Clear and realistic goals are key when building customer loyalty programmes

By Samantha Tanner, Telecoms IQ at IQPC

It’s a key aspect of any marketing campaign—rewarding those who are loyal to you, so that they remain your customers. All businesses or brands do it in some shape or form, but how effective is your strategy?

New research into the way that loyalty marketing programmes work shows that currently around 65% of marketers believe that the key result of these campaigns is to entice new customers. The report, produced by Forrester Research, also shows that 40% believe their customer loyalty strategies are erratic and have unclear objectives.

This is a worrying statistic for brands and, indeed, customers. With competition high and a number of brands vying for the attention of the same segment of customers, rewarding them for staying loyal is a key aspect for any campaign.

Additionally, half of marketers interviewed for the research believe that their customer loyalty incentives are not in sync with their brands’ key marketing messages, causing confusion and uncertainty. So what can the telecoms industry do to ensure that their loyalty incentives are employing the right tactics in order to reward their customers and improve upon their service?

At a Customer Experience Management in Telecoms event, Peter Spencer, director of solutions incubation and thought leadership for the Customer Experience Transformation Program at Alcatel-Lucent, explained that: “Customer experience encompasses all interaction between a customer and a brand. If you understand which parts of your customer experience are important and where the critical decisions happen, then you are able to target your investments appropriately. It relies on a whole varied range of factors which need to be taken into account.”

In an age where word of mouth can circumnavigate the globe within seconds due to social networking platforms, it has become essential to correctly train employees, so they are able to pass on their knowledge to the customer. This is your first stage of creating brand advocates and rewarding them for being loyal to your brand.

Secondly, optimise your OSS so that you live up to your service fulfilment in offering a better quality of service and are completely transparent within key aspects of your customer experience programme. For example, if you are new to number portability, how are you going the extra mile in order to provide a superior network and service for your customers?

Finally, your long-serving customers are ultimately costing you less money and are promoting your products and services; surely they deserve to be rewarded for this? This is where your customer loyalty programme should start—with the aim to reward customers for their loyalty in order for them to feel appreciated.

This post was created from content on the upcoming Maximising Loyalty & Profitability event being held in Vienna in May. To find out further information and to read articles in full, please visit www.loyaltyandprofitability.com.