Being the Academic Director for Truth’s Customer Academy really is one of the most rewarding parts of my loyalty life. I love teaching, I love sharing and I love loyalty. We hosted 39 enthusiastic loyalty students from many of South Africa’s finest corporate brands plus a guest from Kenya and our sponsors from Poland – Comarch Loyalty. The Customer Academy Diploma in Loyalty ensures our students are fully equipped to tackle all aspects of rewards & loyalty strategy through to implementation. We follow a robust nine step process which leaves no loyalty stone unturned.
So what does a loyalty nine-step process look like?
- The nine step process starts with strategy and data insights. Data insights is a story in its own right, so much so that we have a separate online training course dedicated to loyalty data.
- Step two ensures that a full audit is delivered and understood for all required programme enhancements. We work against a ten point audit system which delivers a traffic light analysis for programme change.
- Step three moves us into programme design or re-design to address the strategic rationale in step one.
- Step four encourages all brands to test their theoretical loyalty programme design with consumers via research and concept testing.
- Step five ensures that the first 12 months of the loyalty programme customer journey is outlined through a member engagement plan.
- Step six brings to life the critical question of technology solutions. Ironically, most organizations start with step six and almost ignore steps one to five….critical errors which our diploma students learnt to avoid in the future.
- Step seven brings the commercial equation into play, which balances costs and revenue uplift from the programme.
- Step eight delivers a full approach to loyalty project management to launch the new or re-design loyalty proposition.
- Step nine gives insight into required KPIs to measure success against and how to ensure a business manages its loyalty strategy and customer experience optimally. We conclude the nine step process with a peek into loyalty innovation.
Our students shared their experiences and programme performance to enhance the learnings across the executive loyalty audience. My book, Blind Loyalty – 101 loyalty concepts radically simplified is the course text book.
Our Diploma in loyalty is externally certified by CPD (Continuous Professional development) which ensures we deliver a learning experience worthy of a Diploma. We’ve awarded our professional loyalty students with the acronym CADipLTM (Customer Academy Diploma in Loyalty), but only after they have completed six assessments to ensure their participation and learning merits such an accolade.
To the world of loyalty, I live to share loyalty insights created out of hours, months and years of loyalty consultancy and mentorship. It brings me the utmost of pleasure to award our students their Diploma in Loyalty. We continue to bring this experience in 2024 to Kenya and Ireland in July and November, respectively and to a South African corporate which is upskilling its entire African leadership team in loyalty in September through our Customer Academy.
