Dear Brand X, Your Loyalty Program Stinks – An Open Letter

Dear insert name here, we have a great offer to reduce your monthly insert service here bill! Sign up now and we’ll include an insert enticing deal bonus.

This cut-and-paste approach to customer acquisition is all too familiar to most consumers. We are bombarded daily with messages containing promises of more for less so we cave, sign on the dotted line and proceed into a world of disappointment.

Its not news that incentivizing new customers, then surprising them down the line with small print fees or escalation costs sets your brand up to fail. This approach creates an ecosystem of disappointment and reactive negative consumer conversation. In an environment when consumer confidence is at an all time low, your brand needs to rethink your relationship with me, the consumer. Please consider what it will take to shift the paradigm from one of constant attempts to acquire customers through margin-eroding gimmicks, to one of brand loyalty that inspires genuine organic advocacy.

I have outlined a few suggestions below:

• Send Flowers: Brand advocates are often inspired to take to social media channels when good things come our way at “random”. A cable company gives me a month free of charge, or an airline sends me a voucher for two airline tickets. These types of actions can even be extravagant, over the top gestures because there is no expectation that every customer has to receive them. Use social listening tools to find out who is speaking out about your brand, your service or your vertical in general and delight them! A few acts of goodwill to a small percentage of vocal consumers can be enough to change the conversation. Everyone likes to be thought of and often times brand loyalty is inspired by unexpected benefits.
• 
  Cut the Prison Term: The average time spent at a job for Millennials is around 2 years to expect a similar commitment to a contract in this environment seems crazy! If you start a relationship by defining its length and setting “bail”, its no wonder customers feel imprisoned. Don’t expect me to commit to your brand because you have subsidized the cost of your incentive for me to join. I’d rather you simply provide me guaranteed service at a fair price.
• Enter the Fray: Own your mistakes in social channels; social responsiveness, especially for customer service, is a necessity. Industry average is a 24-36 hour response time for service concerns but 42% of customers expect a response within one hour! Consumers are more likely to buy from brands that respond and resolve concerns, than those with squeaky clean complaint-free profiles. Ignoring concerns (or worse erasing them!) erodes customer confidence and can directly impact your future business.

In Summary

We need to stop breaking up. When YOU expect our ‘relationship’ to be shorter than the lifespan of McDonald's french fries, something is wrong. Gimmicks don’t buy loyalty, worse yet; contract shackles breed resentment, buyer’s remorse and disillusionment. Stop chasing each other down the path of diminishing returns by simply sniping each other’s customers; instead work harder to retain the ones you have. Satisfied customers breed more of the same.

Regards,

Your once and future customer

Image Credits: Marketoonist, B4B Telcoms