Loyalty Stories 44: What Loyalty Looks Like in the MENA Region – Chayya Sakhuja

Gabor

Hi, and welcome to Loyalty Stories, that is Antavo’s podcast on customer loyalty and loyalty programs. I am Gabor Vigh, one of the Partnership Managers at Antavo, and Antavo is a technology vendor that empowers loyalty programs all over the world. We help various great businesses, such as KFC, Benefit Cosmetics, very well known global automotive and fashion brands, airports, and so on. 

In this Loyalty Stories podcast, we dive into the trends around loyalty programs and customer loyalty. We talk with industry experts all around the world to pick their brains to learn what’s new and what’s next for loyalty programs. 

Today’s guest is the co-founder of Quick Brown Fox Consulting FZ LLC, a consultancy dedicated to design and mobilize loyalty and CRM programs to improve customer journey, deliver a better brand experience and improve customer retention.

She is an exclusive partner and a board member for the Loyalty Academy for CLMP workshops in the MENA region, a returning contributor to the Global Customer Loyalty Report, and a valued member of the Customer Strategy Network. 

Please welcome Chayya Sakhuja. Hi Chayya, how are you?

Chayya

Thank you very much and thank you for your amazing introduction. Very excited to be a part of the podcast today.

Gabor

Thank you very much for accepting our invitation and be here with us. Really looking forward to discussing loyalty with you today. But before we dive in, would you mind just quickly introduce yourself to our audience?

Chayya

Yeah, thank you, Gabor. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. My name is Chayya Sakhuja. I’m the co-founder for QBF Consulting, leading loyalty in the MENA region. We’ve been in the region for the last 13 years, but as a consultant for the last five years, specializing in strategizing, performance management, and implementation of loyalty programs. 

And as you mentioned, we’ve been working on the development of the MENA region. We’ve been working on the development of the MENA region, and we’ve been working on. We’re also the exclusive provider for the CLMP, which is Certified Loyalty Marketing Professionals certification in the MENA region and a board member with Loyalty Academy. 

Loyalty is something I am madly, deeply, passionately in love with because I’m somebody who really enjoys things that are objectively driven and highly measurable and to me, loyalty is one such tool in terms of business or marketing.

And also what I really enjoy about it is that it runs through every single aspect of a business, whether it’s operations, finance, marketing, technology, loyalty runs through all the disciplines, which is what excites me because you get to learn so much more. And been in the region, as I said, 13 years. The better part of it, I was working with Emaar as Director, Group Loyalty. 

So, was instrumental in launching one of the largest programs in the region called U by Emaar, which incorporates Dubai Mall, all of Emaar’s assets as hospitality, entertainment, properties and communities. So since then, we have launched quite a few loyalty programs here, Eastern Europe as well as Saudi. Very excited to be here today and I will do my best to contribute and share whatever I’ve learned in the last few years.

Gabor

Thank you so much, Chayya. And as you’ve been loyalty passionate, just like myself, what would you name as your favourite loyalty programme, as like a user perspective, and why are you in love with that concept?

Chayya

I think if I was to say U by Emaar it will be biased but I did leave Emaar five years ago so the reason I love that program for two or three reasons. One, it’s highly relevant to me. I’m a property owner with Emaar. What I really like is the richness of generosity of the program. 

I think having Dubai Mall as the ecosystem, having hospitality, entertainment, it pretty much encompasses my entire lifestyle. So it’s not just a part of my, when I go in, then I do something. So I think to me, it touches many aspects, from shopping to entertaining to dining to living in the community. So it becomes a part of my everyday lifestyle. And I have a co-brand credit card with them, which also offers me amazing perks, like valet parking at Dubai Mall. 

So I really enjoy the generosity and the easy understanding of the program. I don’t have to do cartwheels to understand it. It’s simple, I like what I get, and I find it highly valuable to my personal lifestyle.

Gabor

Great, very happy to hear that coalition loyalty programs are not the easy ones, but if it’s working, it’s working really nicely. And if you look back on your career, would you say that’s one of that piece of work that you are the most proud of, or is there anything else that you would like to put here?

Chayya

Exactly. I think being my first program and also with the region’s largest, you know, real estate developer, world’s largest shopping mall, I think it’s one of the programs I’m very proud of because a lot of my learning came from that program. And the key learnings were, you know, a program that’s well designed also has to be technically, operationally, commercially well executed. 

