I joined Stream as a Loyalty Account Manager in May. Coming from customer experience research, I was new to the loyalty space. Given the obvious link between the two areas, I was confident in my new role and looked forward to learning all I could about this key industry.

Having spent a few evenings trawling through articles and absorbing many pearls of wisdom from the directors here at Stream, I came to an obvious yet reassuring conclusion. I couldn’t have come from a better industry to understand the principles of customer loyalty.

Understanding the principles and methods for delivering a better customer experience means you understand the start of a customer’s loyalty journey. Loyalty begins with a positive brand experience. A successful loyalty programme then builds on this and encourages behaviour change that is guaranteed to benefit the business.

Your customer experience teams should also be getting involved. CX surveys should be used to ensure that your business is aware of a customer’s engagement and satisfaction with your loyalty programmes. Get a scale satisfaction question in there, with a deep dive verbatim thrown in for good measure. Here’s a freebie:

Are you currently a member of our loyalty programme? 

If Yes: On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with the loyalty programme? 

If you have an external provider running your loyalty programme, then giving them as much information as you can about your customer’s feedback on the business will enable them to better segment and target customers for improved engagement.

So, I don’t think of this move as joining a new space in marketing, just moving along the customer journey a bit.