Advertisement
Residents living in community associations are not your typical customers. Their expectations, as customers, are much higher than those of your average customer walking into a store or purchasing something online
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It is our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better.” Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon
Residents who are investing in your estate require an endless amount of services and support, especially when it comes to their lifestyle and their security.
But at the end of the day, you are the hosts of the party; and you have invited your residents to join; you have even allowed them an endless number of plus-ones … how are you going to make every important aspect of their experience a little better?
Planning a party is much like developing a residential estate. You set out an array of activities to keep your guests entertained, and you make sure that their primary needs are satisfied. Sure, some guests may not get along with each other, and some guests may not have a great experience no matter how much you try to meet their expectations, but as all party hosts and party guests can agree, sometimes all you need to do is make sure that the chip bowls get filled up before they are empty.
The party venue is within the boundary walls of your estate; the party hosts are the board members and management teams; the party guests are the estate residents and their visitors; the party activities are your estate facilities and amenities; and the party’s chip bowls … well, that’s up to you as the leaders of your homeowners association or body corporate.
You want your guests to enjoy the party as much as possible, and ultimately you want them to come back to the next party that you host. Guaranteeing this can come down to two simple things that you as the hosts can do. Firstly, make sure that the chips are tasty and that they keep on coming. And secondly, something that we are starting to see at almost every party in the world – give your guests a small bag of chips to take home with them. Enough with the metaphor – community leaders have a responsibility to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better, and rewarding your members for being loyal customers is a fantastic way to do this.
ARC is working with Mahala, a rewards and loyalty platform developed to enhance the interaction between home owners and service providers through rewards, and to assist residential estates in developing an affordable mobile solution to engage with the home owners by bringing them a loyalty-based rewards programme. The programme focuses on increasing sales within the community and ensuring that members get rewarded for doing so.
Advertisement
Steve Jobs once said: ‘Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need before they realise it themselves.’ This is exactly what we intend to facilitate within this programme. The Mahala loyalty programme will revolve around three pillars:
- Intra-community rewards – rewarding your own members for utilising your internal offerings
- Inter-community rewards – recognising and rewarding members from other communities who visit and use your facilities and amenities, and vice versa
- Mahala partners rewards – with Mahala being an already well established loyalty programme, members from who sign up to the programme can also be rewarded for purchasing from Mahala’s existing partners. The Mahala loyalty programme is completely flexible, and can be developed to meet the community’s needs as well as the needs of the community members
For more information,
visit www.mahalas.co.za | Jono Gilmour on 083 286 5939
