Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Executive Spotlight Featuring Don Smith, Chief Consulting Officer, Capillary
In this edition of Loyalty360’s Executive Spotlight, we speak with Don Smith, Chief Consulting Officer at Capillary Technologies. With nearly two decades of experience at Brierley, now part of Capillary, Don offers unique insight into the evolving loyalty landscape — from program design and advanced analytics to the role of AI-driven personalization and member-controlled experiences.
During this conversation with Mark Johnson, Loyalty360 CEO, Don shares his perspective on the future of customer loyalty, the importance of building programs around customer choice, and how loyalty strategies must evolve to address shifting customer expectations. He also discusses the challenges and opportunities of coalition loyalty in the U.S., the potential for innovation in the automotive sector, and the critical importance of listening to customers and acting on that feedback to build authentic, data-driven relationships.
For loyalty professionals, brand leaders, and those shaping customer engagement strategies, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable takeaways to apply in your own programs.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you back to our new interview series, the Loyalty360 Executive Spotlight. It's part of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series.
Speaker 1:In this new series, we feature conversations with some of the most influential minds driving success in the most esteemed customer loyalty programs in the market today, all of whom are members of Loyalty360. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Don Smith. He's a chief consulting officer at Capillary. Welcome, Don. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well, Mark. How are you Doing well?
Speaker 1:thank, you First off, for those who may not know, can you tell us a little bit about Capillary and your role with Capillary?
Speaker 2:Yep. So Capillary is a leading marketing services agency. It's a full-stack solution provider that does everything in customer loyalty engagement soup to nuts. We design programs with a rich consultative experience. We bring a strategy perspective. We also have a technology platform that enables those it's a CDP, it's an entire loyalty platform to run the program. We have a communications solution and platform as well as a reward solution for sourcing catalogs and gifts. I mean, we really do do it all and we provide back-end analytics and back-end strategy support to optimize and improve those programs.
Speaker 2:And Capillary has been around for about 15 years. Some of the folks who may be watching this may know Briarley, and Briarley is the agency from which I come and I've been there for almost 18 years. And two years ago Capillary purchased Briarley and I think part of that acquisition was really focused on bringing our strategic and consulting perspective with respect to program design, and so it's been a really great fit. And we're still Briarley. We're just a wholly owned subsidiary of Capillary and we really are that global consulting arm of the agency and my role is leading the consulting practice, which is advanced analytics, data science, but also strategy, program design, optimization and all of our voice of customer research as well.
Speaker 1:So, don, I know we have had a number of conversations throughout the years. You seem to be always on top of kind of what's next in customer loyalty. So what do you think is the next big trend in customer loyalty, or what are you most excited about as an opportunity customer loyalty, and how is Capillary preparing for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. I'll answer it in a way that says look, there's a trend and then there's a couple of trends within that trend that get consumed, Mark, and I think the trend I'm most excited about is member choice. More and more, we're seeing loyalty programs tailored to the preferences of members and they're going to be in control, not just in terms of their redemption or what they earn with the program. They're also going to be in control with respect to their accrual in many respects and the perks that they select and the benefits, and I think this is exciting. You're seeing more of this. But I think the trend that everyone would have talked about last year was it's hyper-personalization driven by AI. Right, and I've said this before, the problem is we did not hit that trend. I mean not we as an industry. I think we're very hyper but not personalized enough, and I think that's where I'm excited, because this notion of choice for members and letting them be in control of their destiny and really enjoy the program and have a reason to stick with the brand is going to come back to the level of personalization that they received, and the more authentic it is and the more data-driven that honors the promise of the data those members are sharing, the better this is going to work and I think programs are finally realizing that we have to embrace clienteling as a possibility and start arming the people who deal with customers and members and letting them be in the position to delight customers and sweeten the pot and facilitate the experience and anticipate their need state, and I think all of those things are coming together in a beautiful way. That really is the age of the customer.
