Jeannie Walters

Ben Hart, Senior Director of Customer Loyalty at Rackspace, was the Keynote Speaker for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). Rackspace is a $1.3 Billion hosting company that is the # 1 specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. They serve 60% of the Fortune 100. They’ve been in the Top 100 Best Places to Work for the last four years and they’re fanatical about customer experience.

Today, Maritz will be announcing the results from a comprehensive study into U.S. consumer loyalty programs. The study, the first released by Maritz, aims to help explore the motivations of brand loyalty across six key industries: financial services, entertainment, retail programs, hospitality, grocery, and airlines. Thanks to early access to the findings and an interview with Scott Robinson and Bob Macdonald from Maritz, I thought I’d share interesting findings which may help organizations navigate the shifting landscape of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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How many meetings have you sat in recently where the term “gamification” has come up? It’s often waved in front of an executive as either a magic elixir or a battle cry. Gamification, it is stated, is the answer to engaging customers.

I like the idea of gamification…in theory. In its simplest definition, it is creating an action and reward system for members of your community. Humans like games because we get some immediate gratification. The gamification of experience, however, leads to some odd “rewards” for those who play.

Is it multi-channel or omnichannel? That is the question. In this ever changing and speediest of worlds, we are tweeting from our phones, planning playdates on our tablets, and presenting via webcams on our laptops. Your customers are using whatever device they have in the moment. Multi-device is so prevalent, it’s difficult to tell the Mac lovers from the Droids.

How do you best serve customers when they are jumping from device to device while posting on your Facebook wall and calling your customer service line at the same time? What are their expectations from channel to channel? What about the old-fashioned ways of storefronts and face-to-face? Do...