Amanda Cromhout 7 min

Blind Loyalty Challenge with Mark Senteu


Mark discusses the importance of gamification in the fuel industry, the role of customer care in building loyalty, and the power of emotional experiences.



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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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