Speaker 2:You asked how Capillary is preparing for it. Well, we're designing programs that have all of these features, but I think most importantly is we've set aside such a large portion of our operating budget just for AI and product enhancement, and so we're bringing in a lot of automation through AI generative as well as prescriptive and predictive but we're doing it in the right ways and it's always with the litmus test of how does this make this better for the marketer, how can we serve the customer better and how can we start tailoring, and I think we're really going at that and we're seeing incremental lifts. No one has perfected the AI solution and there's a lot of noise around AI, but a measured strategy and that's what Capillary has is what are the experiences I'm going to make better and really tailoring to the approach. That's how we're getting ready to jump in and we're already in deep and we're just going to get deeper and better.
Speaker 1:That's awesome If you could collaborate with regard to a customer loyalty program with any brand or industry to create a groundbreaking customer loyalty program. What would that be and why?
Speaker 2:It's a good question and I'll answer it like I think my number one answer is I want it to be a coalition and ideally it would be interbrand or intervertical, because I really do see that the rising tide of coalition loyalty can lift all brand boats if it's engineered correctly and around the world we're seeing more and more multi-brand and coalition designs really proving coming to fruition and delivering on a promise.
Speaker 2:But if I had to pick I mean I won't punt on your question If I had to pick a vertical right now where I think loyalty is underpenetrated and not working very well at all, it's automotive, and less about the automotive retailers and more about the dealers, the brands that are selling new cars and new vehicles, and I think that's where the opportunity is wide folded.
Speaker 2:We all know it's kind of a sales cycle, right, they get you in, you buy a car and there's a lot of programs out there, but they really tend to be focused on the next sale or just generating the next service visit and generating those revenues and they're not holistic and really facilitating the driving experience and helping you plan out your larger experience as a driver. And to me, those programs you know, and there is a long purchase cycle If there was a partnership with many other adjacent brands that fit into the driver's journey and the driver's life. It's just an opportunity to do something amazing across the board with a number of partners, and so I look to that one where we need the most innovation. That's clearly one of the verticals for me, and I hope we see someone step up and just knock it out of the park soon.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. We had JD Power speak at a conference a number of years ago seven years ago-ish it was in Dallas actually and he just talked about that industry holistically and how there is just an agency problem between the manufacturers and the dealer network. Right, there's always been that antagonism there. They don't have the same goals and it's a fascinating story and I'm sure you're very familiar with that as well.
Speaker 2:I am, and I mean, I just think there's so much opportunity there because there's also a share of garage. You know, conversation, that needs to happen, and just because you've sold one vehicle in a household doesn't mean you don't have the right to win another, you know, and be set up and also be prepared for trade-ins. There's all sorts of things. We should be incentivizing test drives. We should be incentivizing regular maintenance and, yes, partners have a role to play in that. Moving beyond simply the automobile, because some people, like me, will keep a car for 10 years, you know, yeah, and that's interesting.
Speaker 1:The incentivated test drives. I think that's a great idea and I always thought there was an opportunity to potentially work with, with the rental companies. Right, because I bought two of my cars based on experiences. I was looking for a car for my wife. One year rented an explorer, just the base explorer right, she loved it. Got home two weeks later bought her a board explorer, you know st top of the line because she loved it. Right, and same thing. I go out of camaro. The same reason. I bought a somewhat of fast camaro, loved it and bought the same car right. So I think there's a great opportunity there that's totally missed because, you're right, it's the experience of test drive. Do you like it? Yeah, I love it. Ok, boom, let's go buy it Absolutely.
Speaker 2:All of that can come together, so look to see some innovation there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be great and real quick. You talk about coalition, and in the US, why is coalition not taken off?
Speaker 2:Well, I think for a number of reasons. One we have mature, so businesses love to own their own program and when you're trying to get a program off the ground, a lot of times you know folks want to own it, they want to get to critical mass and be in control of their brand, their brand mission, and they want to build their own brand equity. That's very logical and I think many US brands do have the marketing maturity to pull it off, which has led everyone to go no, we can do this and it's ours right. And I also think where you've looked at and there are some exceptions I won't get too deep, but I think the Plenty Coalition was the big miss that ran on the rails of American Express and you know we certainly worked with a major brand and advised them to leave that coalition because it wasn't living up to its promise. But I think and so that was a burned experience that many folks felt, because Plenty definitely benefited some of the hero brands but it didn't do much for the other brands that were occupying sort of secondary status within that program. And for a coalition to work, there needs to be adjacencies and complementary positioning where any brand can find a way to be an acquisition vehicle for another brand in a way that helps everyone, and that's really what good coalition has to do, and, at the end of the day, the journeys that are created across those brands have to feel authentic around things that consumers want.
