Jeannie Walters

My sister remembers when the “fancy” mall opened in our hometown. She and my mom would dress up to go. By the time I was ready to hang out at the mall, I trudged from one store to the next in jeans or even (oh goodness) sweat pants. After the novelty wore off, customers came as they were – on their own terms. No amount of well-polished marble could compensate for the need to rush into the mall to grab something on the way home from a babysitting gig. My “customer buying behavior” was far from fancy, even though the mall wanted me to believe otherwise.

These last few decades have been dominated with the introduction of technology into the shopping experience. Online shopping helped customers find the things they needed from the comfort...

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.