Blind Loyalty Challenge with Mark Senteu

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Hi there, I'm Amanda Cromhoe from Truth. Welcome to the Blind Laugherty

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Challenge.

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We interview world experts in loyalty blindly. We're hoping to create insight,

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spontaneity

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and a lot of fun through the challenge. The challenge is about promoting the

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Blind Laugherty

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Trust and my book called Blind Laugherty, a hundred and one loyalty concept

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radically simplified.

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All profits from the book go towards the trust. We hope you enjoy the Blind L

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augherty Challenge.

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For today's Blind Laugherty Challenge, we stay on the African continent but out

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of South Africa,

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so I have the pleasure of chatting to Mark Santeo and Mark is the marketing and

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customer care

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manager for Vivo Energy in Kenya and he was nominated by his fabulous colleague

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who I know

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super well, Konit from Vivo Energy. So Mark, you can blame Konit but thank you

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for being with us today.

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Deeply, deeply grateful for this opportunity. Amanda, thank you.

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Well, it's wonderful to connect with the rest of Africa because of a real place

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in my heart.

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So let's go straight into this. So in Blind Laugherty chapter 68, we talk about

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fuel rewards. So

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I'm sure you're expecting something about fuel rewards given you're at the

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heart of the fuel

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industry. What is your personal favorite rewards experience in the fuel space?

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One something that's so my favorite is to reward this to be able to collect

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points

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and there is something outside the space of fuel. So it's being able to have

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the partners around

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whether you're partnering with a telco supplier, whether you're partnering with

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a shopping

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as an experience or a travel agency. Those are the ones that I love because we

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already have

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the fuel but I get to get an experience outside my space. Yes and I heard once

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around, in fact,

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IAG loyalty which runs the Avios currency for many airlines talks about. The

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earning of points

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is quite rational but the redemption of points is very emotional and that's

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where obviously

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fabulous partnerships in the fuel industry will help the emotion rather than

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just filling up my

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talents. So you play perfectly into that. So chapter 64 is around gamification

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and it's like

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one of the buzzwords or is it a buzzword or is it a real game changer? So do

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you think

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gamification has real impact or is it just kid stuff? It's a complete total

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necessary

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step because one of the things we've realized is this. The petroleum industry

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does not have

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the margins to support high loyalty points and you have to look for multiple

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ways to keep your

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customers engaged. Gamification steps into that space exceedingly well. One of

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the examples I

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would give is for instance you have like say happy Friday activity and the gam

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ification is such that

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within one hour you have an opportunity to redeem. All the people who get to

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redeem during this window

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they get set to triple their points and if you're not able to redeem during

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that window,

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there's something else also for grabs. So there's a big big opportunity that

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people keep getting

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engaged through your program outside just the in some cases, you know,

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certainly of being able

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to just collect points. So I find gamification as a necessary necessary need

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across this particular

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sector and also in other spaces within our region. That's fantastic to hear.

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Great. I haven't heard

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as affirmative a response to that question before so thank you for sharing it

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and obviously

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speaking from experience so that's wonderful. And then my last question is

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about experience so

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given your portfolio as customer care manager as well as marketing in the

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region,

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we have a chapter on customer experience chapter seven. So what is your view of

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how

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customer care plays a role in building customer loyalty? Okay, so first I did

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run the customer care

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sector for about three years and one of the things that you learn is that

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customer care is not

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somebody who picks up the call simply because you have a problem. It's actually

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the entire value chain

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and when I think about the element of experience and the customer care is fast,

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have a mobile fast

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solution. That's part of customer care that I can be able to automatically

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collect my points and

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I can be able to check, I can be able to test whether it's through an app or a

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USSD, but it's a mobile

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fast solution. Then your transition needs to being able to have something that

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's data driven

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and one of the things that we have like in Kenya with partner with one of the

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mobile

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manufacturers and PESI in this case, it helps us because our customers almost

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at least 87% of them

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are actually on MPSA. So it helps me again to follow them where they actually

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are. So when you

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move to experience, the experience then is really brought to life through their

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ones. And sometimes

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I'll give you an example, we are running a current program called Shell Club

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surprises. It's very

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simple. If I find you at the station and you're a member, I will surprise you

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with something unique,

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totally unique. I could be paying your rent, I could be paying for your full

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time, I could be

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I could be fixing, assuming you have a medical bill or something. It's just a

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surprise. Let me

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fix something. That's the biggest benefit I've seen in that customer care

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journey and directly tied to

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an experience that will always outlast the number of points that you have. So I

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see it through a

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digital platform, have a solution that is really emotional and live an

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everlasting impression on

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even just on the field that you can be able to capture. That's the memory that

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people

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have on your platform around the world. Absolutely. And absolutely. I think

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your market is quite

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unique that as you said, 87% of consumers are on MPSA on a digital mobile first

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platform. It is

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absolutely remarkable. So thank you for sharing that. And I think I mentioned

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earlier, I've got

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the pleasure of coming up to Kenya at the end of October. Can't wait to run one

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of our master

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classes and I'll meet you in person then. So thank you for answering the three

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questions so

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beautifully and succinctly. So now you've got an opportunity to tag someone

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else for me to challenge.

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Who's that going to be? I'll tag a fantastic lady who's running our platform.

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My name is Virginia

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and Juho. She's actually the marketing operations manager in my team and she's

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a fantastic

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lady when it comes to loyalty. I'm glad to hear what she gets to say. I think

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she will knock it

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out of the pack. Yep. Well, there's a challenge for me to find some super hard

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questions for her.

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Sorry, Virginia. I look forward to meeting you. But Mark, thank you so much.

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You're an absolute

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superstar. Thank you so much. Cheers.

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