Speaker 2:And so plenty, I think, definitely left a bad taste in folks' mouth because it fizzled out so quickly. But I also think we have a lot of marketing maturity that exists with US corporations that lets them think they can get to scale and many of them do and want to stay in control of their own brand equity. When you move to Europe and you look at like you talk about a coalition, like Nectar, for example, well, my goodness, it's sticky, you know no pun intended, and it's done something very, very smart with those brands, and many of them probably couldn't pull off a loyalty program at scale. The countries aren't as large, they don't have as many locations, right, and so this pooling of resources in a collaborative effort works a little bit better. I mean, there's still hero brands within that coalition, but I think it's brands coming together because they don't have the scale, whereas in the US, some of our biggest brands have a huge footprint and have a huge organization, and so scale probably plays a role into it too.
Speaker 1:Excellent. In your opinion, what is the single biggest factor that drives a solid, great customer experience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a great customer experience is a function of planning what customers want to have a great experience and I think there are some prerequisites to that. For sure, and we can't. So getting it right from a service and delivery perspective which isn't always the role of loyalty, right, but just things like competent employees do what you say you're gonna do, deliver a high quality product and service. Those are prerequisites for programs to work as best they can, you know, and do the blocking and tackling.
Speaker 2:But for us, when we think about engineering customer experiences, we've stood in the shoes of the consumer or the customer and we're donning the mental mantle of the customer.
Speaker 2:We're talking to them in focus groups, we're talking to them in IDIs, we're bouncing their feedback off of customer panels and asking where is a friction point where customers stub their toe? How can we rise up at a real-time inflection point and potentially solve it or make it better? Right, and where are places where folks would love to get something or a benefit, a perk or just some help from a brand? And if the theory is right and you identify the places where you can take a bad experience or a mediocre experience and make it great, those are the places we start focusing our efforts. Right is trying to find that, but you have to research them ahead of time and if you're going to keep them and make them work, you also have to do financial modeling on that and make sure that we're not prescribing too much or doing something that becomes dilutive or breaks the bank. We want to deliver meaningful experiences, high perceived value benefits, but do it in a very responsible way so that it can get traction and be sustained.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And where did you attend college?
Speaker 2:For undergraduate I went to a small liberal arts college, St Andrews Presbyterian College. It's now become St Andrews University. That's in North Carolina, and I did grad school at Florida State.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent. And Don, what was your first job after college?
Speaker 2:So I graduated from Florida and I was an academic and so I started out as a college professor. My very first job at a grad school was teaching at Rice University. It was a one-year teaching appointment, you know, because someone was on maternity leave and they'll hire you for one year and Rice is a pretty good school and I sort of stepped in and taught classes and it was a wonderful experience.
Speaker 1:Excellent. What is one thing you remember from that job?
Speaker 2:What I remember about this job was I sat down the first days and, like Rice students if you haven't heard, rice is really a gem of a university and the quality of the undergraduate students they source is fantastic. And I remember being in these classes and I taught other classes before through graduate school with the same material and the quality of the discussion and thinking that we got was absolutely amazing. And I think one of the things I kind of learned from that was wow, it's a really. There were students in that room much smarter than me. I mean, I remember my first seminar and people were just shooting a little talk over lunch and I started probing like what were your SAT scores? And about half of them had perfect SAT scores, which I did. These were just smart kids, you know.
Speaker 2:And one of the things about having people smart people smarter than you, quite frankly around you it's not a threat, it's an elevation. It lifted the quality of the discussion. It helped me prepare better and rethink how I was positioning materials. It made me a better and rethink how I was positioning materials. It made me a better teacher, and that's a lesson I think people need to learn in the workplace too, anytime that you get the privilege of working with people who are smarter than you or can teach you something in a given area. It's a blessing and you should embrace it. I really believe that.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's absolutely great. I'm not sure if you've read it, but over the weekend the whole controversy about DeepSeek right and kind of how it was funded, how it maybe went through some loopholes with the chips and what have you. But you know, supposedly they worked with a very young and very smart team and obviously the gentleman had some models that he'd used from financial investing and they were like 24, 25, 26 year old, but very smart people and they said have at it, versus people who are more into like work patterns, right, 30, 40, 50, you do things certain way or not. So it was a very interesting discussion how they did what you just mentioned right, used very smart people, that kind of rethought the whole process.
