Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Executive Spotlight featuring Aly Blawat, Senior Director of Customer Strategy at Blain’s Farm and Fleet
Welcome to another Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Executive Spotlight, where we bring you insights from top executives driving innovation and excellence in customer engagement. Today, we’re thrilled to feature Aly Blawat, Senior Director of Customer Strategy at Blain’s Farm and Fleet. She is a seasoned leader in customer loyalty and the driving force behind Blain’s rewards programs, credit card offerings, and customer insights strategy.
With over 15 years of experience in the loyalty space, Aly has a deep understanding of what it takes to foster customer advocacy, streamline in-store training, and create meaningful engagement strategies. In this conversation, she shares her approach to aligning loyalty initiatives with business goals, leveraging first-party data to enhance customer experiences, and overcoming the challenge of driving program adoption across diverse customer segments.
Beyond her professional expertise, Aly also opens up about leadership lessons learned from her early career in retail management, the challenges of balancing a high-impact career with family life, and her passion for outdoor recreation.
Join Loyalty360 CEO Mark Johnson as he explores how Aly is shaping the future of customer loyalty at Blain’s Supply and gain valuable insights into the strategies that are making an impact in today’s evolving retail landscape.
Good afternoon and good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I want to welcome you back to our new interview series, the Loyalty360 Executive Spotlight. These conversations will be with some of the leading minds and personalities who are driving success within the most revered and successful customer loyalty programs in the market today, all of whom are members of Loyalty360. In this series, you will learn about the individuals working behind the scenes to develop and maintain their customer loyalty efforts. Yet we will take a more personal look at how they got to where they are today, the successes they've achieved, and address some of the challenges they may have faced along the way. Today, with the pleasure of speaking with Allie Blouat. She's the Senior Director of Customer Strategy at Blaine Supply. Welcome, Allie, it's great to connect with you again. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Good First off. Could you please provide us a little background on your focus at Blaine Supply?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I oversee the Blaine's loyalty programs, including rewards, cobra and credit card, extended product protection and service plans, and they also manage our customer insights research and analytics team. My team sort of represents the voice of the customer for strategic and department level initiatives and we really are trying to ensure that all business units understand who our customers are and who we're targeting and want to grow with through wallet share, trips and new customers.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and how does Blaine's supply work to meet the evolving needs and expectations of today's customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we leverage post-purchase surveys and some other first-party research to understand how our customers are expecting their experience to be at Blaine's and we track that over time to learn how those expectations are changing. We're also leaning into our vendor partners, our store teams, our contact center team to really learn where we might be falling behind or where there may be friction in our customers' experience today and, what's the most important thing to our neighbors, our customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, excellent. How does the customer loyalty program play into meeting those needs and expectations?
Speaker 2:So the loyalty program kind of works in two ways to support our customer needs. On one hand it's getting us access to better quality data so we can do more robust analytics on loyalty members. Many of the expectations from our customers kind of land in the world of enhancing that experience or doing more personalization, and our loyalty data allows us to do that. It helps us to communicate better through our owned channels and we get higher engagement. Our rewards customers are also looking to be rewarded for their loyalty. So that's kind of more of the second objective of the program to keep our neighbors coming back and choosing us for more solutions. And we can't really afford to disappoint our members. So we really use the program for both everyday value and surprise and delight to keep them coming back.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. In your opinion, what is the single most important factor that influences a great customer experience? Those are the hard ones to pick one a great customer experience.
Speaker 2:Those are the hard one to pick one To me. I think it comes down to the interaction at point of sale, whether that's in store or online. It's the ease of purchase. It does take a lot to deter someone from buying something that they've already decided they want or that they need.
Speaker 2:If they took the time to do the research, they took the time to go to the store or to go to the website, they looked at all the different retailers and different prices, sizes, colors, availability of the item and they selected their product, they added it to their cart. They're going to get to checkout. You know it'll take quite a bit to get them to not get to checkout if they've already done all that work. But if that process from there on is too difficult or you don't offer the payment type they're looking for, you don't have the shipping transparency when will I get this? How much is shipping? Or if you're in store and you don't have that nice, friendly, welcoming associate to elevate the experience and to create a positive emotion, you can kind of make it or break it in that moment. So I would put ease of purchase as one of those big factors and moments that can help influence the customer experience.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, I know, getting to know you over the last year. You have a passion for your customer loyalty program but also one of the things that you've developed kind of a focus is around in-store training and developing advocacy for the program. Can you tell us a little bit how that came to bear?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've been in the loyalty space for about 15 years and to me, getting the buy-in is one of the hardest parts. People want to know what the secret is to getting more people to sign up for your program. Is it the value proposition or the signup bonus, hiring the right kind of people who are selling the program in your store, or putting together the marketing to sell the program online? And while all those things are important, I think it really just it's so simple because it just comes down to asking consistently and there's not a silver bullet, there's not, you know, some super fancy secret out there that you can pay all the money in the world to get. It really just comes down to asking every customer every time about if they know about the program and how you personalize your response back to them.
