Starwood VP of marketing: Managing customer expectations requires emotional credit
The hotel group's VP of marketing, distribution and loyalty discusses the balance between solid and great customer experience and how data is helping it do both
Managing customer expectations and the balance between solid and ‘wow’ experiences is about putting credit into a bank account, Starwood Hotel’s VP of marketing, distribution and loyalty claims.
Speaking at this year’s ADMA Data Day in Sydney, the Belgium-based Daniel Kerzner said modern customer engagement was a “give and take” arrangement, where brands needed to gain “emotional credit” with their customers to drive advocacy and long-term loyalty.
“With any business, you have to have more credit in the bank account than you take out of that account,” he told attendees. “There is usually that one defining stay that makes me think about why I want to stay with a certain hotel [group].
“What we do is try to find those touchpoints and where it makes sense to overload the bank account with those credits. But we also know those extra credits won’t be there every time.”
The comment followed Kerzner’s presentation on how Starwood is using customer data, as well as social media channels, to drive more personalised experiences that surprise and delight its customers.
One example he provided was having a gluten free cake in the shape of a shoe delivered to the room of an influential shoe blogger who had posted comments about her forthcoming trip to a Starwood hotel in Athens and her love of gluten free desserts. Another example was delivering bathrobes to a loyalty member with their name embroidered on them.
“It’s not so much transactions, but how to find opportunities to have interactions with our guests,” Kerzner said. “Data allows us to understand that it’s a guest’s birthday, for example, and then use that information about the customer to wow them.”
However, Kerzner admitted not every experience can always be better than the last, and said the key for brands is to ensure the core experience is great one every time.
“Each opportunity puts some credit into the account,” he said. “We know our guests aren’t coming to us for that ‘shoe’ experience every time, so it’s about how we give you a great stay every time, then one experience in the customer lifecycle journey that wows you.”
Another way Starwood is working to improve its influential on the customer journey is by building partnerships with other travel providers and services. As an example, Kerzner pointed to its recent partnership with Uber that allows Starwood loyalty program members to earn points for hitching an Uber ride.
“This allows us to know where guests are travelling, market to them and in the end, ensure they stay with us more than the competition,” he said.
Starwood is also piloting a new partnership with Whatsapp in 25 hotels globally that allows guests to directly communicate with its staff via the mobile app. Guests can use the chat app to ask for services such as booking a taxi or service in the hotel.
Kerzner said the Whatsapp and Uber relationships were also recognition that it’s sometimes better to use a third-party’s technology over your own.
“Uber has a great app, so why would we try and replicate that?” he asked. “And with Whatsapp chat, the question was: Do we want to drive conversation through own channel and app? My sense is no – if our customers are using Whatsapp to talk to friends and colleagues, we don’t want to ask them to leave that to have a conversation in a proprietary Starwood app with us.”
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
Enterprisetalk
Mark
CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June
Great e-commerce article!
Vadim Frost
CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes
Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...
jackson13
The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration
Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.
Ella Hall
The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration
Great Sharing thoughts.It is really helps to define marketing strategies. After all good digital marketing plan leads to brand awareness...
Paul F
Driving digital marketing effectiveness