Speaker 2:I completely agree and I think this whole positioning I remember. There's this notion of a boy with a hammer, right, and the story goes you give a boy a hammer and he'll decide that everything he encounters requires hammering. And I think sometimes we become little boys with hammers in our professions if we go. But I've always built predictive models this way and identified next best actions this way and set up my A-B test this way, and I think opening it up and going look, everything is open for disruption and improvement really does democratize the process, and strong businesses have to be willing to do that.
Speaker 2:It's one of the things I love about Capillary is that we're constantly doing these hackathons within the company. Hey, let's solve a different problem. Take one of our tools and see if you can make it better. Can you map one new experience into that? And they'll have these weekend long contests and developers and others will get together and write user stories and come up with new solutions.
Speaker 2:And that's how you start changing the narrative and making the tools work harder. It's being willing to let everyone into the process and not having any third rails that you can't touch of how you do things. Honestly, it's how we design loyalty programs. Just today we did an internal focus group for a potential client. We brought our employees who use the product into groups and asked their opinions and said what would you change if you could change how these programs operate and if you could change the retail experience? And they told us and you get ideas that you never would have gotten before. When you do that changed innovation and energy and also channeling it in a productive manner that can be operationalized, can be financially responsible and, quite frankly, can be morally ethical as well.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So, looking back on your first job, what was something you learned as a professor that has translated into your career and customer loyalty yeah, I think the one thing you learn as a professor.
Speaker 2:In fact, I remember giving my first lecture in graduate school to a large class and it didn't quite go as I had planned, and one of the students I thought it was brilliant, I made great examples and I forgot. I'm dealing with 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds. You know, and you can quickly read the room and figure out that things aren't landing and people are distracting and not appreciated and you must course correct. And I think that this learning is know your audience and always be paying attention to how your message is received, how your customers are feeling, how your clients are feeling, and be willing to adapt. And I really do think that we all need to do that.
Speaker 2:When you're giving a presentation, it should always be a discussion with your audience. Even when you're on stage at Loyalty360 and there's 500 people in the room, you do need to be looking around and seeing how your message is landing and if folks are engaging with it and if not, you may need to tailor your approach a little bit, go deeper with some examples or move quicker, and I think that's the art that needs to be there and it really does speak to how loyalty programs need to run too. There's not one voice for every customer segment, there's not one voice for every brand, and you have to keep working to find the right voice and the right message and be willing to adapt to earn that authenticity.
Speaker 1:No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the challenges we've always seen within loyalty 360, especially as we've grown the member side is brands have challenged truly listening to and understanding their customers. Right, they hear in a passive. I heard this you know all this new technology that was supposed to be the? You know the secret sauce or the? You know that addressed these opportunities has made it more challenging, more cumbersome. Right, you have more data. How do you make it actionable? Still that listening to and understanding the customer is a very challenging process and if you're listening to them and you can't do something, even saying we can't do this, but tell them that you appreciate them, so at some point, as you know, they'll tune out, they'll quit telling you. If you're not, you know either thanking them or actioning on that data, correct?
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you on both points and I think the latter one may be even more important, like what is the point of creating a preference center or a zero-party inventory Tell me your interests, tell me your likes, tell me which products you need or about your family If you don't honor the social contract of sourcing information and provisioning the messaging around it right? Folks, I still think a lot of folks will share a lot of information with us if we honor the social contract and take it to heart and make a better experience for them, you know, and that means not recommending things that are completely out of their need state, that don't make any sense for them, you know, and trying to think about their journey and map and experiences and things that'll be meaningful to them and really also identify areas where they might have a friction point and smooth it over. Those are the things that people really appreciate and to facilitate the experiences beyond the transaction and there's still much to do in modern marketing in that regard.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Looking back, what's the best work advice you've ever been given? I was working as a graveyard cook in college at an IHOP and it was a tough time and prior to that time I was like any kid. I'd had a whole bunch of different jobs in the service industry to make money. But I really needed this graveyard cook job and it paid better than most jobs for a college student did. It was an owner-operator of this franchise and I saw just how hard this guy worked. I'd started as a dishwasher. One of the cooks quit. They promoted me to cook and it was taking me a while to multitask and to learn to prepare all the stuff quickly.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's skills. You have to be able to flip eggs and land them without breaking up at the same time that you're dropping batter. And it may sound ridiculous, but I was very slow in my first couple of days and on the third day the owner came and he said look, don, it's time to light a fire under your butt and improve your learning curve or get out. And that may not be very beautiful advice that would be on the cover of a book but I think it is advice a lot of times people need to hear, and what I realized was I was like well, how do I do that then? And he's like when your shift is over, stay, because the more experienced cooks are going to be there and follow them, shadow them and watch them and helped them and get better, see how they're.
