This article I got in a newsletter recently is a perfect example of when it’s not realistic, or even possible, to give customers what they want. The survey says customers want to be able to look up their loyalty profile using only their name. Anyone who has worked with customer data at even moderate scale knows that isn’t feasible.
There are more than a dozen women named “Megan Burns” within a 100 mile radius of where I live. Nationwide? Thousands. My middle initial does not help at all.
Even people with uncommon names can have a problem. My partner has a very uncommon last name but he is a Jr. and his son is the 3rd, so the chance of confusion is high!
There are ways to make calling up a customer’s loyalty profile faster, like QR codes, which is the underlying customer desire. Retailers are, or should be, experimenting with those options, but we also need to manage expectations that you can’t always get what you want.
