Loyalty & Customer Experience Consulting

Today, firms are concerned with all aspects of engagement across the customer lifecycle. The way they think about “customer experience” is becoming increasingly omnichannel in nature. Enhancing the digital experience is gaining equal footing with the optimization of human interactions. Increasingly, companies want loyalty programs that go beyond rewards and incentives and instead enable a deeper relationship with their customers through greater understanding and more relevant conversation.

Many of the world’s largest and most innovative loyalty programs in the retail, hospitality, airlines and consumer services industries rely on AKT’s extensive global experience to help them optimize these programs. We are a trusted advisor to leading firms because of our deep insights into how the distinctly different drivers of both “true loyalty” and directly motivated behaviors intersect across the end-to-end customer experience. This differentiated cross-industry expertise has helped many of our clients more effectively acquire, engage and retain customers.

You’ll find that our innovative approach is data-driven and grounded in customer understanding. And our capabilities include program development and activation for all stages of the customer experience including acquisition, development, commitment and retention.

To help our clients drive a world-class customer experience, we work with them to address the following questions:

• Does your company have a truly differentiated brand ideal? Focusing on the core customer group is essential — too often, retailers try to appeal to such a diverse audience that they dilute the experience and do not appeal strongly to anybody.
• Does your current model really reflect how shopping is changing? Retailers should redefine their business model around the customers they serve, not the items they sell, while also developing an integrated, cohesive cross-channel shopping experience.
• How in sync is your company’s culture with a customer excellence vision? Retailers should strive to deliver an authentic, consistent and compelling experience and link customer service to the corporate ethos and brand identity.
• How will you measure success and ensure continued evolution of your company’s customer experience?

• Apparel Retailer Revamps Loyalty Program to Fend Off Heightened Competition: When a leading department store announced plans to aggressively target a major apparel retailer’s core market, the company enlisted AKT Consulting to develop a counterstrike strategy to strengthen its relationship with its core customers. Read the complete case study .
• Global Hotel Group Enables Cross-Selling: A hospitality group wanted to improve customer engagement and enable cross-selling. Partnering with AKT, they were able to implement a new, unified multi-brand loyalty program that focused on customer recognition and 1-to-1 marketing. Implementation included guest lifetime value metrics and other leading-edge initiatives.
• North American Airline Identified Major Opportunity: A progressive airline engaged AKT to assess a dual-branded arrangement with a loyalty program partner. We developed strategic options for a go-it-alone strategy versus a currency partnership. The resulting new program repositioned the airline toward greater control of data and economics and unlocked hundreds of millions in shareholder value.
• National Specialty Retailer Optimized Rewards Program to Grow Market Share: A leading apparel and hard goods retailer wanted to produce more effective results from its loyalty program. AKT’S recommendations emphasized creating experiential benefits and relationships with customers. As a result, the retailer’s optimized rewards program enabled personalized marketing as part of a larger strategy to differentiate the brand, which also helped the retailer grow its market share position.
• Leading Multinational Hotel Taps Loyalty Program to Generate New Sources of Profit: A major hotel brand engaged L.E.K. to evaluate strategic partnerships with its credit card and non-traditional partners. We quantified the potential gains from offering elite status benefits to a broader set of guests and optimized the client’s loyalty program to unlock additional profit streams.
• Emerging Market Airline Strengthens Financial Results: An emerging market airline wanted to strengthen financial results by improving its loyalty program. AKT recommended a clean-sheet approach to the client’s loyalty strategy that included recalibrating the program’s features and benefits and restructuring the elite program to focus on recognition. As a result, the airline realized more than tens of millions of dollars in annual value capture.
• Global Hospitality Company Unlocks the Power of Loyalty Data: While examining strategic options for its portfolio of loyalty programs, a major, multi-flagged hospitality company engaged AKT to leverage data to better understand and serve its guests.  After analyzing its large, rich CRM database, AKT developed a proprietary algorithm to dynamically calculate customer lifetime value.  AKT then worked with the client’s Marketing, Operations and Technology teams to make simple, easy-to-understand recognition aids visible to thousands of front-line employees.  As an industry first, this work underpinned a redefinition of hospitality service standards that is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Please contact us at contact@aktcg.com for additional information.