In an enlightening conversation with ET Edge Insights, Sumit Prakash, Country Director — India & South Asia, Collinson, sheds light on the new rules of customer engagement. With over two decades of experience in the financial services, business, travel and loyalty sectors, he has a proven track record of scaling businesses in a competitive environment. In this interview, he shares insights on a recently launched Collinson APAC consumer insights report – The New Rules of Engagement: Customer Expectations Revealed – and also the type of work that the company is doing on a global scale in the travel experiences, customer engagement and loyalty sector.
Prakash shares that Collinson, owners and operators of Priority Pass, has been working with over 1,400+ financial services institutions+ to deliver market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement programmes for over 35 years across the globe. In their recent APAC consumer insights report that surveyed 4,750 multi-generational consumers in the region, it aimed to better understand what consumers in this region expect from brands and companies as the world enters the “Customer Experience Era”.
The report showed that 86% of consumers in India perceive the experiences that brands and companies provide is as important as its products and/or services. As consumers form the new “C-suite”, their expectations are rapidly evolving: they want brands to provide hyper-personalised communication and offers, to anticipate their needs, and are eager to build emotional connections with the brands they buy from the most. Against this “Customer Experience Era”, travel-related rewards and benefits have emerged as a rising opportunity for financial services brands to drive better commercial returns.
The report also explored two axis of customer behaviour – membership to loyalty programmes and customers’ travel behaviour. There is a strong positive correlation between travel and customer engagement. The report found that travellers in Asia Pacific that took 10+ trips in the last year were members of twice as many customer engagement and loyalty programmes as those that took 1 or less trip per year. Similarly, 60% of frequent travellers said that their spending behaviour was influenced by their customer engagement and loyalty programme as compared to only 20% for non-frequent travellers.
While most consumers cite rational rewards such as points or cashback as preferred ways to engage with them; emotional, ‘experiential’ benefits are becoming increasingly significant – especially for younger demographics like Gen Z, and travellers who take 10 or more trips per year.
With travel firmly back on the agenda globally, the report also discovered that consumers in India rate airport lounge access as one of the most appealing travel-related reward – in turn having a positive effect on Indian travellers’ emotional connection to the brand providing access – with respondents advising it makes them feel valued (59%) and rewarded (57%). Besides airport lounge access consumers are also increasingly looking at other travel benefits such as access to airport transit hotels and airport parking.
