Sigh

In a transparent programme it makes much less difference whether the front line call centre agents are highly trained and fully conversant with their roles as customers will have a clear understanding of what should be happening at any given point in a membership lifecycle. Whilst it is better for your front line agents to be skilled and fully conversant with the programme the impact is less significant in a transparent programme because customers can self resolve issues and ensure that they are escalated.

In an opaque programme a customer has no real way of knowing whether their failure to qualify for a tier is a failure of data flow, is staff failure (skill, training or ability), relates to a known issue (e.g. manual stay credit) or is a genuine failure to qualify.

Customers are apt to see opaque programmes with poor contact staff (a very real issue with IHG and AMB service lines) as unfair, arbitrary and capricious and rather than serving the intended purpose of motivating customers to expend a greater share of their wallet with the organisation, the loyalty programme starts to push customers away.

So put simply simple, clear and transparent criteria are essential if the quality of your loyalty programme service staff is "variable". This should be simple common sense not some deep insight into loyalty management.