Can Brands Build Loyal Customers Through Mobile Technology?

It’s sort of like “better living through chemistry”, except safer. The best mobile loyalty integrations provide convenience and ease of use, but what about the human experience? Amit Jhas, CEO of Lucova, shared his thoughts on why the customer-merchant relationship is the key to loyalty programs’ success.

There’s no question that merchants and retailers benefit from customer loyalty. What remains to be determined is the best path to building – and maintaining – that consumer affinity with a particular brand.

A big opportunity that remains underutilized is mobile technology. According to a report from Capgemini Consulting (‘Fixing the Cracks: Reinventing Loyalty Programs for the Digital Age’), released earlier this year, 76 percent of U.S. retailers fail to allow mobile redemption for their loyalty programs.

“It’s surprising how few retailers had integrated the loyalty experience into their mobility strategy and vice versa,” said Mark Taylor, global lead for customer experience transformation at Capgemini, via MobileCommerceDaily. “The mobile device should be the hub of a customer’s relationship with a retailer. The expectation on the part of consumers is that the loyalty program be a fully integrated part of their experience with the brand.”

It’s ever more apparent that built into the mobile experience is the social experience – and this, too, is an essential element to be leveraged in maintaining dedicated and productive customer relationships.

SmartBlog on Social Media recently broke down how some retailers are using social media to connect with their customers outside of the transaction. These methods include: word-of-mouth marketing, immediate response opportunities, and personalization.

Combining social elements with an optimized mobile integration into a merchant’s loyalty program can lead to a competitive advantage for the business, and certainly improve convenience and ease of use for the customer… but is there an even further step to take?

Lucova thinks so.

A customer management and mobile marketing solutions company founded in 2012, Lucova’s vision is to “Humanize Commerce.” The company seeks to fill what it views as a human experience gap in current mobile technologies, by pushing the technology itself out of view and returning focus to the customer-merchant relationship.

The Lucova platform incorporates fully integrated loyalty and rewards, hands free payments, customer identification, in-depth customer profiles, real-time data, and instant marketing campaigns, all towards the goal of enhancing brands’ relationships with customers through technology. This is all offered, without having the customer pull out their phone or wallet, using Bluetooth Low Energy Technology.

The company touts a few of the positive results that brands have gained from implementing Lucova solutions, including: a 41 percent increase in mobile engagements; doubling of basket size; and 2.5 times more store visits.

“Retailers are aware of the huge potential to unlock sales through an effective in-store mobile program,” Amit Jhas, CEO of Lucova, told PYMNTS. “However, integration issues with existing infrastructure, coupled with a gap in providing a seamless user experience have posed challenges. Using our proprietary platform, we’ve been able to solve for those key challenges and our customers are seeing tangible benefits in the form of increased app downloads, higher transaction sizes and repeat store visits in a relatively short period of time.”

For a first-person point of view on the hands free and seamless customer experience Jhas is referring to, check out the video below.