An interview by Adam Posner with Chris Mills - VP Loyalty & Partnerships - Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific at Accor.
This Loyalty Leader interview (#29) captured my heart in many ways.
It started with a little bit of envy when Chris explained that his passion in life is travel and how it is part of his everyday loyalty role at Accor.
Living your personal passion in your day job, that’s almost 247365[1] joy!
Then when Chris went on to explain how the focus on creating emotional connections with members permeates their loyalty program Accor Live Limitless, my heart skipped a few more beats!
This Loyalty Leader interview also reveals something quite extra-ordinary and that is how relentlessly they work to create loyalty belief and buy-in across 330,000 team members globally.
Plus, how they overcome some of the challenges of a global program that has local nuances.
The interview is perfectly packed (sorry holiday pun) with so many insights and heartbeats!
Enjoy!
1. So, who is Chris Mills (outside of work) + a little on your work biography
I am Sydney born and raised. I love to travel and so it's no surprise that I have pretty much spent most of my career in travel and hospitality.
Straight out of Uni I worked in hotels and hospitality and except for a short stint in financial services, I have been in the hotel and hospitality industry for more than 16 years.
Interesting, I briefly mentioned my short stint in financial services and the reason for the brief encounter was really a sliding doors moment where I quickly realised how much I loved travel and hospitality and how much I was not suited to financial services.
Working in financial services didn't excite me to go to work on a Monday morning.
(A reflection: When you are “excited on a Monday morning” then you know you're in the place you are meant to be)
Jumping straight back into Monday happiness, I went back into the travel, hotel, and hospitality industry.
I love all elements of travel. I am a bit of an aviation enthusiast - I love going to the airport. I love flying. Then definitely exploring the local destinations is a big passion point for me.
Seeing the rest of the world as much as I do is perfect for me.
I’m lucky in that I have conversations with the local hotel teams who give me tips on where to go that the locals love, making it even more authentic and unique for me.
A few weeks ago, I was in Dubai, and I had probably one of the most amazing Indian meals I've ever had in my life at Little Miss India – Fairmont The Palm. Who would have thought! The experience was incredible.
So, yeah, I've certainly found my home working in tourism and hospitality.
(Our conversation about travel went deeper and longer but as this interview was a Loyalty Leader interview, not a traveller interview, we got back on track).
My skills have been honed on digital marketing and loyalty.
The connection there is clear and my roles over time have focused on driving business direct through loyalty and digital marketing. And now I have moved into leading loyalty and partnerships for the Middle East, Asia and Pacific regions.
2. Tell us about Accor Live Limitless program. Any stats you can share?
Interestingly Accor Live Limitless – ALL, is relatively new. If I compare us to some of our other global competitor hotel groups, we only launched our program in 2008, whereas some of the US hotel groups started back in the 1980s.
The program is global and it's free to join. The growth has scaled very fast, and to put that into perspective we enrolled 8 million new members in 2023 alone.
We also offer a global subscription program ALL+ as well as Accor Plus - our Asia Pacific subscription program.
ALL+ is focused more on the frequent traveller looking for a variation of accommodation, discounts, and value.
Accor Plus goes a step further being more lifestyle driven for both the accommodation but also food and beverage benefits that you can access in Asia Pacific.
We have 5500 hotels and resorts globally in our portfolio that our members can enjoy across 45 brands.
Being the largest hotel group in this region (Asia Pacific), a key component of the loyalty program is to drive awareness and understanding of the many brands that we represent, being the diverse breadth of brands from Ibis and Novotel through to the likes of Sofitel and Raffles.
This provides a range for members to choose from depending on the purpose of the trip and who is funding the travel. So, if you are just needing a bed for a night, you don't necessarily need a luxury hotel. That said, if you're traveling with your partner and it's a special weekend, that's when you may want to splurge and do something a bit more special.
2023 has been our best year yet in terms of the performance not only in our membership size, but also the contribution of loyalty to the business.
Activity is a metric we talk about internally with the focus on driving that member engagement, the active rate and repeat rate, making sure that we're seeing members more than once a year.
To help with this, in 2024, we're working on having over 1500 experience packages available for members to be able to redeem their points for. And when I say experiences, I'm talking about events like sporting events and concerts at Accor Stadium through to things like Opera Australia. That’s just one small example of opportunities for members to have those limitless experiences.
3. What is the most unique element of the program?
I think for me it’s little more basic in theme, and that is the accessibility of rewards.
So, to put that in context, the fact that our points have a transparent dollar value, 2000 points equals €40 or approximately AUD$65. The reason why that's unique is the fact that our program has never devalued the value of its points.
Also, the fact that you can use your points 365 days a year. There are no blackout dates. There’s no opaque redemption system. You can also redeem them either at the time of booking or at the time of checking out and paying your bill.
For us it’s all about making sure that it is truly accessible to be able to leverage the value of your points and seamless in the way in which you do.