Speaker 1:What have you learned from this? Focus on training and advocacy for the program.
Speaker 2:That it doesn't really matter. You know the type of personalities you're dealing with. You know you want a pretty dynamic and unique group of people who are talking about the program. But giving a little more attention to how you got to this place and why the program is so important to the customer, to your business, to your team, for your store, you know, insert whoever, why is this program important? And helping them understand that, why bringing them along the journey for how you came up with a hypothesis if you wanted to make a change or introduce the program. Helping people understand those connections that's where I've noticed the buy-in comes into play. So, taking the time to do that and not just assuming everybody already knows or the details don't matter, you know, here's what matters. Don't worry about how I got here. That, I think, has made a really big difference in how I've been managing our programs.
Speaker 1:Well, that's awesome to hear because, as you know and you mentioned right, getting initial buy-in for the program but also sustaining that buy-in, that executive level support, can be pretty challenging for brands to attain and then to sustain. It's just the same and you seem to do a great job of that, so that's great to hear. When you look at things you may do outside of work, what's one passion outside of work that you enjoy?
Speaker 2:Well, right now, in my current stage of life, my hobbies have sort of become taking my children to wherever they want to go. But as a family we enjoy outdoor recreation quite a bit. We fish ice fishing right now, in the wintertime ice skating. We do hunt as a family. We go hiking. We're planning on getting a little more into camping and kayaking this summer, now that my youngest is a little bit older. I also have horses so I do a little riding whenever there's time. So lots of outdoor things.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. What was your first job after college?
Speaker 2:An assistant store manager with Kohl's.
Speaker 1:OK, and what do you remember most about the position? Okay.
Speaker 2:And what do you remember most about the position At that point? The dynamics of the people on my team. So I was a young 22-year-old leading a group of people who had incredibly diverse backgrounds. Some were part-time, working in high school or college just to make some extra money. Some were part-time and they were retired college just, you know, to make some extra money. Some were part-time and they were retired and they had worked for decades as a nurse or a machine operator or a teacher or a cop. So they had very long advanced careers before working in retail. And even some people on the team had worked in retail longer than I'd even been alive. So having that group of people to lead right out of school as an assistant manager, they taught me so much what to do, but also definitely what not to do, the patience and how to build credibility with the team. I really owe a lot of my success in my career to that team in Brownsburg, indiana.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And then what's? One or two things that you shouldn't do?
Speaker 2:Make assumptions, you know, unless you're assuming positive intent. Don't assume everyone knows everything. Not all communication comes in the same form and sometimes people might be missing some critical components of that message. Critical components of that message Patience. So patience was a big one as far as understanding that while this is someone's career you know it was my career and I was very passionate about that there are other things that are just as, if not more, important than your career and have that human element as a leader. It goes a long way.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Along those lines, what's the best work advice you've ever been given?
Speaker 2:So they? It's about communication, talking to people and explaining. So, whether it's good news or bad news or no news at all, just communicate. People deserve to know, even if there's no new news, what's going on. What am I waiting for? Or, if they've done something really well, recognition in the form of communication, just telling them that they did a great job. If they could have done better, using communication to have some dialogue back and forth. I was always told to constantly ask questions and if you get a lot of questions, don't take it as a bad thing. You know, it's not necessarily that you weren't clear in your instruction, but there's more to it than just you know the words on the page. So two-way dialogue and make sure that you're just communicating with your team and your leadership and your peers. That that will make the world go round.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You have a very successful customer loyalty program. You've mentioned that you've driven organizational alignment. You have a great training program. What do you think the biggest opportunity for customer loyalty is? Your customer loyalty program.
Speaker 2:Us. I think our opportunity at Blaine's is with the breadth of loyalty stages. So we have a lot of customers who shop us weekly for consumable type goods that need replenished. But then we have other customers who shop two to three times a year more for weather related or seasonal goods. We've got people who come to us just for toy land or people who come to us only when the sun comes out for the first time in spring, and my goal is really to reward all of them and everything in between in unique ways, because we're solving multiple problems here and I think the way our program sits today it's just a little too universally fit where it works but it's not as customized and I think we can do quite a bit more to encourage those less frequent shoppers to become quite a bit more loyal, even if they aren't purchasing in that consumable good area where they're buying animal feed, dog food or food and beverage for themselves or their families. There's another way to kind of break in.
