4 things to know from All Access: Customer Loyalty & Retention

In June 2024, CX Network hosted its first All Access: Customer Loyalty & Retention webinar series. Over one day, four expert speakers with diverse experience shared their tips and best practices for cultivating customer loyalty and improving retention rates.

If you missed the series, we’ve got you covered. Read on for the key takeaways from each session and links to the On Demand videos. 

Embracing the concept of reverse loyalty

Adam Nowak, CRM & Loyalty Director, Electrolux

Electrolux recently made the decision to shift from a solely B2B model to one that includes a B2C offering. The 100 year old brand recognised the need for first party data in order to connect with customers more, building emotional engagement. “Having a great product is not enough in the current world […] consumers require this special touch and that is all about the experience”, said speaker, Adam Nowak, CRM and loyalty director at Electrolux.

This echoes the trend uncovered by CX Network’s Global State of CX 2024 survey, which found that 24 percent of CX practitioners consider customer engagement to be an investment priority.

His closing advice to attendees was to embrace the concept of “reverse loyalty”: “Only when brands become loyal to their customers can they expect some loyalty back from them. This is reverse loyalty”.

To learn about Electrolux’s journey into the B2C world, and their approach to building emotional engagement, watch Adam’s session On Demand here.

Linking customer reviews and user behavior

Arne De Keyser, Professor of Marketing, EDHEC Business School

Professor Arne De Keyser’s recent research paper, How Ratings Systems Shape User Behavior in the Gig Economy, explores the power of customer reviews and the effect of ratings and reviews on service providers. We sat down with Arne to discuss the impact of reviews on customer loyalty.

We explored how different ratings systems can impact customer loyalty and retention. Of incremental ratings systems, Arne said "Incremental can have negative impacts immediately on loyalty, but it also pushes people to improve, which might in the long term be a good thing.". He then shared his analysis of average ratings systems, stating "Averaged in the short term would typically lead to higher loyalty, higher retention, because you kind of flatten out negative impacts."

At the end of the session, when reflecting on how attendees can use ratings systems to boost loyalty and retention, he advised consulting a diverse pool of data to complement ratings systems, but warned “be careful of relying solely on one data source”.

If you want to learn more about how customer reviews and ratings can affect retention and loyalty, watch Arne’s session On Demand here.

Humanizing technology with UX design

Aparna Unnikrishnan, Head of UX Design, Fire Tablets, Amazon

While a bad user experience (UX) can certainly put customers off, a well-considered one can delight and satisfy them, encouraging increased engagement and improving their perception of your brand.

Aparna Unnikrishnan, head of UX design for Fire Tablets at Amazon, joined us to discuss how UX can make or break customer retention: “UX needs to get [the] job done seamlessly [for it to] foster a very strong emotional connection and trust with the customers," she said.

Aparna emphasized the need to “humanize” technology, saying “Humanizing technology is all about making technology relevant for people, accessible for people, and also making it easy, intuitive, and natural for people to interact.” To do this, it is important to uphold customer-centricity. Collaborating closely with adjacent departments, such as research and sales, helps to embed customer-centricity throughout the design process and subsequent customer journey.

When asked for her closing advice, Aparna said: "Ultimately customers don't care how long it took for you to build it, how strapped for resources you were, or what kind of constraints you were facing. They just need to experience a good design. That's all they care about."

To learn more about how UX design can foster customer loyalty when an organization in customer centric, watch Aparna’s session On Demand here.

Evolving from loyalty to lifestyle partnerships

Dr Nejib Ben-Kedher, Head of Skywards, Emirates

Emirates is one of the most recognizable airline brands in the world and its Skywards program is a shining example of loyalty done well.

We sat down with Dr Nejib Ben-Kedher, head of Emirates’ Skywards loyalty program, to ask everything we (and you) want to know about its success.

A key focus of the conversation was on lifestyle loyalty partnerships. These are important because “retail and lifestyle partners accelerate the spinning of the loyalty flywheel – —earning, engaging, and rewarding." When asked how to build a successful loyalty partnership, Dr. Nejib said a successful loyalty partnership “balances transactional loyalty and emotional loyalty”, adding "we are very selective when choosing our partners, looking for like-minded partners that can complement us".

He further explained that lifestyle integration helps keep Emirates top of mind for infrequent flyers by maintaining daily engagement through these carefully selected lifestyle partners. Part of this approach is balancing earning opportunities with burning opportunities, ensuring that customers have plenty of opportunities to burn points. “We introduced cash plus miles, which helps us democratize the rewards so you can start redeeming from the first mile you earn.", he said, which has meant that “97 percent of members who are not frequent flyers also have access to rewards”.

To learn more secrets to Emirates’ loyalty success,
watch Dr Nejib’s session On Demand here.