Speaker 2:You know, and he was absolutely right. It was just sitting there going. Oh yes, I can do four things at once instead of two, and I can think through a sequencing of this and I think that learning experience. What I learned from it was you have to invest in your own success. You can't assume that a training manual is going to teach you how to do something. You have to jump in, get wet, learn and be willing to learn from others, and I think that is the best advice. You're making your own investment in yourself and just about everything in life, and hard work and willingness to learn has to be right at the center of it.
Speaker 1:So not everyone has that drive or that interest to you know, as Carol Dweck mentioned right, there's a fixed mindset and there is kind of the growth mindset. Right, there's two types. People that have the growth mindset will do more. They learn more. There are all kinds of great attributes. Many people have a fixed mindset, right, Kind of that fatalistic. I'm here, I'm not going. How do you make that open to everyone? Because you're absolutely right, Learning, growing, it's working. That extra half an hour, 45 minutes an hour, you know, spending some time with you know, and reading in your field, and, like we both do, voraciously reading, right?
Speaker 2:So you know, how, if someone?
Speaker 1:how do you get someone who may not necessarily have that interest to do that, or can you?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's different ways and there's different personality types and, quite frankly, you know most organizations like if you're running data analytics, for example will have some skilled analysts who want to do that. They want fixed functions, they want to be able to execute against those with excellence, and a lot of times those roles are needed and they work great for folks that have that kind of orientation. I think we just try to celebrate the success, make them aware that they're contributing to that success. But I think the other thing that you can do to stimulate growth is try to create an interdisciplinary team structure and really almost create a coalition of ideas and idea sharing, if you will. We call them pods, like in the consulting group, and we'll pair an analyst with a strategist who might be working with someone else, and they're working together to provision insights, tell the story, reinvent it, and their success is intended to be a shared success as they work together and that pooling of ideas and that peer review process can do some stimulation. I think it becomes a place where those two different mindsets can kind of coexist and perhaps there can be some stimulation there as well.
Speaker 2:Set aside time for employees who say I'd like to learn more about this. Can I do this? Yes, if I can support a training course or something that they want to go take and learn and improve their skillset, there ought to be a business justification. But if there is, we ought to support it and encourage it and really celebrate that innovation, because that's what excites people, and I think cultures that say you can learn, you can do more, we're going to give you a chance to fail, but fail quickly and get better and help us do something. Those are the places that keep employees and that's where people stay, you know, and I think it's exciting to be part of that culture, or trying to create even a better version of that 100%.
Speaker 1:I know it can be difficult, but well, thank you for that. When you look at your life, you know are there some life lessons that have shaped your perspective.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think there's quite a few. I mean, like most people, I've made many mistakes, I have failed, and I do believe that fail stands for first attempt in learning. I really do. But I think a couple of things. So one I am a cancer survivor. I had a scare when I had started graduate school with a tumor. I had a very bad prognosis for that particular aggressive tumor. I had surgery, I had radiation therapy and I was on pins and needles and I think that was a catalyzing event for me in my life because I looked at that and I was like you know what? It's short and there's no guarantees and I can't believe this happened to me, but it did.
Speaker 2:Do what you want to do. Focus on the here and now. Don't set things aside. Pursue your passion and just go after it and don't be thinking 20 years ahead. Think about what you want to achieve and just go out and do it and live and enjoy different moments. And I've tried to bring that into my work, I think, as we move forward, because you know you can't set everything off. If there's travel you want to do, if there's trips, if there's new skills, if there's a chance you want to take it. You know that's a great idea.