Speaker 1:When you look at the opportunity to potentially break in there, getting your customers, your vast set of customers you have, and they have different interests, as you mentioned. Do they know the array of products and services that you put forth, or is that part of the opportunity that you see?
Speaker 2:It's definitely part of the opportunity that we see Because we are a destination for solutions. A lot of times what happens is a customer will be very mission focused on their trip and we say internally you know that they've got blinders on, they're walking in, they're going straight for the thing that they need and they've got to get home to get that project finished or something fixed, and so they're really not there to experience all that we have to offer. But they do think of us in that moment of need. How do I get them to come back later when they don't have something leaking at home or a mess that they're working on? How do I get them to come back because they had such a great experience for that one solution for things that they didn't know that we had? We do have people who shop our entire store, every single department. They have learned all these things that we have to offer. But we definitely have that wall to break down with several new people who have been coming over the last couple decades.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's awesome. When you look at the passion you have for the program. It's definitely sincere and it's always great to hear how you talk about the program but also the employee advocacy elements that you've championed within Blaine Supply. You know you are certainly focused and passionate about that. What drives that passion and what are you seeing as some of the outcomes of these programs and initiatives you put in place?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the passion for me? You know I've always been very results oriented. I like to see what I've done and be able to look back and notice a change. I need to see the KPIs, I need to see that improvement.
Speaker 2:And with a company like Blaine's we've been around for 70 years there's a lot of people who have that the tenure with us. They know us through and through. A lot of our customers and even a lot of our employees have been here for a very long time. And so coming in, you know, to an organization that's well established, that has the loyalty from their customers, with or without the program, it just really inspired me to try to make a difference for the organization, to see how you can elevate that a little bit further and take it a little bit in a different direction. So we started the organization as a discount retailer for farmers and the only way to get the discount was if you were a member, through having five engines or more. So it was kind of that idea of the first discount store, the first loyalty program in the state of Wisconsin, you know, 70 years ago.
Speaker 2:I don't want to lose the fundamentals of the history and I want to make sure we're always kind of grounded with what we were and our roots.
Speaker 2:But now that we've grown and we're flourishing, how do we continue to tap into what our neighbors are looking for? Because our family farmers still very important aspect of our customer base, our core customer really but their lifestyle has evolved quite a bit. So making sure that we aren't just doing the things that we've always done, but we are focused on delivering on the experience and recognizing the loyalty of this new dynamic customer base that we have. That goes from your family farmer to new homesteaders, to hobby farmers, to people who live in the suburbs but have nice yards and they want to have gardens, or they just want to have a nice green yard for the first time. They're outdoors, they're doing fishing or hunting, they're in the recreation camping. There's so many different ways to solve the problem that some of our neighbors are dealing with that I think the loyalty program can help elevate that experience just a little bit more and get that access to the customer data to make it more personalized.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at kind of the life personal work, you know what's the biggest challenge you have faced in your life and how has that shaped you as a person.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a mom, I'm a wife, daughter, sister. You know all the, all the roles, but I have a career and so, kind of being a working mom, I I'm trying to balance all the things that my family wants to do what I want to do with my career and in my personal life.
Speaker 2:So really the idea was kind of put into your head and everyone kind of hears this like you can't have it, all that old saying. And I grew up with this complete opposite train of thought of yes, you can. So you can kind of have whatever it is you want. You just have to have the energy and the focus. You have to have the willingness to ask for help to make it all happen. So for me the challenge kind of comes into play of wearing all these different hats and making sure that I've prioritized those roles in my life in the right way so that I can do all the things that I want to do with all the people that I want to surround myself with and that my kids are happy and healthy, my husband is happy and healthy. I'm happy and healthy with both my personal life and my work life. So that that's really been just an evolving challenge. As people grow and age and change, priorities change over time, but staying true to to what that end goal was.
Speaker 1:And that's awesome. That's great to hear. I know that that can be a big challenge, especially for working moms. I know my wife works and she does a great job of balancing it. As you know, a little bit of sacrifice there, especially at the younger ages. But as you find things that you and your kids have a passion for, things get to be a little easier at some point yeah, that you and your kids have a passion for things get to be a little easier at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you look at life lessons you've learned, are there life lessons, or is there a life lesson that has shaped your perspective?
