Loyalty Management and How it has changed CRM

Introduction

When talking about loyalty management, the first thing that pops into our minds would likely be loyalty cards, programs, or memberships. Despite that being most companies’ most overt example of loyalty management, the term encompasses far more than that. Loyalty management is a unified, cross-industry solution that enables businesses to plan and manage perks for longstanding members and partners. In essence, through loyalty management, engaging with customers in meaningful ways and bringing value into their experience has never been easier.

Does it live up to the hype?

Many have observed that companies scaling up often implement loyalty management into their processes to some extent, is that a strategic move or is it just following the big players in their industry? The degree Loyalty Management has been hyped up, particularly in the west has made it the center of scrutiny by skeptical business owners not familiar with it.

Though a relatively new system in Hong Kong and throughout Asia, it should be noted that Loyalty Management has also proven itself in Asian ecosystems. In fact, the Asia Pacific Loyalty Management Market is currently valued at $945.9 million expected to triple by 2026. From the perspectives of everyday consumers, more than 86% of respondents in Asia reported that they were more enticed to a shop with loyalty programs, we can conclude that the presence of loyalty systems has been growing in Asia and has started to play a substantial role in consumer’s purchase decisions.

If you have not been convinced of the power of loyalty yet, having it also allows for easier data collection and customer acquisition.

• 57% of consumers agree to share data in exchange for personalized offers & discounts
• 73% of travelers say they expect companies to understand their travel needs and behaviors.
• 85% of business buyers say a business’s experience is as important as its products and services, but 73% still say that most sales interactions feel transactional.

Struggles without CRM

So, looking to drink the Loyalty Management kool-aid but have no clue where to start? Before diving into it, we should understand what issues setting up a loyalty management system may face. With loyalty management depending heavily on customer experience and personalization, the main issue business sees when attempting to create a loyalty system without tools. This is due to the taxing amount of menial work and aftercare services employees need to conduct on a daily basis, the time needed only increases as more customers sign on to the loyalty system.

After a while, most businesses that start off with a manual process pivot to loyalty management software, though automated, businesses face an issue at the other end of the spectrum: loss of personalization! Most ready-off-the-shelf systems that are not integrated with CRMs have preset schemes that may not apply to every business, making them inflexible and unable to cater to each business’s needs. Besides that, they require much higher maintenance than CRM integrated Loyalty Management systems, businesses must manually update their CRM and loyalty management system separately.

With that, it also brings up an issue of data disparity, since the loyalty management system is isolated, it often leads to the loyalty system being outdated or incorrect due to the lack of updates. In most cases like these, customers responded negatively due to the bad user experience. Coupled with the commitment time and separate billing, businesses opt to scrap loyalty management altogether, never attempting it again.

Introducing Salesforce Loyalty Program

By now you might be rethinking the inclusion of loyalty management in your system altogether, but before you come to a decision, let’s talk about how the Salesforce Loyalty Management program tackles those issues!