We want to ensure members have plenty of options to redeem their points, be it with over 100 partners or a variety of experiences.
As an example, we've partnered with a company called Fever, where you can do lots of local experiences in a range of destinations around the world. So that could be like a cooking class or a pottery class, through to being able to dine in our restaurants.
We are a program that does not want members to have their points expire.
For us, we know that once a member uses their points and they experience the value from that, they become even more sticky.
(Note: My mantra = redemption is retention)
Have you ever had pressure from your CFO or finance division to re-evaluate the value of your points?
Not so far. I guess it's probably one of the elements that we've always been the proudest of, in terms of the fact that we haven't ever devalued.
I think the fact we have such a transparent dollar value and it's the value proposition of our program.
So, the moment you change that value proposition, you're going to kind of devalue the worth of the program. And we don’t want our members to feel like their points are suddenly worth less. As a result, we have commitment and buy-in to this across the business.
4. If you had to choose the most important measures of success for your program, what would they be?
I have two.
For me, the starting point is always going to be member NPS.
If members aren't happy, any kind of positive performance from our loyalty program is only ever going to be short term, because it's unlikely you're going to get them back if they check out and they have not had a good experience, or they haven't seen value.
And then the second one is our contribution to revenue.
So essentially the share of business coming from the loyalty program in terms of our total revenue. Making sure that loyalty is continually delivering more and more of our total business performance.
This is where it's important to show the business the impact and the value that the loyalty program has, and why we need to continue to invest in the proposition for our members.
5. What are some of the challenges you face on an ongoing basis to keep the program relevant/fresh/thriving (internally and externally) and how do you overcome these?
The biggest internal challenge we face is team education and engagement.
To put that into perspective, in 2023, we recruited globally 140,000 new team members.
So, the need for robust training and education is critical, because if our teams aren't confident in what the program is, the value that it delivers to the business and why they need to really take it seriously, the whole program falls over.
It’s important that we have consistency. Our teams are the advocates and the face of the program with our guests.
In terms of how we overcome that as a challenge, we've introduced a behaviour change app that’s about micro learning.
Instead of delivering a new employee hours of training about the loyalty program we have gamified the experience.
It is about short, sharp learning sessions. They can't do more than about 5 to 7 minutes of training in the app each day.
They get credits for these micro learning sessions and continually build up their knowledge daily instead of long extended hours and volumes of information.
These micro-learning sessions help them to retain that knowledge far better than if they were to do a one hour, face to face training workshop, as an example.
We've started using the tool for our loyalty programs and it has been so successful that we see the opportunity to leverage it beyond just loyalty as a discipline.
We also found that the percentage of hotels that are actively using the app for their team engagement and learning are exceeding on all of our targets.
(WOW! Investing in their team and proving the performance of that against other measures of the program)
Can you share more about gamified learning?
The way the gamification works, is they earn points each time they complete a module.
There are also some fun quizzes and games to embed the learning and earn extra points.
These little things excite them and keep them coming back. And then we add incentives in the app for the team to receive an instant win and also for those that score the highest or have the most regular usage of the app. We have a whole range of different prizes for our team members.
Can you game the game?
Yes, we had some of the team hack the game where they would adjust their phone device date and time to have their credits earned reset so they could keep doing more learning modules to earn more. As a result, we had to make some adjustments to make sure it was a fair incentive for all the team.
Plus, it overrides the purpose of doing these micro modules each day because if you're essentially bingeing the content then it starts to put into question how much of it is being retained.
What about some external challenges and how you overcome those?
I think the key external one for us is we're constantly working on localisation.
It can be difficult to have a global program and make sure it's relevant for people all over the world at a local level.
We need the flexibility to have a global program that has consistency of how you earn points and how you can redeem them. But at the same time, we need to make sure there are elements we can localise depending on where the members are based.
That can range from things like the language that we're communicating in, through to our communication channels. As an example in Asia, members absolutely love messaging apps and SMS. So, the use of WhatsApp as a communication channel is critical.
Whereas what we found in the Middle East members love using the app and push notifications.
There's other examples like the types of rewards available by market or even the value of rewards and needing to change the threshold depending on a market where the value of goods and services is different.
As an example, our 2000 points equals €40. €40 is a lot of money in a market like Indonesia. And so, we had to adjust the threshold down to a thousand points so that it's actually relevant for Indonesians looking to redeem their points.
6. What advice would you give to brands thinking about a loyalty program?
- What are you solving for? What's the objective of the loyalty program and why do you feel you need one? It can range from trying to address the customer experience, gaining a greater share of the customer spend, or it could be trying to reduce the distribution costs that your business has. I think there are also avenues a business can take without the need to create a whole loyalty program such as partnerships. Instead of establishing your own loyalty program, is there an opportunity for you to be able to plug into others that have a program already?
- Speak to your customers and understand what they would like to see that you don't currently offer?