Speaker 2:You know, there's definitely a lot of different lessons that I've learned over time. I touched a little bit on communication. I do think a lot of what I've learned has to do with the type of people you surround yourself with, the partnerships you make and the relationships. I believe it takes a village and you really have to depend on other people and that's not always easy to do but to lean into your support system, whether that's family or friends or coworkers and it could be all of the above depending upon the situation but being open and honest and just communicating when you need help, communicating when you're behind or when you're moving too fast or you have too much on your plate, and being able to reprioritize all of those things. You know you have to take time for yourself, but you also need to make sure you're not going down that path alone. You know, take the time you need, but count on the people around you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one of my biggest challenges is asking for help uh and feeling like you're disappointing someone right especially yeah, uh, and not realizing. They may not realize how busy you are, but you right being able to realize how busy they are as well, to just kind of that reciprocity, that can be very important yeah uh, you've driven change within your organization. How have you done that so successfully, especially when you look at championing the customer loyalty efforts and the programs that you have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are in that right now. The change you know we want to change the way we not only see things but also the way that we do things. So we're trying to make some pretty big changes here at Blaine's. Some of that comes in the form of new leadership, some comes in the form of new priorities. But what's been working for me is bringing those business partners and the leadership kind of along for the ride.
Speaker 2:Sharing data that informed a hypothesis if there was any insight or conversation that was had with a customer or through survey or focus groups, explaining that data a little bit in more detail, how any new tactics are performing. Everyone wants to know the KPIs and wants to know what our goals are and are we on track to reach those things? If there are setbacks, why what happened? And then really leaning into the subject matter expert for products, for marketing my team we are the customer strategy, so we will offer suggestions or thought starters. We need to get the conversation going. So we usually come in pretty strong with who the customer is. What's the problem we're trying to solve? What does that customer target need or want from this category or brand? But then leaning into the experts there for recommending the actual tactics and making sure those will ladder up to the strategy.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That can be a big challenge too is having the strategy especially if you're working internal teams, external teams on strategy that it can be somewhat arduous to be able to implement everything in the timely manner that maybe the consultant or the strategy team developed. But and again it gets back to having that alignment internally, which you seem to do an amazing job of you know driving, and obviously that can help you know champion the efforts that you put forth, especially when they have measurable results, as you've alluded to.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. When you look at your career success, you know what are a couple of things that you're most proud of.
Speaker 2:The partnerships. For sure you know people. It's probably a quick response that most people will say is the people you know. I really like to get to know who I'm working with on a little bit more of a personal level. You know what makes them tick, what's important to them, where are they rushing off to, what else might be on their mind when we're having these conversations, and you know if we're scheduling meetings and they can't attend or whatever. Just having that relationship with the people on the team that has helped me. You know quite a bit. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I've launched a lot of really cool things. So I've launched rewards programs I was part of creating an associate level recognition program in my past revamping rewards or credit programs, testing new components of customer experience through digital enhancements or new things that are kind of coming into the website or the customer journey. I love always love doing focus groups and research and learning exactly what our customers are looking for A little more unbiased, you know, if you can get to that. All those things are really invigorating and enjoyable for me and I get to do all of those in my rollout planes.
Speaker 1:Awesome If you go back in time and change one thing about your life. You know what would that be and why yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a tough one. I'm very happy with everything. You know where all landed for me. But one thing that you know I've learned about myself since you know, even even childhood is that I'm kind of moving 100 miles an hour all the conversation. I'm not super present in the moment and so I tend to miss some details. Or, you know, I might hear you but I'm not really listening at times. So I would probably try to go back and just slow down a little, live a little bit more in the moment, or at least write things down more so that I can remember better now as an adult, you know, recalling memories with my grandparents or conversations I had with someone two or three years ago. Yeah, it's there, but it's not all there. So you know, if I could go back, it would be slow down.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I commiserate with that as well. I have a tendency to do that always and I try to slow down and put the devices away and be more present and spend more time on vacation. This last vacation I had no devices.
Speaker 2:It's hard to do that. Sometimes it's hard yeah.
Speaker 1:You championed the whole loyalty program, the training program on customer loyalty. Is there another change that you would like to bring to the workplace? You know, what would that be potentially, and why?
Speaker 2:Hmm, one like the low, low hanging one.
Speaker 2:That's not real, but it would be great Pet friendly, wouldn't that be awesome if you can bring your dog to work or your cat?