Speaker 1:Looking back, you had a lot of great success. You know I consider you a friend. I also consider you a very smart person. I love the conversations we have and finding people, as you mentioned, that are smarter than you or as smart as you to have informed conversations is something I love about my job. I get to talk to very smart people about a very smart and passionate field that we're in, and very often sometimes you talk to some people. You get off the phone with the CMO or someone who runs a company like and passionate field that we're in, and very often sometimes you talk to some people. You get off the phone with a CMO or someone who runs a company like man. That was a bad conversation, but with you they're always amazing. You're very kind. Yeah, looking back at your career success, what are a couple of things you're most proud of?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, I think part. Well, one of them preceded my involvement in loyalty. I kind of pivoted out of academia, you know, and that probably wasn't a great fit for me. I love teaching but I'm definitely an applied person. I like to be in the action setting, not studying things as much as doing things that help influence what happens.
Speaker 2:And I had a great job with Dallas County, texas, and their juvenile department, and part of the physician ended up being funded by the Annie E Casey Foundation and we were looking at racial disproportionality in juvenile confinement and we do have a real crisis, I think, in locking young men up and locking kids up and it does have disparate tolls and I love that I got to work for two and a half years on that grant with the Casey Foundation, with Dallas County, because some of the things that we were able to do with data helped change up the experience and it was really nerdy and operational. But some of the reporting and just looking at the flows, we were able to dramatically cut the amount of time that kids who were placed in detention were in detention, because almost none of them need to be detained. Most of them need therapy or help or coaching or guidance or a plan on how to move forward, and I think that they made leaps and bounds and we saw a dramatic reduction in the number of kids incarcerated and the number of kids and then the days of incarceration for those kids. I didn't cause that to happen, but I was helping provide the data that helped inform the decisions and I think it was part of something good and I'm very proud of. That was one, but I'm really proud of it.
Speaker 2:I actually left that job to go work at Briarley and at the time Briarley was sort of they had a really, really great strategy team. The analytics was newer to them. They didn't really have a predictive modeling practice, and so I got tasked with sort of setting that up and building it, and I think I was able to do that pretty quickly and bring it to scale, and from there I was lucky enough to work with strategists on program design and eventually lead the strategy organization as well. But I think it was taking something out of almost nothing and growing it and nurturing it into something better. That was very gratifying, made possible by working with a great company and great people.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You know we've talked about this before in the past, but what is one passion that you have outside of work?
Speaker 2:I love to travel, and I love to travel to new places preferably, and I love anywhere where I can take mass transit and or hike, and I really enjoy hiking. So I love to go to new markets and new places and if I'm not doing that, I'm probably nerding out and playing video games, which I also really love.
Speaker 1:Excellent, if you go back in time, if you had the Wayback Machine, you know what would be one thing that you potentially change about your life, and what would that be.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, so many things to do and I think I would take myself if I could go back a little bit and think about my college experience, for example. I was certainly involved in different activities and did a little theater, but I think I was great obsessed. I was success obsessed, like I would be devastated with a B plus on a paper and looking back it just seems so trivial, like really should that have been my focus? Some of the nights at 2 am in the library might have been better spent with friends and doing more social things and learning to enjoy life and balance even more. And I think if I could go back, I wouldn't be so obsessed with things like stamps of approval and grades. I would be obsessed with having more experiences and meeting more different types of people earlier and diversifying my experience base.
Speaker 2:And that might be true for my education as well. I mean, I went straight from undergrad into grad school to get a PhD and didn't even stop to catch my breath. I should have stopped and worked and then stopped and traveled and I would have changed what I studied for sure. But at the end of the day it all brought me to a good place. But I think I guess a short answer to the long-winded response to the question that you asked is take myself a little less seriously and just enjoy the moment and enjoy the work that you're doing and take time to celebrate it when it works and embrace opportunities.
Speaker 1:That's awesome If you could bring one change to the workforce, the workplace. What would that be and why?