So a lot of my learning came from that program, but another program I’m very proud of, was Galerija Belgrade, which is part in Serbia, largest shopping mall in Belgrade. So literally was a part of the team before the opening. I really enjoyed working with the team in Belgrade because it’s really nice to have a client when they’re very clear and give loyalty the importance it’s due. 

So it was very nice collaborative effort to launch a complete digitized loyalty program for the largest shopping mall. So I think that is something also gave me a huge amount of learning because when you are working with especially with shopping malls and you’re dealing with third-party retailers. 

You know you’ve got certain technical limitations operational limitations so I think coming around those limitations and really taking a program to market which is fingers crossed quite successful today was quite a great learning and we launched it during covid this is when I was based in Dubai, the client was in Belgrade, the branding agency in London, the technology partner in India. So to make it all come together and happen on day one of the mall opening was quite a learning and something I’m very proud of.

Gabor

Great, yeah. Sounds like a good digital challenge for the time. And if you look back maybe one, two, maybe three years in the timeline, what do you see the big changes in the loyalty space?

Chayya

I think change is constant, one, two, and I think there are so many different changes now that you see loyalty. I like the fact that it’s becoming, businesses are waking up to it to understand how important it is to one, recognize your customer or value and that loyalty programs enable that for you to understand while every customer is valuable, but they’re not equal in value. 

So I think loyalty programs are becoming quite a trend to, it’s more than a trend, I think it’s a necessity today for businesses to have a loyalty program. And I like the fact, especially in Middle East, that businesses are recognizing that as a core requirement because COVID was a real wake-up call when we’re all holding onto our best customers, but we don’t know who they are. 

So, you know, I think that’s what I’m enjoying and I’m seeing loyalty change. It’s become more of a priority than something that we’ll take care of. So you know, businesses are understanding the importance of knowing your customer or value, building that relationship, nurturing that relationship, also in how you’re communicating. 

I’m enjoying the different ways in people are engaging with their customers. So relevance is becoming more and more prominent in the ways you’re engaging with your customers and not sort of taking a spray and pray approach. You know, let me speak to everybody in the same language. 

So I think those are some of the changes we are seeing, and a lot of legacy traditional old programs, the hotels, the airlines are also adapting to what do the customers want and rather than just saying this is the customer that I want to focus on and this is the only language I want to speak in. 

And we can see that because we can see, I’ll give Emirates as an example, now Emirates has launched something called Skywards Everyday. They’ve integrated with multiple partners, retail partners, because now they’ve realized that they have to go beyond just, when a customer flies in with them. You know, how do I become a part of your everyday lifestyle? So programs are going beyond their core proposition to expand, to integrate more with the customer’s holistic lifestyle. And that’s what I’m enjoying about loyalty in the last couple of years.

Gabor

Was there anything kind of shocking or surprising in terms of loyalty strategies or program launches that came up in the past one or two years? That was really kind of like, what’s this? I haven’t seen this kind of approach before. 

Chayya

What I like about this region, and there are two key programs I’ll mention to you, very big programs in the region, is from a coalition perspective as well, there’s a whole card link technology which has really come up in the last two years in this region. I’ve not seen it anywhere else, and neither I have experienced it anywhere else. So that’s what I’m enjoying about it. 

It’s huge because now you can integrate your credit card and start to earn points on certain key points, which I thought. And I’m enjoying the fact that was quite surprising to me as to how these big companies have invested into, it’s something so technically advanced to make it more customer friendly. Also, I’m sure the investment is sizable. I’d love to be a fly on the wall to be able to see how it’s coming along in the P&L. 

So that’s what’s made me quite curious in the last couple of years of some of the big programs in the region that have launched and now this nature of a coalition program and we all understand the nuances of a coalition program but I like the fact that they’ve kept the customer as the key focus so that the customer can just link their credit card, move on with it. But from a financial perspective or the commercial perspective of the program, I’d be interested to know how that’s doing. So that’s what’s caught my attention in the last couple of years.

Gabor

Great. And if we look into the future, towards the bright future for loyalty programs, what would you say, what are the two fresh trends in loyalty that are kind of going to dominate the loyalty strategies or loyalty programs in the upcoming 12, maybe 18 months?

Chayya

What I’m hoping to see and I’d love to see is more of subscription based and I think that’s going to become quite a trend, you know, thanks to Amazon Prime and, you know, people don’t mind spending as long as they can get the value back. So I think what we see in large scale loyalty programs is a lot of redundant loyalty base. So you know, you’ve got millions of these members in your program, but they’re not all obviously, they’re not all engaged. You’ve probably got your top five, 10 percent. 