Speaker 2:But in real speak here I would say, part of your regular weekly schedule is could we as a workforce kind of protect time for development, whether it's sponsored by the employer or it's individual time by the employer or it's individual time? But development for, like leadership skills, for management, like project management or any other skills that generally come with time in the position or on the job. But you know, as you're maturing in your career, sometimes it's nice to have that structure to close the gap on the skill set of some of the people who have high potential. So how do you protect that time? And we're all moving quickly, we all have tons and tons of meetings and in between meetings we're trying to get all this work done. So we kind of put development on the back burner throughout the year. You know it usually starts off strong and then quickly trickles out of priorities. But I would love to see the workforce protect a little bit more time for that development.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a good focus.
Speaker 1:I know that that can be a challenge. You know a lot of the avant-garde tech companies have that. You know 10% of the work. You know that we can be just thinking right and being creative and strategizing. It's a little bit different having that time for development as well whether it's taking classes, you know because there is a balance, especially for those who want to learn. I know some people don't have an interest in continual learning, right, they're kind of a fixed mindset. But for those who actually have the passion and desire to learn and better themselves, finding time to help them achieve that can be a big challenge. Yeah, book Is there a book or a podcast that you recommend to your colleagues?
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting. Well, I'm into. I read a lot, but I read more fiction books than I do anything. But I do recommend getting into some of the fictional stories, whether it's in sci-fi or fantasy or romance, having an outlet of um, just letting your imagination kind of run wild. So you know, right now, today, today is the, or maybe this week I would say, is the day. Uh, the third book in one of the more popular series was released. So if you haven't read the Fourth Wing, iron Flame and now Onyx Storm series, that's top of mind this week for me.
Speaker 2:But, I do think those books and books like that were created to give us an outlet as an adult. You know we grew up with those kinds of stories as kids and now they're a little more elevated and mature for all of us to think more like the real world that doesn't actually exist. So it's a nice outlet.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Since you've been a member of Bulletin360, you've been quite active. What do you like about the association? What have you found value in? Is there something that you maybe would like to see a little bit more of?
Speaker 2:I really like the roundtables, hearing from people who are in similar roles as mine and kind of bringing forth what they're doing in their organization, even if it's in a totally different industry. So I really enjoyed the roundtables and the different topics that come up as far as kind of seeing more. This year I'm really hoping to get to the conference to see some more people in person and make some of those connections face to face. That will go a long way. For me is just to be able to have that new relationship with somebody in person, share contact information, get to know everybody a little bit better, versus just talking about the one topic at hand in the round table. So I don't know if there's a way to do social hours or anything where we're not necessarily talking about a structured topic but we can get to know each other a little bit better on more of that social side.
Speaker 1:We do. We have a great brand only member only networking event, video games and bowling, I think we did last year.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you definitely you be coming. I think we got you on a panel and, yeah, you actually have extra gift cards from last year from Andretti. That's where we do it.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 1:This whole stack. That'll be more card time, so it's good, nice. What is one question you would like to ask from another individual who runs a customer? Is there one kind of pressing question you have right now?
Speaker 2:I mean I go right to kind of the KPIs and the data. On the data side, I would want to know, you know, what else are they tapping into their loyalty data to help inform for the rest of the business? You know I mentioned what Blaine's in a lot of other places that I've talked to. We leverage the loyalty program to collect more zero party and some first party customer data to do a little bit more personalization with that's kind of where it's been more, I think, more pigeonholed. So I'd love to know what else are you guys doing with the data there from a customer perspective? What else are you using it to inform within the business?
Speaker 1:Okay, and last question we have. We like to end these with words of advice for someone new or somewhat new relatively new to the customer loyalty industry. What would you recommend to them? For those who are looking to elevate the customer experience and do something unique for their program, what's a piece of advice you would give?
Speaker 2:them. I will bring it back to the customer every time. You need to know who you're focused on, who is your customer and is that the group that you want to grow with? What is it that you want from them? Is it more items in their cart, more trips to your store or your site, and then kind of identifying that as the problem you're trying to solve for your business. But then you also have to identify what's the problem you want to solve for your customer and can those be solved with the same solution? But really the foundation of all of that is to know the who. So take the time to really learn who that person is or that group of people are, understand their needs and their wants, understand where there's friction, understand that problem that you think your company can solve for them, and then work into the business problem.
Speaker 1:Allie thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today in our Executive Spotlight series. It's great to hear about your passion and also some of the things that you do in your personal life. It seems to be that you put 100% into everything that you do. We definitely appreciate you taking the time to share your advice with our listeners and look forward to learning from more from you and your team in the future. So thank you very much for taking the time today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Also, I want to take the time to thank everyone for listening today to this edition of our executive spotlight. Please be sure to join us back every Saturday for another edition and make sure you sign up for our podcast series and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on all things customer loyalty. Until then, have a wonderful day.