Speaker 2:It would be more collaboration and mentoring in open environments and I do think this is one of the things. Look, there's debates on both sides of the work from home, work for office, hybrid score but I think when we create open structures, like competition is good and healthy in the workplace, but hyper-competitive environments are not fun for many employees and in fact, it can be paralyzing and disincentivizing for them when they feel like they're competing against one another. And the more we can position folks to be part of collaborative teams working together and sharing in success against common goals and KPIs and OKRs, the better off we're going to be. And then maybe your group becomes competitive with other groups to have the best ideas. But they can also be collaborative and if we're celebrating success and acknowledging success, that resonates with folks.
Speaker 2:And I think those more open, collaborative solution sets are going to benefit younger workers, because they are the ones right now with whom I'm most concerned. They're coming straight out of college or out of high school or wherever and they're looking for guidance. They don't know exactly how to succeed and certainly asking that person to work virtually and not be in the presence of others to look them in the eye and be able to grab a marker on a whiteboard. No matter how good the virtual tools are, it's not the same as being supported and nurtured in a community, and I think that communitarian focus and shared objectives and a shared sense of vision if you can set that up, we're going to see people stay at jobs longer and enjoy the work that they do, and we'll see lots of people succeeding and growing with these companies. That's the right direction.
Speaker 1:How do you do that in a virtual organization if you don't have that opportunity? What can you do to address or assuage some of those challenges if you have a virtual workforce?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you go in and try as best you can to have breakout groups, like one of the things my team we have some folks that are in different places and we like to do virtual happy hours. We like to do virtual Slack sessions because that's one of the tools that we use, where someone will just be like, hey, I'm hanging out Anyone got time for coffee and encouraging people. It's okay between meetings to have a virtual coffee with your coworkers and doing the same thing. Someone will position a new idea and say I've got two new slides. No one needs to prepare for this meeting, but can I have 15 minutes in a huddle and everyone tell me what they think about this idea? And people will join and they will do that and I think that's one way to get the juices flowing and to encourage that collaboration.
Speaker 2:But that alone does not solve the problem. I'm seeing with the youngest workers who need to be, or the newest workers who need to be, mentored and tutored, and I think that means we have to have better training protocol, we have to have mentor systems, we have to have buddies, we have to have coaches, check-ins, accountability, because you cannot expect someone to dive into a role that they've never done before and succeed. They have to be coached, they have to see examples from others of what good work looks like, how to improve theirs in constructive ways, and it just means you have to manufacture more of those opportunities. But I think the hybrid model of bringing folks in and making sure hey, there's a new employee and she or he gets to be with the team in the office, even if it's two days a week, is still a better solution. It's the mix of the two.
Speaker 1:I think you know it can work either way, but I think this hybrid solution probably is on the right track okay when you look at presentations you've given out, given through the years at loyalty x billion, what's the most memorable presentation you've given?
Speaker 2:man, I've done a bunch of them, but I would say my favorite ones to give are the workshops, and those are the most memorable for me because I think the feedback's been so good and they these are not big this won't be addressing the plenary session of 400 people, 600 attendees at the expo but I think these workshops, especially over the last couple of years, where folks are like we've done boot camps and analytics and help folks get ready to just go in and really get tactical about here's the right KPIs, here's the measurements you should be doing. Just go in and really get tactical about. Here's the right KPIs, here's the measurements you should be doing. And it seems like those are really resonant.
Speaker 2:I can tell because that comment I made earlier about watching the room and seeing people engage when you conduct workshops, people engage and I've enjoyed those tremendously because after I've done those people are, you know, sitting up meetings with you afterwards wanting to discuss more. There's a lot of organic conversations that occur from that and I think that's just gratifying and that's the kind of content people want from conferences. We've all been to conferences where it's just hey, here's a fireside chat and one person interviews another person, and that's great if you've got a luminary, and you've certainly had luminaries on stage. But I think that has to be balanced. Every conference ought to do what Loyalty Expo does and give people a chance to learn substantive skills in areas that they're interested in and really treat it like a hands-on workshop where you're going to impart information. And those were my favorites to do and I hope I get to do more in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, looking forward to one coming up in May for sure. So thank you. Yeah, you all do a great job and I think that the interactive piece and it obviously leads to opportunities, but giving brands brands want to hear from those within the market right, they want to hear from you and from others about what they're seeing. They need best practices and it's a great way to subtly put your thought leadership out there. But help them solve a problem. When you solve the problem, you become a guide for them right and that guide obviously can lead to much more.