What I  see as an opportunity coming up, and I’m seeing some programs taking interest, is to see that data and create meaningful interest groups from that data based on certain subscriptions. So what I mean by that is, let me understand this customer who’s not engaging at every level with me, what is relevant to them? 

Can I create something meaningful? And will they be happy to pay for that? You know, so looking at, we talked about micro, you know, micro targeting, creating micro segments and using subscription as a way to even fund the program as well as give the customer that extra value so you don’t lose them, you keep them interested. 

So I think subscription to me is something that is going to be the way forward because it works commercially for the program and equally should show value to the member. And people don’t mind spending a little bit of money if they can get some kind of a convenience factor out of it.

Another research we were doing the other day and I’d like to share that with you is it’s not a loyalty program but some of the airports around the world have introduced a membership where you can pay $100 or $200 for a year and you get fast-tracked for example. You’re not getting all the business class benefits but it’s some of the benefits around it so if you’re somebody who’s a frequent traveler can now have a direct relationship with the airport to get certain benefits, as opposed to the airline, which I thought was very interesting. 

And you know, you always question yourself, would I pay that $200 to get through the airport faster if I was travelling? And if it’s something I could recover in my two visits, then fair enough.

Gabor

Yeah, definitely. Sometimes there are those life moments when you would pay $200 for one single fast-track checkout just to avoid the crowd. Yeah. And how do you see Chayya? What a loyalty technology company should support these things? How or what about the features that like a technology should have to not even should have but maybe must have you know to support all of these trends that you were just listing?

Chayya

So, I think like I’ve always said this, technology is an enabler. Finding a good tech partner is like gold dust, in my opinion, because you know, we’re consultants, we come in and of course, having launched some big programs, I feel it’s important, the strategy is obviously very key, but the program has to be technically, commercially, operationally viable. 

And where technology plays a key role is obviously there, the enabler. They’re the ones who bring this whole dream and the vision to life. The simplicity of technology, I think we talked about innovation as a tech partner on a program from a client side. I want the tech partner to be proactive to come and tell me what’s trending, exactly what you’re doing. 

You’re speaking to the right people in the industry. You want to know what’s upcoming. So you’re 10 steps ahead of the game and come back and tell the client to sort of, you know, this is what the next few years are going to look like or the next, you know, the next generation is going to look like, and this is what we are doing, and this is how we can support you on this journey. 

So I think for me, more than technology itself, there’s guidance, there’s a service element to it, and there’s operational support. Because most of the teams you will see from a client’s perspective are quite linear teams in loyalty, so they rely heavily on the technology partner to also constantly drive the strategy.

We built a strategy today, tomorrow it’s going to change because technology is changing at a very fast pace. And we may, as loyalty technology experts, the client will rely on you to drive that expertise forward, to take them on this journey with you. You know, so if you are not on that journey already, then your client is obviously behind. 

So as a tech provider, client will rely on you for the expertise, for the speed, for simplicity, as well as, you know, bringing in the Intel, the global intelligence to enhance their program, their vision, and how they can be ahead of everybody else, whether it’s locally or globally.

Gabor

Great. And what would you consider like important features in loyalty technology?

Chayya

I think it also depends on the business. What we’re seeing, a good trend. I like the fact that there’s gamification elements today in technology where you can use your points. Especially like I said, there are certain very boring segments when you look at loyalty to create that excitement. And I talked about this as being education, healthcare, real estate. These are where frequency is not driven. These are high value items. You go in there, you buy a property once.

Where am I taking my customer on the journey? You know, not going to wait till they buy something else. So I’ve given them a reward. I want them to stay engaged. So gamification is a key element, but also to enhance that gamification. So I think it’s gone at those days with spin the wheel and what else can we do to drive that engagement? Metaverse is something everybody’s talking about. And it’s actually, you know, while we think it’s something that’s thing of the future, but things people are already doing so much in that space.

So I think that is something to definitely look at from a from but if you ask me from an overall program features simplicity is something that we want to look at and technically data is also how you’re collecting the data. How you’re analyzing the data because that will define a lot of the future of the program so when you’re onboarding a technology partner the dashboard and the Internet that partner can help you support is equally important. 

Because data is the new oil, so that’s why you’re doing the loyalty program. And how that data is utilized and fed back to the business, I think is a very, very key decision-maker when I’m looking to select a loyalty technology partner.

