Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
#391: Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Dr. J.R. Slubowski, Kobie
Kobie provides robust solutions for its brand partners. Thoughtful design on the front end, coupled with extensible, configurable technology, leads to a seamless customer experience. The company takes a strategy-led, technology-enabled approach as it works to narrow down to what truly drives a consumer to be loyal at an emotional level. This allows clients to grow the enterprise value of their membership and of their customer base through loyalty. Kobie’s market-leading platform helps deliver those end-to-end loyalty solutions.
Kobie primarily works within retail, financial services, travel and hospitality, and quick-service restaurant (QSR) industries, but it also serves clients in a number of other verticals. From the company’s strategic services standpoint, it partners alongside clients in healthcare and manufacturing, among others.
Loyalty360 spoke with Dr. J.R. Slubowski, Kobie’s AVP of Strategic Consulting and Head of Kobie’s Research Center of Excellence, about key findings in its recent consumer research report, leveraging the power of program tiers, and avoiding pitfalls when rolling out new program features or functionalities.
Good afternoon and good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. Hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series we seek the leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact the brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement but, most importantly, impact customer loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Dr JR Slabowski. He's COBE's Assistant Vice President of Strategic Consulting and Head of COBE's Research Center of Excellence. A lot to go through there. Very smart guy. It's always great talking with JR, so thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Speaker 2:That's great. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. First off, we love to start these on more personal levels, so we'd love to know a little bit more about you yourself, your current role, kobe, and maybe how you got into the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so. So I'm an AVP, strategic consulting, as you mentioned, primarily delivering strategic support services for financial services and travel here at Kobe. So helping them with their strategies, helping them optimize their strategies, create new strategies so that they can continually, in the context of the loyalty programs that they're operating, I also do run a research center of excellence, kind of leveraging my uh, my academic, my academic street cred if you will, uh.
Speaker 2:So I do a lot of research for our clients, um, or on behalf of our clients here at kobe. If there's a research study that needs to happen, I tend to be involved in that. Um, I tend to help on the planning stuff on the front end to make sure methodologically we're we're all sound, uh, going forward, so we're getting the questions answered that we want answered or that we need to have answered. So that's one of my other big hats that I wear here at Kobe is doing a lot of research stuff, and that also allows me then to do large-scale research studies like what we're going to talk a little bit about today in terms of Kobe's 2024 Heart of Loyalty study Excellent.
Speaker 1:For those who may not be familiar with Kobe, can you talk to us a little bit about how Kobe supports brands customer loyalty efforts? Can you give a brief overview of what you do as an organization and maybe the industries that you provided for?
Speaker 2:Sure, so we Kobe has a has a market leading platform that helps to deliver those end toto-end loyalty solutions. We primarily work within retail, financial services, travel and hospitality and QSR, but there's a number of other verticals, particularly from our strategic services standpoint, that we also play in and we also work in as well, from healthcare to manufacturing, et cetera, and actually one of the things that's really great that just happened fairly recently is where we were named both a leader for technology and for services within Forrester. So that's something that we're really proud of. I think we're the only provider who made both lists in terms of leader status, so that's something really that we're really really proud of and glad that we were able to achieve. But we really work to deliver those solutions with what we call a strategy-led, technology-enabled approach. We think that's the best approach because it gets to the core of what drives a consumer to really be loyal at an emotional level, so that ultimately, our members can grow enterprise value of their membership and of their customer base through loyalty.
Speaker 1:Okay Kobe recently released the Heart of Loyalty 2024 Consumer Research, where you researched, got you a research study with over 4,000 respondents from both US and Canadian households, where you looked at their perspective on retail financial services, travel, hospitality, quick service, restaurants. Can you talk to us a little bit about the report and what consumer loyalty opportunities it addresses?
Speaker 2:Yeah sure. So this year we conducted a loyalty study where we really drilled in and focused on some specific hypotheses and theories that we were looking to investigate further. Past studies were a little more exploratory. We sort of threw a bunch at the wall. Let's get a read on what consumers are thinking.
