Officer, Accentiv, Chen Peng, Business Director, Carlson Marketing Worldwide and Kartikeya Kompella, Chief Strategist ' CRM, Lowe Lintas. The session was moderated by Ajay Row, Group Head CRM & Loyalty,Tata Capital

Jain spoke on "Do Loyalty schemes really drive Loyalty?' where he elaborated with his experiences with airlines. He is of the opinion that loyalty schemes do work. "How do you manage to put your brand, your company in a space where when the company's honour is slighted the customer feels his honour is being slighted? How do you build loyalty as the link between customers and brands? Brand is a promise of familiarity and comfort," he explained.

He went on to speak about the changing Indian consumer and how customer engagement is crucial today.

MS discussed on "How employee R & R with the help of technology facilitate enterprise-wide loyalty'. He said, "The very first thing all organizations must do is re-structure themselves in order to make themselves customer centric organizations. One must understand that each customer is different and data needs to be captured to understand these preferences and insights."

Peng's presentation was on "7 tips in fuel Retail Loyalty Program'. He spoke about how to retain customers and spoke about the importance of activation in campaigns.

Kompella discussed his views on "Loyalty Programs ' moving from transactions to transformation'. He said, "Loyalty programmes are sprouting up at every corner, this leads to un-differentiated programmes. Also the recall of these programmes is poor and lacks relevance." He further discussed the kinds of programmes existing and offered solutions for enhancement.

This panel discussion revolved around creating loyalty and how to implement certain offerings to convince the customers of their brand values.

The first day of the summit finally ended with the last panel discussion which included Ronita Mitra, Head- Corporate Brand Group, ICICI Bank Ltd; Ajay Chopra, Chief Executive Officer, Drive India Enterprise Solutions Ltd. and Vineet Narang, Chief Executive Officer, MobiQuest.

Mitra spoke how brands should remember three key elements of- Discussion, Interaction and Action. She said that brands should try to provide consumers a platform for direct discussion and interaction with the company and then back it up with appropriate actions. She further spoke of brands like Starbucks, Canon and Dell who used the online medium wonderfully to enable interaction forums and engagment with the customers.

On the other hand Chopra spoke of how a brand should always test its commitement, loyalty, preference and awareness. He further pointed out that brands should reach consumers throught various touchpoints and at the same time be equally careful at every single touchpoint. "Customer experience earns maximum benefit for any brand. Moreover most of the time though brands believe they are providing quality services, customers believe that they are not getting enough returns on their purchase. Hence brands should work harder on customer retention," Chopra added.

Bobba spoke about how technology was changing the landscape of customer experiences and which in turn is creating a need gap of persoanlised loyalty programs. He pointed out that since touchpoint have started increasing and changing customer acquisition, engagement and retention should be prime for every brand. Thus he feels that brands should gauge the frequency of engagement by studying relevant and accurate customer data. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com] & Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]