Dan Ribolzi

LoyaltyOne Consulting

As Vice President, Dennis leads the development of innovative, analytics-driven loyalty strategies for LoyaltyOne Consulting clients throughout North America. He directs a team of internationally recognized practitioners working with companies across the business spectrum, including MGM MIRAGE, Eddie Bauer, Best Buy, HP Software and Visa International.

New Year’s Resolution: Revamp Your Loyalty Program?

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Posted on 2011-12-27

As 2012 approaches, many of us are starting to consider our resolutions to begin the New Year. And if you are responsible for a loyalty program, this is a good time to take a fresh look at that as well. Any program can benefit from some classic New Year’s resolutions:

1. Get a Makeover. Even a strong and successful loyalty program should consider a new look just to keep things fresh for those engaged members. A rebranding effort can inject excitement and energy to the program without disturbing the actual value proposition. Some fresh colors and a new logo can liven things up, and a new card can be selectively issued to re-engage some stagnant or lapsed members.

2. Trim the Fat. Many loyalty programs are already designed to reset in January, inactivating the accounts and wiping out the points balances of any member who was not active the past calendar year. If your program doesn’t do this you likely have some stale liability on your books that is...

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Practitioner experience meets customer experience

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Posted on 2011-11-18

"Engagement Expo 2011," held at the Westin Stonebriar in Dallas last week, focused on customer experience, and here I’ll focus on highlights from my experience at the event:

Ed O’Boyle, Practice Leader, Marketplace of Gallup Consulting, discussed the state of American consumers and their level of engagement in "Engaging Customers Today and Planning for Tomorrow." The findings that O’Boyle presented confirm the findings of COLLOQUY’s Relationship Chain(TM), which demonstrates that customer engagement (from dialogue to redemption) lead to further, more active, engagement and greater customer value. O’Boyle shared these findings from their research:

* Fully engaged customers provide a 23[%] premium in performance, whereas fully disengaged customers create a 13[%] discount in performance. The overall consumer mix of engagement:
* 26[%] Fully Engaged, Performance Index 123[%]
* 27[%] Engaged, Performance Index 107[%]
* 27[%] Not...

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The loyalty-program designer’s co-pilot

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Posted on 2011-01-28

People who know me understand my passion for the contributions front-line employees make to a loyalty program’s success—at every stage of the program’s existence. For example, as I watched a trial launch of a program on a recent client engagement, I realized once again that if a test launch is a pilot, your front-liners are the co-pilots.

Engaging your employees in a pilot not only helps you eliminate a program’s operational bugs, but also opens the possibility to gather new ideas that can make your broader launch a big success.

Here are some key reasons for deeply involving front-liners in a pilot.

1. A pilot is your chance to make mistakes early. You’re going to make mistakes. But making a 10-store mistake is much different than a 1,000-store mistake. Use the pilot to figure out what’s working and what isn’t—and let the front-liners do a lot of that figuring. Make sure everyone on the team knows mistakes are OK. Even more important, encourage and...

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Trialogue

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Posted on 2010-07-29

I just spent a couple of invigorating weeks on the road training front-line employees about an upcoming loyalty program launch. I say invigorating because I was able to engage in a critically important element of corporate communications—what I call the Feedback Trialogue. I came away from these exchanges with ideas, energy, and confidence that because of the trialogue itself, the front-liners were eager and prepped to bring the new program to life.

Marketers employ a number of customer feedback sources, but many likely don’t leverage employee feedback sources as aggressively. In the Feedback Trialogue, employees become another voice of the customer to the corporate management team, while learning to better serve as the voice of the brand to the customer. And though employee observation of customer experiences can’t replace the customer view, combining both perspectives can lead to tremendous insight.

One of the most basic geometric shapes and one of the...

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From the Front Lines: Program Gut-Check

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Posted on 2010-05-13

In my capacity as a Consultant for LoyaltyOne, one of my favorite things to do is get out in the field with the frontline employees – the store employees and call center reps that actually interact with those customers we value so much. I recently spent a few weeks helping to train frontline employees and despite the burdens of a hectic travel schedule I came away energized. Not only do I typically leave these sessions with some fresh ideas, but I also feel much more in-the-know about where the loyalty program stands.

Sharing a new or revamped loyalty initiative with frontline employees is typically a humbling experience. They won’t hold back their opinions on your value proposition, will correctly anticipate the top customer complaints and are guaranteed to find a loophole in your terms and conditions faster than you can say “conference call with the legal department.” Dazzling PowerPoint presentations and gaudy business card titles are lost on them – they’re straight...

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