Speaker 2:With this one we entered in with some specific ideas around what we wanted to talk to consumers about, and some of those were things like the foundational components of programs, the features and benefits that are going to resonate with members and how that corresponds to the ultimate health of a program. We did deep dives in personalization and how loyalty marketers can better engage with people between transactions. We also asked a lot of questions around status and tiers in programs, which is something near and dear to my heart because I studied that as an academic as well. But then we finally also asked about some new loyalty innovations or some things that are part of loyalty programs today that don't maybe see the level of adoption, to try to understand what consumers' perceptions are of those, and because we are Kobe and emotional loyalty runs through our veins, we tried to tie it back to either our emotional loyalty scoring tool or other indicators of emotional loyalty that we can look at as well. So that's essentially the gist of what's in the report.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the key findings that you can share with us today from the report, and how should brands be looking at them?
Speaker 2:Great question. So one of the biggest findings I think that emerged from the report is that consumers are more than ever signaling that they want choice, optionality and the ability to co-create that loyalty experience with the brands they're engaged with. Choice and optionality is not a new trend. We've seen it building gradually over the past I'd say five to eight years but where we saw a pivot this year with the research is that it's expanding beyond just the redemption sphere or the reward sphere within the context of loyalty programs, to ways that people want to use their points, to ways they want to build the experience alongside a brand, to what features and benefits they want to be able to access and when. So it's really ballooned beyond just the redemption experience and just rewards and we're seeing that choice and optionality. It's definitely a trend that I think is here to stay. We also uncovered some things about personalization and about how it's critical to match the medium to the message and then the message to the member and to really achieve true personalization.
Speaker 2:You have to acknowledge that collecting zero-party data as part of a zero-party data strategy is often emotional in and of itself. So I sometimes get questions where people will say what data do I need to collect to drive emotional loyalty. And when it comes to zero party data, that information that people volunteer about themselves, which loyalty program members, are very, very fertile fishing grounds for that right Hunting grounds for that information that act in and of itself. Just asking it tends to drive an emotional connection, particularly for those who are engaged in programs. So I think, programs that really tap that.
Speaker 2:The third big finding, I think, is the programs that can really tap into that emotional vein. In the study we talked a lot about joy and fulfillment and meaningfulness. I think those particular programs that can tap into that have the best chance, I think, at engaging with members, not just during transactions but even beyond. Because I think, when you think about particularly if you think about a game science strategy in that regard, that's really all about human psychology and understanding that human psychology is a fantastic way to really achieve that. So but the report is chock full of all kinds of insights. Those are, those are essentially three. You know off the top of my head that I know I've been talking to a lot of people and clients about, you know, pretty regularly coming out of the study.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And how are brands receiving the study? Is it something they feel they can action on? Is it something that they find value in? And because it's obviously kind of a unique, challenging opportunity right now, brands want to have more impactful loyalty programs. They want to focus on, you know, the behavioral psychology pieces, behavioral economics, and drive more value. What are they telling you about the report? What are you hearing?
Speaker 2:So a lot of our clients have really embraced it, to be honest, and we're starting to have a lot of conversations between our strategic consulting team and our clients, helping them discern how to exactly leverage some of the insights and some of the findings that are coming out of out of the loyalty study, because context matters right.
Speaker 2:So there's some general things and that general insights that are coming out of study.
Speaker 2:This is what consumers are telling us, but you need to still bring it back to what your program can do and what your members look like so that you can begin to implement some of those insights. A great example we had one of our clients basically the section where I talk about endowing progress versus status as a psychological principle they really embraced and brought a whole bunch of ideas on how to endow progress in the context of their program to us and asked us how to evaluate and asked us to evaluate those. So that created a really great collaborative moment between us and clients to say, okay, well, I think you've got it here, but maybe over here we could pivot to something else. It was just a good example of you know, one insight coming out of that study that really resonated with a particular client and then bringing it to Kobe to say you know, is this how I would implement this, is this how I would make this practical, you know? And so we were able to have that dialogue, collaboration. So that's great.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the challenge and or opportunity to being authentic, relevant and personalized. It's kind of a. It's a big challenge for brands, right? So being in the right channel, having the right message, having the right content and especially if brands sorry customers, consumers want to personalize their offerings and reward their program itself or have a voice in that, you know how should brands be looking at authentic personalization in regard to their customer loyalty programs? You know what are some of the challenges that you've observed while working with brands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that some of the big challenges that brands have of personalization really, I think fall into two different categories. One I think that they're just plain challenged with what their zero-party data strategy should be. So how do I collect the information that I need?
