Building Digital Resilience in Loyalty Space

In post-pandemic “New World”, leveraging digital technologies to engage and enrich customers with holistic experiences is the way forward for long-term growth in the Loyalty and Engagement space. An agile and resilient technology infrastructure is imperative for driving a seamless and valuable customer experience.

The five essential focus areas to build digital resilience in the loyalty business space are:

1. Dynamic Solutions for Dynamic Behaviors

Several technology solutions are based on behavioural analysis of known user interactions. However, no time better than now has showcased the dynamic nature of human behaviour. Hence, it is imperative to have dynamic solutions that can swiftly adapt to the rapid customer changes and business disruptions.

Loyalty Technology solutions that have been denormalized into completely independent cloud-native distributed microservices can make this happen. It is important for organizations to to migrate architectures to 100% native microservices for 100% efficiency in technology solutions

Hence, from technology point of view, organisation must consider the core capability metric as a measure of success for loyalty programs than immediate ROI of product/feature build for the immediate future

2. Build systems that cater to changing personas

The unprecedented pandemic era has showcased different personas of different individuals. What seemed impossible before has now become the usual for many. To keep-up with the ever-evolving times and changing personas, it is essential to have a technology infrastructure that can morph the user experience based on the ever-changing user persona. The Micro-SDK and Micro-Front-end technology comes with robust Audience Segmentation capabilities that can change faces basis the changing user personas. The ability of the system to offer personalization based on the changing user persona is going to be a game changer in future.

In essence, every aspect of the user experiences provided by the system should be self-morphing. Such fine-grained components can considerably enhance the automated orchestration capability of a technology set-up.

3. Speculations vs Precise outcomes

The pre-pandemic ways of managing data through ROI-based Data Projects, now stand obsolete. With the ever-changing behaviours and work scenarios, the world is in need for a well-architected smart technology system that can comprehend behavioural change and identify external factors that are affecting it and modify the mechanisms accordingly.

This means long-term promotions / campaigns will probably have to wait until there is stability. Very agile short-term solutions that are based on real time machine learning algorithms will be critical for the system. For example, the model of inclusivity will keep changing depending on the working scenario.

Hence, it is important to invest in building Real-time machine learning algorithms that are built within technology systems. Make sure these systems not only consider existing attributes but also have the ability to consume new attributes while imparting training to employees/channel partners.

4. Enhancing Experience through seamless connectivity

Over usage of internet bandwidth during the pandemic challenge led to network congestion and subsequent decrease in internet speed and connectivity. Where the participants were tolerant of the slow network experience during the initial phases of the pandemic, there is now a need for seamless application availability to ensure a successful participant experience irrespective of the status of network availability. Hence, arises the need for a revamped technology architecture that includes the following:

• Virtualized API with a thicker end-point that can handle local basic functions
• UX designs that consider the “OFFLINE” model of network availability
• Systems that can handle both online and offline mode of Internet availability

The Architectural principles in organizations to add a new parameter is to  consider adding “Offline” mode as part of the Non-Functional requirement for your technology architecture. Also, look at Infra deployment architecture that comprises of both Thick as well as Thin endpoints.

5. Love-Hate relationship with technology

Love for digital has been consistent since the time of its inception. However, as evident, the pandemic witnessed a drastic change in participants’ behaviour. Where the availability of digital channels during quarantine showcased the participant’s sheer love for digital space, once the restrictions were lifted, there was also an urge to go out and experience life in person. The human behaviour has been swift in oscillating phases of ‘Digital Love’ and ‘Digital Hate’. Here arises the need for an integrated technology infrastructure that smartly caters to the shifting behavioural patterns of program participants.

Hence, the companies that are able to provide that seamless user experience and benefits basis fluctuating Digital behaviour, are the ones who will ensure continuous business Acceleration through the various periods of digital phases.

Building Digital Resilience in every aspect (5 focus areas as given above) of IT infrastructure, can enable organisations to rapidly capitalize on changing behavioural and market conditions. Thereby, create a competitive advantage by achieving business acceleration in the loyalty space.

Author: Prasad Poosarla, CTO, BI WORLDWIDE India