Love your customers forever

Love your customers forever, just like the commitment you made from the beginning to love and nurture your new puppy. This family of puppies have a bright future ahead of them. Even at a young age they wear their scarves differently. Personal style or was it mom's idea? The opportunity to put your imprint on new lovers of your business or service begins from Day 1. Having a commitment to love and nurture your new customers from that day forward is so essential to sustained business success. Likewise, how you plan to evolve that engagement over time. So what does it take? For some, it's treat me like you know me. For others, it's give me something back, reward me for my patronage. For others, it's make life easy for me, all about convenience and time is the most important commodity - not cash back or other tangible rewards. For a select segment it has nothing to do with recognition, personalization, emotional connection or time savings - rather it is price/value relationship. They don't want to be bothered with cards, fobs, mobile phone recognition, phone number entry at point of interaction. Email or Mobile messaging is not desired. Mail to home is a nusance as they don't have the time nor patience to read. Give me a highly satisfying website experience that does all the things a traditional loyalty program provides. Plus, have a customer care representative there for me who knows me, knows what is in my closet, has offers unique to my preferences and can get me through the purchase process quickly. It is a challenging time for recognition and reward practitioners. The consumer or guest continues to experience what can only be generously as uneven recognition and reward. Their expectations are mountain high based on the commitment some best practitioners provide today on a global scale. Surveys indicate that SVP, Loyalty, their CMO partners, CIOs and CFOs alike recognize the need for investment. Where to start? Go back to the original business case. What were the assumptions to justify the program? How far off are the key business metrics? The financial plan (if there was one produced) should be the guide. A re-fresh to the program design, communications strategy, new analytical tools for intuitive insight, digital channel audit and update of mobile, website plus improved social listening tools are all top considerations. What of the technology that receives transactions and drives customer tiers, differentiated value proposition by segment? If "home grown" may indicate a consideration of build vs. buy/license. If the platform isn't fulfillng the functional needs required to support achieving desired advanced or leading-edge capability, then time for a review. Ultimately, just like making a commitment to have a nurturing relationship with your pet for a lifetime, it's time to do the same and show the love for your customers and guests for a lifetime.