Speaker 2:Should I ask for that information. Should I derive that information? When is the best time for me to ask for it? Do I need to offer an incentive for it? So we're actually working with a couple different clients right now and crafting strategies that are all about capturing that personal level of information so that then they can begin to exact against that and make all experiences across the member lifecycle more personalized, especially the ones that are real critical to an ongoing, sustained engagement.
Speaker 2:So I think that's one piece that I think where brands do really struggle. But the great news is that loyalty programs are a wonderful place to go after that information, because there's already a trust situation there. They're already engaged with you as a brand, so it tends to be some of the best customers to ask for that information, because often they'll volunteer it more readily. I also think brands struggle with how to action upon the information in ways that are accurate and efficient, or even action on it at all, because one of the core tenants of building out a zero party data strategy is if you ask for it, you need to act on it, because if you don't act, pretty soon consumers going to be like why did I supply that information to you? And they're just going to stop telling you anything and bringing that information forward. So you know, I think again, you know, so I think again, when you act on it, you act on it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that you're able to really drive that additional level of engagement, and it's tricky, though, because you have to still make sure you get it right, and that's something that we uncovered in the study as well that if you do do personalization and you get it wrong for certain things, your members will vilify you but they won't necessarily give you the credit if you do it really right. So I do think that also, some markers have felt, even burned I would say burned by the executing personalization in the past because of situations like that where you know, if I do do it well, my member doesn't recognize that I really know them, but the minute I get it a little bit wrong, they get really angry. So but we encourage members or marketers, loyalty marketers really jump back on the horse if they've sort of, you know, push personalization to the side and, you know, really reach out to someone who can help if you don't think you can do it yourself. So that's the. I think that's the gist around personalization that I would ultimately recommend In the report.
Speaker 1:You talked a bit about early versus late member disengagement. Can you talk to us a little bit of how they differ and how brands can avoid both?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's great. And the fact, the easy answer is they don't really differ. That was one of the big insights that emerged, because we expected, we had a hypothesis that maybe the reasons for disengagement early in the relationship might be different than the reasons for disengagement early in the relationship might be different than the reasons for disengagement later in the relationship. And what we found is that the top three was essentially the same, albeit maybe it's slightly tweaked order. But the number one reason is it took me too long to earn a reward. That was both for early you know early disengagers and for those that disengaged later. So early disengagement is all about immediate gratification. Late disengagement is all about sustained re-gratification, if you will. So that was one of the insights that really emerged as one of the top reasons.
Speaker 2:The second reason what was actually tied for early disengagers and second for the late ones, was that I just stopped buying from the brand, and that's always going to be normal in programs. There's always going to be some level of organic attrition. But the third reason was around basically looking at the program benefits and basically saying they weren't really all that appealing to me or they weren't really changing or there was nothing new. So that actually underscores the importance of really understanding your members, what they're looking for from a features and benefits perspective, and really focusing some energy on building out that evolutionary roadmap for your program going forward, because that's going to keep those members engaged and it's going to drive that longer term sustained engagement certainly Excellent, and you touched on this a little bit.
Speaker 1:You talked about the need for zero party data, first party data and brands may not be going about kind of trying to attain that zero party data in the right way gamification or quiz commerce, depending. How should brands be looking at zero and first party data and being able to leverage it most effectively? Are there one or two things that brands should be doing to leverage that data more effectively in their customer loyalty efforts?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think the first thing brands can do is really recognize that context ultimately matters. So one of the behavioral science theories we talk about is something called information boundary theory, which basically says we build walls around information in our brain and we'll take down those walls for brands, for people, for whomever we interact with if we find that the context or that the information we're going to share is hyper relevant to the context or they give us a really strong external reason to do so. And so it's important to recognize contextually what's going on within the loyalty program when you're starting to ask for that kind of information. But it's really building out that ask versus derive versus buy strategy when it comes to your zero party data Recognizing, of course, that you want to aim that also at specific audiences, so that member who's been disengaged or dormant for nine months or 12 months in your program probably not somebody you should ask for zero party data.
