Strategizing Customer Loyalty Program for Fortune 500 Home Improvement Chain

Business Challenge

A major retail home improvement chain headquartered in North Carolina launched its customer loyalty program. After the program launched, the company asked Experis to assist with the strategy of future program initiatives, enhancements, and capabilities. The challenges involved: 

• Integrating key elements of the customer loyalty program strategy with other business functions
• Gaining and maintaining strategic alignment with other business functions 
• Ensuring the end state vision of the strategy is not compromised 
• Influencing external partners to adjust their products and services to meet the needs of the program 
• Delivering wide-scale change to the store operations function and organization
• Maintaining alignment across senior management 

Solution

Experis partnered with the client to develop the customer loyalty program in support of strategic vision and alignment with stakeholder goals. Experis provided critical pieces including a senior consultant to understand current vision and intended audience, the leadership roadmap, business and engagement-level requirements, future-state alignment, and planning and work execution processes.

Through this immersion with key program stakeholders, we succeeded in effectively driving organizational impact with strategic insight, encouragement and facilitation of cross-functional collaboration, as well as ownership of key tactical initiatives.

Key elements of the customer loyalty program included: 

• Managing the program strategy and roadmap development
• Defining and designing future state capabilities 
• Managing multiple workstreams ensuring integration with efforts in other business functions such as Mobile, Store Operations, Finance, IT, and CRM
• Identifying and managing risks and dependencies between the program’s product areas and across other corporate initiatives
• Evaluating potential partnerships and integration options to accelerate speed-to-market, improve competitive differentiation and increase ROI 

Results

• Reworked the program roadmap 
• Researched and vetted several key initiatives that were ultimately approved by leadership and slated for implementation
• Rolled out a standard set of deliverables to create consistency across all projects
• Developed an official transition between the strategy and planning layers 
• Established weekly cross-channel meetings to gain visibility across the organization and foster a more collaborative work approach 
• Altered process to more effectively involve the Customer Loyalty strategy team throughout the entire life of a project
• Established greater visibility and more frequent communication with the other business functions Customer Loyalty relies on, resulting in a stronger acceptance and support of the program
• When three out of four key people left the Customer Loyalty team within the same month, Experis brought in top talent under a temp-to-perm arrangement