For years brands and companies have been investing in loyalty. Loyalty programs were the core of customer relationship management. Every customer was encouraged to sign up for the loyalty program so the company could have them on their customer rolls and market directly to them. Those programs, which were at the core of what was known as “direct marketing” allowed those who offered loyalty programs to be able to communicate with their customers directly, bypassing traditional media, and before the advent of the world wide web and email marketing, to make offers to them by mail. When the brands did choose to use mass media in conjunction with the loyalty program, it was usually to promote something new and drive their customers to stick with them and not even consider the competition.
Airlines, hotels and car rental companies jumped on the bandwagon and offered all kinds of bonus incentives to fly, stay and drive with them. When a new route opened in a market from a competitor, the airline that you flew most between your city and the new one being flown by the upstart competition, the airline you flew offered double or triple points to keep you in their seats.
The point wars followed the air wars. Hotels did the same to keep you sleeping in their beds, while car rental companies offered you more points when you chose them if you flew in with their airline partner.
Loyalty programs led to status programs. Stay so many nights, fly so many miles or rent so many times and you become a “status” customer. The higher up you went, the more the brand did for you. Upgrades. Free stays. Free flights, rentals. Loyalty programs became incentives for traveling business people to stay loyal. You got offered credit cards, and the more you spent the more points you earned, the more rewards you got, and the higher status you were awarded.
But oh, how the premise of loyalty has died. It used to be if you called the rewards program desk and they saw you were a status passenger they did all they could for you. Now, getting someone on the phone requires an act of God, or a longer than human wait on hold. While the reservation or customer service person thanks you for your length of loyalty and your status, that and a few dollars may get you a latte at Starbucks.
You see, your loyalty no longer matters.
All the investment and all the data that’s known about you collected by the brands has become meaningless. Your years don’t matter. It’s all what you did “last year” and already it has become “what are you doing now” as airlines look at spending levels and miles together vs. in the heyday of points programs, all that counted was your miles or your segments flown. Your years of loyalty, don’t count. The person who traveled a lot more than you last year gets the perk, and your length of service is out the window.
Already the hotels give points not on nights but on money spent, so the rack rate traveler gets a far more lofty point stay than the savvy spender. But in the end, they both need the same number of points to get a free night, and then, despite your status level for your brand loyalty, you’re both offered the same entry level room, even though your many nights of suite states should earn you a similar room as you earned it.
But it goes without saying that the rewards are not really the point that keeps a customer a customer. It’s the way they’re treated that is the reward. Being a regular guest gets the warm hello, the “welcome home” arrival and your known likes arranged for before you arrive, and your dislikes noted so they don’t arise. Unfortunately, loyalty programs and the data that was collected about you no longer bring with them the intangible benefits they were designed to offer when you arrive somewhere for the first time, or fly out of city you’ve never been before. The benefit of “alliances” are pretty much gone too. Your status may get you a shorter line, but nowadays the “partner” favors their own customers over you, as you’re the alliance’s person not their’s.
Then there’s the new person at the front desk, with a glazed look, and an unhappy frown doesn’t know you from the last person. The airline gate agent doesn’t see your face, they’re too busy worrying if the FAA or mystery shopper is going to catch them doing something wrong. They’re staring at the color of the boarding pass scanner or running from gate to gate. On the plane, you’re no longer greeted as “Mr or Miss” and for all your years of flying the airline never even gets you a free newspaper or coffee.
In the air loyalty has been pushed aside first due to 9/11 and now Covid policies. Those are now excuses not reasons for bad service. Fear of being fired for doing something that in the past was seen and being nice for a passenger has been replaced. Instead of making the loyal passenger feel just a bit more “loved” than the occasional traveler, both are treated with disdain, rushed into their seats in favor of an on-time push back from the gate, only to sit at the gate for minutes waiting for a take off slot. Heck, in the old days a status passenger could arrive as the gate was closing, and the door would be held for them.
Veteran travelers know the routines as well or better than the gate agents and flight crews. So instead of keeping them happy, the routines get changed and they get treated now like the irregular passenger. Being scolded to put seat belts on while the plane is being refueled. Being denied hot coffee or cold water before going in the air, not because the coffee isn’t there, but because it would mean breaking the crew routine. That clearly demonstrates a total lack of care about the passenger, top tier loyalty or first time flier, either of whom could become the airline’s next million miler.
While the loyalty programs remain, they remain in name only. Respect begets respect. And loyalty programs were built on respect for the customer, and from the customer towards the brand with what matters most. The spending of the hard earned dollar. By disincentivizing the customer, and reducing what the loyalty program brings to them, the brands have basically said “we don’t respect you.”
The billions spent over decades led to an intangible value for every company, and from every customer. Unfortunately, with the erosion of value in the programs, the companies have clearly said “we have no loyalty to you.”
So why should customers be loyal to them?