Gabor

Great, thank you, Csaya. And there is always like a very interesting debate or just opinion around my next question. When it comes to technology, what do you think, what is the best approach, buy or build in-house?

Chayya

No, no, don’t build in house again. That’s not my approach. Look, I think loyalty in itself is a business in itself because technology is changing at a rapid speed. So you have to focus on what your core is. And that’s my recommendation to my client. Unless you’re a tech company yourself and you know that this is something that you can take a lead on, because by the time you will go to market, this technology would have changed base already and face. 

So our recommendation always is to let the experts do the job. So when you’re talking about building loyalty internally, and we’ve been through these conversations many times, and I can guarantee you, if your expertise is in making a car, focus on making a car. Because let the experts do their job. Everybody has good technology, IT teams today, but I’m sure they’re already very occupied. 

So if you want to get your program, have seamless support then you need to bring the loyalty tech experts because you will also be enhancing the technology. You as technology experts have the global Intel and will be moving with time. Whereas if you build it in-house, you’re going to focus on getting what you had decided six months ago to market, you’re going to do that first. By the time it’s time to change face, the program itself would’ve changed a lot. So it you’re expertise is not making loyalty programs, then don’t go there. It’s more expensive, you pay a great price for learning.

Gabor

Great advice, thank you, Chayya. Because you are working on a lot of different loyalty projects and you also rolled out a couple of them. What do you see nowadays? Who are the main stakeholders for loyalty? What departments in a company behind the loyalty project?

Chayya

Again, depends on the size of the business. But what I’m seeing now is sitting under, you know, they’ve got these digital teams.So it’s a lot of loyalty programs and big organizations today are sitting under the tech aspect. So whether it’s, you know, because they’re going through digitization, so it’s sitting in the digital team, in some places in marketing, some places in CRM, it really depends on the size and scale of the business. 

But I’m seeing it more and more in the tech side of the business, from marketing, because initially it used to be under marketing. It’s gradually moving towards technology with marketing involved.

Gabor

Great, thank you, Chayya. And as like my last question, I would like to ask if there’s anything else in mind that you would like to share with the audience in terms of like loyalty, or if there’s any like advice for those brands who are looking into discovering loyalty or implementing loyalty?

Chayya 

I think the advice is always, you know, it’s not, the programs are very, very helpful to identify a customer of value. My only advice, my always say this loyalty programs are for those who don’t have one. And for those who have one also, sorry, is they’re very much like a child being born. Because when we often do loyalty strategy, the first thing we’re asked is, you know, what is my return on investment? 

So for me, loyalty programs are like child being born, they require being nurtured, being invested in, you know, you need to give them the right nourishment, the right engagement, the right focus for them to grow into something that’s going to become very meaningful and give you back in terms of business.

Loyalty is not something that is going to solve your problem on day one. Loyalty focuses on customer retention, retention of your best customers. Yes, it will help you acquire new customers, but it’s not going to solve for if your product has a challenge, loyalty is not the answer for it.

But if your customer experience has the challenge, loyalty can definitely help you in streamlining your customer experience in streamlining your operations and your marketing efforts for sure. So the advice really is that, you know, you can launch a loyalty program, but the returns will depend on what you do with it.

Gabor

Very thoughtful. Thank you very much Chayya for sharing your opinion on loyalty and being here with us today. I really enjoyed the conversation. There’s been definitely favourite parts, but if I just need to highlight a couple, it’s definitely when you were mentioning that loyalty programmes are there to enable brands to recognise customers. 

I think this is a really great quote from you today and also when it came to the trends for the future that the rise of subscription programs are gonna be there and gonna be more and more popular and also they will become even better and targeting the audience much better with the help of data so definitely loyalty programs can collect zero party and first party data that helps. Yeah, so thank you so much, Chayya.

Chayya

It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you Gabor. Thank you for this opportunity. I’m very privileged to be here.

Gabor

Yeah, so thank you so much, Chayya. It was an absolute pleasure.  And for the viewers, wherever you listen to us, be it on a podcast platform, YouTube or LinkedIn, please like this podcast, like the channel and also subscribe to our channel, so you will get the notification when the next episodes are out. And also tell us what you think about loyalty in the comment section below. 

Visit antavo.com, your next loyalty software. Antavo is a next-generation loyalty technology vendor used by global companies like KFC, Benefit Cosmetics, automotive and fashion companies and airports all over the world. But also don’t forget to visit Quick Brown Fox’s and Chayya’s LinkedIn page to find out more exciting details of their work. 

Thank you and see you on the next one. Bye for now!