The sad truth of it is, customer loyalty programs don’t really exist as their own thing. That’s why you’ve spent so much time searching high and low for information on this, and have found nothing useful. It’s not that you can’t get systems to help you, it’s that they will not identify themselves by this label.
Other Software, Same Purpose:
Yeah, if you look for customer loyalty programs, you’re not going to find them, because that’s something a few other types of software cover by extension or by proper application. What you actually want is a variety of software that have in recent times become the cores of digital business.
Among these are CRM solutions, BI solutions, and ERP solutions.
Why No Dedicated Software:
Because customer loyalty isn’t something software can facilitate directly. It’s something dependent very much upon compliance from the customers. Sure, you can measure it with software, but you can’t enforce it.
All you can do is work out good methods for retaining customers, and use software where needed, to implement it to its fullest. This is where the various software solutions I’ve mentioned come from.
Software:
#1 – Salesforce
Salesforce is a solid CRM solution with an added punch. While its inherent CRM features measure customer loyalty pretty much out of the box, the bigger thing is that with the app exchange to back them up, all kinds of added functions, custom reports and various custom data objects can be implemented.
These diversify the system enough to implement reward and discount systems.
#2 – NetSuite BI/SuiteAnalytics
This system is designed for taking in and processing a massive amount of analytics from the internet, such as social media mentions, search statistics and trending topics.
Integrating this with Salesforce means you can measure loyalty from within, and pair it with conditions that are external that may coincide to show patterns of why loyalty is faltering or booming.
#3 – Onboard Systems
Onboard systems like WalkMe were designed to make hands-on training tutorials that let students learn complex processes by safe, direct practice. It prompts users, corrects mistakes, and captures analytics as well.
Onboarding this with your website or your web service means you can capture problems users encounter, and you can even implement higher customization and migration, retaining loyalty.
Common Strategies:
Common strategies used to try to encourage loyalty are things like discounts, rewards and bonuses and early privileges with things others have to highly buy into, or wait for access to.
It all depends on the type of service, which of these if any actually works. The biggest thing anyone can do, honestly, is to have an outstanding product or service, a likeable company identity and brand, and ultimately, having fantastic customer service and support.
Loyalty is first and foremost about being good at what you do, and not pissing your customers off. If you’ve got that down, the rest is mostly dressing, but that doesn’t mean none of it counts.
But, given how abstract this is, it must certainly be no surprise now that no customer loyalty programs really exist as their own entities. It’s unfortunate, but true.
