Customer loyalty is a well proven concept and has been around for a long time and most probably will be around for a long time too especially in the 5-star hotel industry. The main part is just for companies to fully understand that the balance in this relationship has shifted from company to customer and with the increasing international competition the fact that the customer now is in charge.
This substantially difference starting point in the strategic thinking has made using a holistic model like the Loyalty triangle ensuring the process, value creation (added and recovery) as well as the foundation database management and communication a necessity. Having a clear strategy of how to actively work with and deepen the customer loyalty level, as well as following the relationship through in a more long –term way and that way developing the profitability together. It is using structured approaches like the loyalty triangle we are being able to leverage on the cross-promotion including financial, temporal, functional, experiential, emotional and social values.
As a conclusion of this dissertation the main factor lies in the holistic view and strategy. It is not so much exactly what pieces that are put together if the all fill their function in the overall strategy. Even if frequency programs and recognition programs cannot stand on their own anymore, they can still serve a purpose and we should still take care of their well proven benefits we just have to make them fit into the new frame of today with the customer in the center.
In some way the next step in customer loyalty is first to understand what has been done so far and keep the good parts and then combine in one well planned effort. Just as resources, number of rooms or resorts were not the main factor to success in the world of social media the major separator was instead which who have realized that the winner now must be more “human” and take step back towards the basic and the real relationship in order to earn trust. After earning that trust the customer will let you in and tell you all that you need to know you just must listen as the customer has become the most important asset of the company.
One of the top trends in 2011 one of the strongest was “Customer engagement and building a relationship” and it is still about the customer engagement in 2012 and the trend is just growing stronger. This will most probably continue in the future as all efforts concerning customer loyalty springs from the engagement!
This also involves that the traditional 5-star service industry must step out of the comfort zone and join forces with the fast-paced IT industry, because the customers in the 5-star segment have become quite tech savvy over the last couple of years. As they have the resources to acquire the new technology quite fast, they have become early adopters of it and learned how it can make their everyday life easier in business as well as in leisure time. So naturally they demand that the 5-star hotel they stay in adapts to as 5-star service is supposed to be about comfort and being able to do things the easy way, because you deserve it.
For the company this means that taking all the benefits from the previous programs and repackaging them into one strategy that must have full support from top management throughout the whole organization. Because to be able to deliver service from the first visit on the web site all the way through pre-stay, during stay and post stay everyone must be in the same team and with the same understanding.
The weak spots of what has been has to be improved and corrected at the same time and who is better to help with that then the guests themselves. Once again, the closer the relationship the more trust and the more they will tell you what you are doing wrong and can improve. They will gladly take part in the process if they see that you appreciate it and acted on the valuable information that comes from that conversation. Facilitate co-operation, co-creation, and co-development as much as possible as loyal customers are more likely to give good and useful feedback. The conversation has already started you just have to tune in and make it happen.
Of course, this conversation is no longer a face-to-face conversation so you must be everywhere, at all time and in all time zones where the customers are. One way of doing that is using technology like web 2.0 and social media together with automated solutions that can listen to all these channels 24/7. Because as the conversation started you cannot just ignore it as with the power shift to the customer and technology advances like social media a dissatisfied customer will not go quietly anymore. With all the technology and places for user generated content a dissatisfied customer can also be in all the places you are to make your everyday a lot more complicated.
When listening to all that is being said you also must remember and store information for later use and this is where the heart of the system is database management. With all new technology, massive amounts of customer data and the demand to be able to share the information throughout the organization at all time the data must be well segmented and structured as knowledge is the key and the foundation for all one-to-one marketing and the root of all CRM approaches. This information can through partnerships/access points/ or interfaces to 3rd party databases evolve the customer knowledge provides opportunities for business planning purposes to enable forecasting, trending, and understanding performance of different customer types over time.
Even if the customer loyalty concept will be highly important for years to come the customer touch points, the technology and the cultures that are setting the future standards are not going to be. So be ready to develop new touch points over mobile platforms and web 2.0 and ensure that the platform of choice is scalable for future expansion.