Speaker 2:They're not that engaged, they're not going to share it.
Speaker 2:We learned from the study that those who are emotionally connected to programs, to have emotional drivers in play, are much more willingly to volunteer that information, because that's the way they demonstrate their loyalty back to the brands they're loyal to is by sharing that information.
Speaker 2:So I think, when it comes to brands and what they need to be doing, well, one is recognizing that context and two, taking stock of where you're collecting the information. Already today I think a lot of brands don't realize, especially across the, if you think about it from an enterprise organization standpoint that they're collecting a lot of zero party data already, but they might not stop be acting on it. So you kind of have to go on that exploratory mission to start, identify then where the gaps and sort of ask yourself that question like what's the three to five data points that if I just add I know I could completely drive an increased level of engagement in the program. So if you have that's kind of the start, it starts to be the questions you start to ask yourself and then you can build a plan around going to try to find that information you know through a whole host of strategies.
Speaker 2:We like to talk a lot about game science because we think it's particularly effective, but it could just be a more augmented member profile or maybe a little bit more extrinsic reward for people actually answering those member profile questions so that you can capture that information or that data. So those are things that you can begin to do and start building a plan around. But I'm a big, you know, fail to plan, plan to fail kind of guy, so I like to do the planning around that. But it's basically creating that plan for collecting information once you figure out which pieces of information are going to get the greatest impact.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. When you look at programs now, many brands are. We saw in our 2024 State of Customer Loyalty Research paper that you know 97% of brands would either like to add, enhance or completely redo their loyalty program. So they're looking at their customer value propositions, trying to understand what resonates with their end user. They may be looking to add tiers or review their tiers. How should brands be looking at tiers and status to make sure they have alignment with the customers right, listening to and understanding what the customers want, as you mentioned earlier, and providing the program that resonates and effectively drives that incremental behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mentioned before I studied tiers and status in my academic life, so I love talking about status structures. I think ultimately you know as one cardinal rule that I generally talk to clients about it's that your member wants to look up and wants to look down. And they look up because it fulfills an innate need for them to basically get better, to improve. But they like to look down because they also need to feel pretty good about where they're at today. So one tear structures need to invite opportunities for members to look up and to look down when it comes to the level of engagement they have with it. But one of the things we learned from this study is that, you know, launching a tier structure still needs to have a lot of connective tissue back into the core program value proposition that caused that person to join the program in the first place or engage with that program in the first place. So it's a bit it's a bit of a duality. You have to have that connective tissue back to that program, either through you know, maybe it's an, it's through the currency, or or maybe it's through what they're able to do to interact with that program or how they're able to earn um or whatnot. Maybe it's accelerated earnings, et cetera. They kind of you have to have that connective tissue back to it, but then you also need to give them something on top of it. So that's where the duality comes in. So it's about that connective tissue back to the core and then using that as a springboard to bring additional features and benefits to them that others wouldn't necessarily get. So that's where kind of upping the ante comes in and really beginning to actually add in some new stuff. So you need to be thinking about that when constructing tier structures and thinking about, you know, is it a net new benefit or is a benefit we can grade out, you know, to make it a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better as people accelerate up in terms of their tiers. So but basically paying special attention to not make them seem so distant from the core structure of the program is one piece, but then also determining and asking your members what kinds of things would resonate with them is another.
Speaker 2:But you know tier structures and programs too. I think there needs to be a realization that they're actually probably one of the most powerful. You know game mechanics you have at your fingertips. I don't know that everyone always perceives them as game mechanics, but they absolutely are. They're achievement dynamic. You know, basically the notion of leveling up is essentially what tears are, and so they have the power to drive a lot of pretty intense reactions and a lot of intense emotional connection intense reactions and a lot of intense emotional connection. So you do have to treat them very judiciously when you're thinking about constructing or putting a tier structure in place that invites engagement with members. Excellent.