Speaker 1:So that's great. It's good fun. When you look at Lilty360, I know you're quite active within the association. What do you like about the community? What would you like to see more of?
Speaker 2:The more conversations, the better. What I like about the community no pun intended is the community, and that's probably my favorite conference, because you're at Loyalty Expo and honestly, I think I feel like I talk to at least 50 percent of the people attending every year. You know, and I've gotten to know folks at brands and at other agencies and providers, and it's that sense of community and there's idea sharing. My absolute favorite part of that conference, though, mark. I love the workshops, but my favorite presentations are the awards presentations, where the finalist brands in a category will have 15 minutes or 20 minutes to say here's the business problem that I was solving, here's what we did and put into market, here were the results.
Speaker 2:That is a rarity in today's conference landscape, where there's often a lot of smoke and mirrors and brand collateral. These things are brass tacks, exciting, and I always encourage clients, you know, go to this one, because you can sit and learn so much and it's real, and I think that realness that exists there is what's best Brand sharing information with each other, bouncing ideas around. It's very stimulating, it's very enjoyable, and so I love those types of presentations and, I think, even more discussions that you can broker where you put different folks together in communities of interest to share ideas and to continue that rising tide of idea sharing and conversation should lift all boats.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly and that's one of the things we're focusing on in 25. We almost finished redoing all of our content strategy types of content or strategy, like doing these executive spotlights, both for the supplier community and brands, because I think this is a great opportunity to address some of the challenges you mentioned. Right. So, training, getting younger people understanding kind of the things you should be doing, could be doing, or learning from your successes and or, potentially, your failures right, these are meant to be more personal and I think that we're very focused on that. And bringing people together to talk about different facets of customer loyalty. We're very focused on that. So thank you for your feedback there.
Speaker 2:No, thank you.
Speaker 1:Keep going. And the last question we have is you know we like to end these to discuss some words of wisdom you may have for, you know, the younger generation who may be in the marketing field and the customer loyalty professionals, marketing field and the customer loyalty professionals. They want to develop themselves, but also looking to develop some loyalty strategies that can elevate customer experiences within their brand. What's a piece or two of advice you can give them?
Speaker 2:Josh, for that new person or that aspirant that's coming into the market. Do something, if you can, that you're passionate about, that you feel will make a difference, and be positive and, I think, try to find the right fit. But, in any role that you're in, make a point of surrounding yourself with as many people as possible and learning from as many of your peers and colleagues as possible. Ask questions, be humble but also be inquisitive. Questions, be humble but also be inquisitive and know that anything that you see or learn that's in market or standard practice can always be improved. And chisel away at that and start learning and go.
Speaker 2:What's one thing I can suggest that would augment this journey or make this campaign better or make these benefits pop and resonate and suggest it. Do those things and learn. Be humble but also innovate and push a little bit where you can and really find that balance and know that if you're feeling good about the work that you're doing and at the end of the day you go home and you're like you know what, we may have helped our brand make money, but we also made a better experience for customers. You've done your job and you're on the right track with something that you're probably going to enjoy for the rest of your career absolutely well.
Speaker 1:Don, thank you very much for taking time to speak with us today. Uh, it was one of the best interviews I think I've ever had. I love your perspective on you know some of the training challenges we have, where, uh, you know the challenges with regard to being virtual, on how to address that and being able to drive interest within the brand but also within the individual. It's why I like these. Right, they're not just all focused on technology and process and best practices. It's more practical and in real in that regard. So yours is one of the best we've done Again, one of the best interviews I've ever had, and that's why I like doing these, because they're different, right, I can, I'm much more focused in these. I enjoy these conversations to, uh, you know, a much deeper level than I have other conversations nothing wrong with the other conversations, right but these are, these are just really cool. So, thank you no, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark. It's always, it's always fun to talk to you. We've had some, uh, some great and some crazy conversations in the past. We have, for sure.
Speaker 1:I also want to thank everyone for taking the time to listen today. Today is Executive Spotlight. Be sure to join us every Saturday for another edition. Make sure you sign up for our podcast series and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Until then, have a wonderful day, thank you.