Significant Customer Engagement Lever: Redemption – But for whom? Part 1

Being a perpetual student of customer experience, am usually in awe of the cathartic manner in which truly customer centric brands execute flawlessly on their inherently deep customer engagement strategies. These customer obsessed corporations have made delivering superior customer experiences a prime CXO dashboard real-estate candidate. The one common denominator, amongst such companies, is the laser sharp and unwavering focus on providing the finest possible experience at all customer engagement touch-points. And responsive organizations, once having pivoted on digital, undertake a thorough rethink/review of their strategies in this domain.

The story that I am about to recount is about an engagement I had a couple of weeks back, with one of the largest and finest global brands in the hospitality industry – the brand name is irrelevant for the purpose of this missive. And am recounting it here and examining it from various angles since it pertains to the area of customer loyalty management – a CX sub-topic extremely core to what I am and what I do today. So, read on and at the end, let me know what you think.

Thanks to a fairly hectic travel timeline pre-Covid, by end 2019, I had amassed a modest tranche of loyalty points in the loyalty program of this brand. Since 2020 was a washout and 2021, too, doesn’t hold out too much of travel and stay promise, I decided to execute an “activity” within the loyalty program since “no qualifying activity for 24 consecutive months” would render my cache of points invalid. And “redemption” or “burning” of points was considered a “qualifying activity”.

So, I went on to the website and checked out the options available for the tranche of points I was planning to redeem. Now, I have always felt that the process of redemption as an experience on most loyalty program websites are not clearly stuff you can happily write home about. Things were not too different here. Anyways, after a lot of research, I decided it was best if I converted my points to Amazon Pay gift certificates (GC). There were 3 denominations to select from. I selected 6 of the Rs 2,500 denomination GC and completed the request on 30th March. So far, so good.

Starting 24 hrs later, elements of CX friction kicked in.

Moment of Gratification: The next day, I started checking my phone and my email inbox for messages that would contain the Rs. 15,000 GC details – the code that I would need to add the GC to my Amazon Pay balance. Alas, even after 3 days, that notification remained elusive. My moment of gratification was delayed – and anguish was compounded by the fact that I had expected at least this level of sophistication from the brand. 

Help!: On the 4th day, I went to the brand’s loyalty program page with the intention of raising a query – where art thou GCs?! The only way to communicate was by dropping a customer support note. I did so, with an increasing sense of helplessness. A conversational CRM channel (like WhatsApp) to communicate could have been more comforting? Definitely, yes. To the brand’s credit, I received 3 replies following my request:

1. The first reply came about 30 hrs later – it acknowledged my message and promised to forward my concerns to the relevant team and that it could take 7-10 days for a reply. In my mind, that was 168-240 hrs. Long time, eh? Yes, Darlene insisted they appreciated my loyalty.
2. The second email from the brand's marketing support team came 36 hrs after the first email that helpfully updated me that they have forwarded my request to the Research Team and that I should hear from them in 3-5 days. In my mind, 72-120 hrs. And yes, you guessed it right, Tonni appreciated my loyalty echoing what Darlene had mentioned earlier. 
3. The third email came in about 112 hrs after the second email. This email gave a more definitive form to the suspense. Triumphantly the message announced that the said GCs were “handled by our partner, M” and that the brand, sorry, had no “access to delivery details”. If I wanted to understand if there was light at the end of the tunnel, I can log on to a website, put in (repeat) a few details and the M team would respond to me (in other words, I will then be well and truly on another customer service journey with no specific ETA). Of course, I was profusely thanked by Sarah for being a valued member of the program. I almost felt like Harvey Specter for some time.

Long story short, my shout for help, after roughly 178 hrs (7.5 brand days) wouldn’t have left me any wiser as to where my GCs were – had it not been for a wonderful event that happened in the intervening period between the 2nd & the 3rd email – well, roughly 32 hours before email #3. The physical GCs arrived! The 9th day was my day of redemption!

I will pause here and invite some fantastic brains in the customer experience business to share their perspective of my experience so far. Was it truly friction-loaded or was it just about a wrong choice of tyres – dry weather tyres when it was pouring cats and dogs on the F1 circuit. Or am I over-thinking and is this possibly the best experience one could have got. If things can be improved, what facets could be worked on to deliver a better CX? Would love to hear from all the bright CX minds around.

Meanwhile, what happened after I opened the package will surely interest you – hence will cover it in a follow-up article to this! To say I was overcome with a mix of emotions would be an understatement. Stay tuned! Till then, “BonVoyage” – through this article! ;-)