Back to THE FRONT(LINE)
Ensuring frontline staff fully engage customers with your product is never an easy task. As New Zealand’s most popular loyalty programme (with over 2.5 million members) but without a physical presence, that disconnect was proving disastrous for Fly Buys.
The challenge
In an increasingly complicated and competitive market, loyalty scheme Fly Buys was finding it difficult to find relevancy with the incredibly diverse group of people it needed the most: The employees of partners tasked with communicating key messaging to customers on the frontline.
The Fly Buys Brand marketing team worked with Loyalty NZ’S internal analytics team, as well as Lab360, to unearth insights. They identified that the ‘ Crew’ segment, a loyalty programme available to employees of Fly Buys partners, was an underutilised but potentially powerful force that could be the key to reversing the group’s fortunes. After all, it’s the frontline staff that, ultimately, sell the service.
“If the staff of Fly Buys partners have any lack of understanding about Fly Buys, aren’t engaged in the programme, or simply don’t ask for a Fly Buys card at the point of sale, there is a significant hurdle to navigate right at the crux of the process,” says Fly Buys.
Engaging with this segment was a complicated proposition, however, with significant variables to consider: fast turnover of staff, varying professions (from cashiers to mortgage managers, to CEOS and marketing managers), and simply the fact that, with multiple other incentive schemes in operation, Fly Buys is sometimes not a priority for salespeople.
The desired outcome was to create evangelists of the Fly Buys programme, armed with a deep understanding of how things work and what the benefits are, as well as a mindset that was less ‘ not worth it’ and more ‘ mad not to’.
The response
Loyalty NZ proposed a gamified promotion, the Crew Quiz, as a way to re- engage those all- important frontline staff by educating and motivating them in a challenging but fun way.
They could compete against their peers in the quiz that busted myths, educated frontline staff and reminded Kiwis of the simplicity and benefits of Fly Buys.
The resulting data of the quiz, which revealed the knowledge and key behaviours of crew members, was fed back to Fly Buys’ head office to provide valuable insights into the competency and mindset of partner staff.
The response
After analysing responses to key questions, it was discovered that measurable improvements could be achieved by actions both simple and profound.
“Fly Buys products and features that we thought were clear and well understood were found to be more confusing than expected,” says Fly Buys. “That changed the way we described these products to all Fly Buys members and the way we promote them,” says the company.
By simply changing the way it communicated with key staff, it could transform the public face of the operation.
Another key insight was around understanding preferred communications channels, which showed mobile device usage was much heavier than assumed.
As a result, the user interface of all future campaigns will now be mobile led.
From not existing ten months ago, the new Crew programme is now a central pillar of the Fly Buys marketing strategy.
“Not only must all brand marketing campaigns now formally include a Crew aspect, but Crew is considered a key channel for communicating upcoming changes or news to Fly Buys members in the same level of priority as Loyalty New Zealand staff.”