To successfully engage their customers today, brands must first truly understand their customers. Often, this is the first step in creating the relevant and meaningful experiences that can lead to brand loyalty. This is (or, at least, should be) the goal for most brands today. And, of course, there are some who are much further along on this path than others.
The Loyalty360 Awards are designed to recognize those that are excelling on a number of customer engagement fronts. Among the categories that will comprise the 2016 awards is the recognition for excellence in Customer Insights, which highlights a strong ability to listen to and act upon the wants of needs of individuals.
Nominated for this year’s award is Wyndham Hotel Group and its Wyndham Rewards loyalty program.
Because of the success it found with the recent re-launch of Wyndham Rewards - the program that offers free nights at any of the company’s wide range of properties for one flat points redemption rate with no blackout dates - Wyndham is a top contender in this category.
“Our entire revamp of Wyndham Rewards was based on customer insights,” Noah Brodsky, Wyndham Hotel Group SVP of Worldwide Loyalty and Engagement, told Loyalty360. “It is so fundamentally connected to the way that we think about loyalty and the way we think about the program’s design and benefits. Really, everything we do comes back to the core of what our guests wanted out of a loyalty program. When we asked, they had a lot to tell us, and a lot of it was about how loyalty programs were not meeting their needs today.”
Other brands nominated in this category include IHG, Rue La La and Thrivent Choice. However, just as the company has done during past expos, Wyndham feels confident about its ability to take home the top honor again this year.
“Not only do we have such unique insights, but also it is the way that we actually built our program around those insights,” said Brodsky. “It is relatively easy to go out and talk to your customers and ask what they think. It is really hard to come back and completely redesign a 10-year-old program with millions of members from scratch, and redesign it to hit on the exact point those customers are telling you about when you went out and talked to them. That’s where we have done so well, and that is why we are now seeing this level of success.”