The Loyalty Surgery on June 20th
Cecilia Floridi, DataLab´s co-founder and Managing Director, was able to bring her unique perspective on the problems facing the industry during The Loyalty Surgery, a one-day loyalty conference held at the Tower of London on June 20th.
The conference brought together global loyalty industry leaders such as Bryan Pearson and Tim Mason who successfully shared insights on the key areas that companies seeking direct customer relationships must address in today´s perfect storm of data regulation, technology disruption and continuous experience re-invention.
Cecilia took part in a panel session with other trusted industry experts to discuss the question “what are the main customer loyalty problems you are being called on to fix?”. During the session she highlighted the necessity for players to be brave now more than ever in their decision-making processes. Here are her perspectives on some of the key issues at stake:
- Relevance: the fact that customer inactivity is the main issue for most loyalty initiatives, the need to reanimating customers with a focus on relevant features and a targeted communication & content strategy
- Data collection & use of data: the implementation of GDPR has meant that customers remain ready to entrust their data to companies that are transparent and responsible about how they will process it to create a real added value for each individual customer.
- Data literacy: enterprise-wide sharing of customer data, combined with training on the best ways to utilize and understand it. Associated with this, is the need to break down internal data silos and to share data externally, with suppliers and connected companies.
- Integration of new technologies: embrace rather than fear the power of AI and machine learning to drive increased levels of customer engagement.
- Program development: create a roadmap flexible enough to allow for the challenges of matching and supporting a changing business.
Cecilia believes that fixing these issues requires companies to take huge leaps towards customer centricity, not only in terms of financial investment, but also in terms of how teams should work together to achieve this common goal. This requires courage and a level of commitment at every level of the organization, from the C-Suite downwards. It’s now or never.