- If you decide a loyalty program is the right approach, my guidance would be progress over perfection. Start small, assess, and build. Sometimes I think people try to go A to Z and what you don't want to do is have to reduce your offering after launch. You're far better starting off small and then adding on whether it be functionality or benefits, rather than launch things that you then need to take away in the future.
7. What do you think is creeping up on programs that could disrupt them for better or worse?
It's not the most fun topic, but I think it’s related to privacy and data protection.
There’s probably going to be further clamping down on the way in which data can be collected and used.
As part of a global program and with our headquarters in Paris it means we're always having to make sure we are meeting the minimum standards being rolled out in the EU.
One example of that is when we sign up new members, our teams can't just sign up a new member.
We must invite members, and it's up to the member then to either accept the invitation they receive by email or SMS, or they don't become a member, and their data is purged.
So, if we capture your email address at check-in and you say you would like to become a loyalty member, we'll send you an invite. But if you don't accept that invitation after a certain amount of time, that information is deleted out of our database.
And that's because it's about protecting the rights of our guests to proactively choose to become a member of our program.
That stops team members being able to sign somebody up just because they have some data. This starts to put accountability on our teams to do a better job of explaining to a guest why it's in their interests to be a member of our program.
8. What’s the most underestimated force behind a program’s performance?
It is about establishing an emotional connection.
There are lots of loyalty programs out there that are focused on the tangible benefits, whether it be discounts, rewards or offers, and while they are still very valuable and essential elements of a program, I think creating an emotional bond is what's the most important.
It certainly can increase the effectiveness of a program. I know this is something we are blessed with being in the travel and tourism industry, being an experienced lead industry with the ability for face-to-face contact.
We usually have somebody staying with us for a minimum of 24 hours, if not days, sometimes weeks. And so, it allows us to create meaningful experiences.
In fact, internally, we call our team members ‘Heartists’.
And the idea behind that is it's about bringing together the heart and art of human connection.
Essentially, it's about creating those little special moments. Empowering our teams to look for ways to create what we call the ‘heartist’ moment.
So as an example, one that was just posted by a loyalty member the other day was they love a particular Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavour. The team went out and made sure that they got a whole tub and put in their minibar freezer for when the member arrived in the hotel. They were completely blown away!
Every team member has completed their ‘heartist’ training before they're allowed on the floor of any of our properties.
(This insight from Chris was a personal favourite as it brings to life the Joyalty* element of loyalty I have been sharing in recent times)
9. What are your biggest frustrations with loyalty programs in general?
Poor communication.
Loyalty programs sit on such a wealth of data. At the same time, I understand it can be completely overwhelming at times, but to use that data poorly and to not receive personalised communication as a member, particularly a member who is active and has had a high frequency of transactions, for me is just so frustrating.
A personal example is where I may have shopped in a retail store multiple times and then to receive communication promoting offers and sales on women's shoes and clothes or makeup, when I've shown no interest or history of ever purchasing those products, I find completely frustrating.
And then my other communication frustration is over-communication.
If I've demonstrated that I'm not opening or engaging with communication, then I feel like there's a responsibility to look at how frequently that brand should be communicating.
10. What are three most important skills a loyalty program marketer needs?
- Communication skills. Building engaging relationships not only with your program members, but also with your business stakeholders and your program partners. Being able to convey the importance of your program to front line team members. That's kind of a critical skill in being able to lead a program.
- Analytical ability. The volume of data continues to grow exponentially. You need to know what to look for from both an opportunity and a concern point of view.
- A customer centric mindset. As a program marketer you need to be the voice of your customer or your member. So, you need to be the one making sure that when decisions are being made, you're putting members front and centre to understand how it will impact them. Three questions we always consider: 1) how can I make their life simple? 2) How can I make their life special? 3) And how do I look after a member?
11. If we are chatting again in (say) two years’ time, what do you predict would be the hot topic related to loyalty programs?
Sustainability. From my perspective, I feel consumers are becoming more conscious of their impact.
They want to understand the ethical and sustainable practices of a business.
They want to know that business they're transacting with is doing the right thing. We have recently partnered with Eco Tourism Australia to become independently certified in terms of our sustainable tourism efforts.
12. Leave us with a lasting loyalty thought?
Summary
There are so many highlights for me from this Loyalty Leader interview with Chris.
- What gave me so much joy are the insights on how focused Chris and his team are in creating loyalty belief and buy-in across 330,000 team members globally. How they have gamified learning is fascinating!
- Then, how they bring emotional connections into their program through the heart and art of human connections and team members called ‘Heartists’ - that’s amazing!
- The challenges they are overcoming with making a global program localised was another highlight.
I must admit, summarising this interview has been difficult for me as it has so many gold, silver and platinum insights, I will leave it to you (the reader) to decide!
Thanks Chris!
Have a happy loyalty day
[1] 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