Speaker 1:With brands who are looking to evolve their program. They're looking to add new features or functionalities to the program, being cognizant of what the end consumer wants. But they can also be hugely irrational, as you know as well. Right, they can say they may want something and they may not actually want it. How do you design the most effective program when looking to enhance it? And due to the fact that you know customers can be irrational? You know what are some pitfalls that you may see with brands and how do you sway to those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think you know we asked about a lot of new things that might be evolutionary in the loyalty space Things like NFTs, biometric scanning, stuff like that and we asked about some of the more ones that have been around but maybe haven't seen as much adoption, things like community or partnerships and things like that. And I think what we found that actually surprised me a bit is that consumers don't think that those things are bright, shiny objects like us loyalty marketers do. So consumers. There were a number of things we asked about that literally had the propensity to impact loyalty in negative ways if they were rolled out. Now we dug deeper into that, of course, because that was really intriguing to us. So we dug deeper into that and we found that the reason why is because there were a whole bunch of people who were sitting on the fence. There were a lot of neutrals. People were like I'm not going to go one way or another on this, I'm just going to wait and see.
Speaker 2:But that's exactly what you're dealing with when you're rolling out any kind of a new innovation or any kind of a new program feature, and as part of your part of your loyalty program, is that there's always going to be the people who are going to sit back, wait and see what adoption looks like and then jump in. So engaging that particular audience is really really critical. Um, I think there's a number of things we can do to do that. Recognizing that it's on our human nature to reject the unfamiliar is one. So trying to make the unfamiliar familiar to that audience is critical. Potentially targeting specific members in the program, those who are hyper engaged, maybe those who might even be younger, are showing a little bit more of a propensity to adopt new innovation.
Speaker 2:But the reality is is it's the product curve in motion. So any way you would roll out a new product, you want to be able to treat that rollout with a new program, feature or new innovation or program in exactly the same way. You know you want to focus your communications on just that feature. You don't want to bury it in a sea of other features that might be getting rolled out. So if you're rolling out something brand new, that's important. You think it's going to really move the needle. You're doing yourself a disservice if then you don't talk to anybody about it, because if you build, it doesn't mean they're going to come, to paraphrase, field of Dreams. So you have to actually spend the time with that rollout strategy in order to help optimize the chance for success really.
Speaker 1:Excellent, very interesting discussion. One last quick question what remains for Kobe in 2024? What are you guys looking at? What are you going to be bringing out? What's next?
Speaker 2:Great question. So, in terms of what's on the docket for Kobe? So we have a lot of client engagements coming our way. Our pipeline for services in particular is pretty strong, so we're going to be doing a lot of that. But we're also, within the context of emotional loyalty, planning some additional deeper dives.
Speaker 2:As a researcher, you always collect more data than you know you're going to need. So we collected a lot of information around emotional loyalty, some additional emotional loyalty drivers, and we're going to start to pour over that a bit more from the study and basically begin then taking a look at our ELS, our ELS proprietary product, beginning to build out some additional componentry there, that that we have right now but need to make an update to. So we're going to be basically building that out as well. So so there's going to be a deeper, a deeper focus in the second half of this year on the emotional components that are emerging out of the study. That's really diving deeply into that, for sure, but that's uh, that'll be in between, in between client engagements, uh, and, you know, creating some really great strategies for clients along the way.
Speaker 1:so absolutely well. Thank you very much, jerry, for taking the time to talk with us today. It was great getting to know a little bit more about you and it's always a treat to catch up with the team at KOBE and see what you're doing in the space, especially what's new with status, habit and reciprocity and your very powerful emotional loyalty approach. So thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today. Absolutely Thank you. Loyalty approach.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today. Absolutely. Thank you, absolutely, and also thank you, everyone else, for taking the time to watch Loyalty Live today. Make sure you join us back for another edition real soon. Until then, have a wonderful day.