Blind Loyalty Challenge with Rendani Mauda

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

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. We interview

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

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and a lot of

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fun through the challenge. The challenge is about promoting the Blind Loyalty

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Trust and

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my book called Blind Loyalty, a 101 loyalty concept radically simplified. All

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profits from

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the book go towards the trust. We hope you enjoy the Blind Loyalty Challenge.

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So for today's Blind Loyalty Challenge, I'm sitting opposite Rendani Maoda and

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he's

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head of ABSA rewards for the ABSA group and we've known each other for many

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years in the

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South African industry. So it's such a pleasure to have you. Thanks, Rendani

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for coming on

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the Blind Loyalty Challenge. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to

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you today. I'm feeling good, excited. I'm really looking forward to the

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challenge.

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Okay, I'm going straight into it. This one I think is super easy because

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recently ABSA

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has dropped, not recently, like last year, you dropped your fee structure,

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which is quite

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a big thing for retail banking programs. So chapter 24 of Blind Loyalty talks

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about fees

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and subscriptions. So give me your views on fees in loyalty programs.

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Yeah, I think there's this big debate about it. I think my personal philosophy

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is you have

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to remove as many hurdles as possible for the customers to engage with your

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program.

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So fees could be one of those hurdles for getting customers to engage. So maybe

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biased, but I

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advocate for no fees, make it as simple as possible for customers to access

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your program.

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The upside, you get, if your program is good enough and the core product is

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good enough,

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it will be much bigger than the fees that you get from customers.

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I think Rindani, there's going to be a lot of people listening to that who are

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potentially

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going through that debate around are we reliant on the fee structure to make it

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a profitable

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program versus exactly what you've just said. That's lovely to hear, especially

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given you've

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just done that, not just, but have been through that process. Great. So chapter

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73, my second

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question, chapter 73 in blind Lordy is about retail banking rewards. So nothing

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that you're

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unfamiliar with, but do Lordy rewards really make a difference in the retail

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banking industry?

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Yeah, I've been asking this question a lot of times for both internally and

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externally

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as you expect. I think there's where retail banks have come from. They've kind

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of converged

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in terms of loyalty programs, right? It was very one retail bank doing it and

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then everybody

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had to do it as kind of a ticket to the game because customers asked for it. So

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that's

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one, but where teams make a difference in how effective the programs are, right

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? So you

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can make a program work for the greater bank. And I think with enough design

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thinking, thinking

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and meeting the customer where they're at and actually getting the customer to

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engage,

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there is lots of evidence that shows that the programs actually work. I think

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in our

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case, as I said, it's out there. Like, since we put the program together, we've

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seen increasing

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customer profitability, right? And that's in fact, customers engaged with you.

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They live

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a few more from a CX index. And then I think also you see the results from a

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bottom line

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perspective. So it's a win-win for both. But the program has to be right. It

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comes more

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than mirrors, right? In terms of what customers get, otherwise, people will

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just disengage.

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Totally. Absolutely. And my question wasn't biased, by the way. I wasn't

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leading it to

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be, "Oh, are they really making a difference?" So the industry, I'm super

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interested. And

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for you to say, you know, it's fact, we've seen a difference in profitability

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of customer

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base is incredible. So that's lovely to hear. All right. The last ones are more

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personal

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view on loyalty. So what would you say has been your most innovative loyalty

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experience?

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Most innovative. So I think I'm a big subscriber to loyalty programs, as I

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should.

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Yeah. So I think I'll answer this in a couple of ways. I really like the simple

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programs,

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right? So it may not be as innovative. But it may resonate with me, right? So I

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think

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like a program like Seattle gets one extra coffee. You love the coffee. That

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works for

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me. I think recently a program I've engaged with the most was a version actor

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that's

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gotten me back to the gym in terms of just pushing people to exercise 30

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minutes and

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twice a week get a free award, right? That's the one I've recently engaged with

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the most.

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But I think what I've seen outside South Africa, it's a program that I just

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forgot the name

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on the program now. But basically, it's like a community in terms of rating

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like places,

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like restaurants where you go eat, you can like new reviews. You can see how

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many people

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have been there and so on. And you get like rewards points for it, right? For

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actually

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helping the profile of the restaurant. So I think that's quite innovative. You

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get honest

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customer reviews for the establishments, which raises their profile. For the

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customer, I'm

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getting discounts of my meals and so on. And I get to find out about new places

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that I

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may not have known about. So that was really resonated with me.

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Yeah. And it's really tapping into that non transactional behavior, not just

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transactional.

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I loved what you said about Virgin. Like just think about what you just said.

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You said,

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it's got me back to Jim. I mean, that in its own right, all the Virgin Active

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Execives

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will be celebrating. And then you said, you know, twice a week and I get a

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small prize

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and my daughter's the same, right? So twice a week and you get a smoothie or a

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coffee or

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a biogen voucher or and it's such a simple concept. But out of your mouth, it's

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got me

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back to Jim, which is success. It's amazing.

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No, absolutely. And I love that it's instant, right? And I just know like, so

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it's an instant

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gratification. So that works perfectly for me.

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Amazing. Really great. Simple answers though, for me, as you said, it might not

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be the most

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innovative on paper, but it's having the biggest impact. So rather have the

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impact than innovation.

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So well, thank you. Thank you for sharing Rani. So who would you like me to

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interview

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for another blind loyalty challenge? Yeah, I think seeing that I'm a big fan of

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President Active, I'm going to nominate Kia Abbot for the next challenge.

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Okay, I know Kia from many years actually and I know she's at Virgin Active, so

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it's been

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absolutely a pleasure to chat to her. So awesome. Well, Kia, I hope you're

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listening. I'm going

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to find you soon and we'll chat you soon. Rindani, thank you so, so much.

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No, thank you.