In fact, I’ve only had a smartphone for about a year. I’ve loaded some of the basic apps on it, most of which I never use. There is one, however, that I’m quite fond of — Keyring. It stores all your loyalty card numbers on your phone and creates a barcode for each, so you can simply hand your phone over to the teller when you’re making a purchase to collect your rewards points.

Of course, many scanners can’t read the barcode off my phone, and I’m not much of a shopper but it has brought the benefit of reducing the size of my wallet by about half. It’s just much easier to sit down now.

So it was with some interest I read some results from an ACI Worldwide study of loyalty and rewards programs. Typically, I’m not one to give much credence to vendor-sponsored research. It tends to be rather predictably self-serving. Yet this survey of 1,053 people across the country had some interesting loyalty results I thought were worth sharing.

For example, according to the survey (conducted by Wakefield Research):

• 62% of Americans join retail loyalty programs so they can get discounts on the things they buy most, yet only 36% received a reward or promotion that made them come back to the store again.
• Only 27% said they have received a loyalty program reward or promotion that made them feel valued as a customer
• 85% report that they haven’t heard a single word from a loyalty program since the day they signed up.
• 81% said they don’t even know the benefits of the program or how/when they will receive rewards.
• 44% of consumers have had a negative experience from a loyalty program.

Why go to the trouble at all of setting up a program, providing incentives and tracking this information if you’re actually negatively impacting the customer?

Is there a better use of that time and effort?

How many retail loyalty programs are you a part of? Has it impacted your shopping decisions?

We sat down with Lior Arussy, president of the Strativity Group, to discuss how organizations can keep focused on the customer experience amidst these challenges.

In this 17-minute podcast, listeners will hear:

• Advice for staying focused on the customer experience despite budget cuts.
• Lessons that can be learned from companies like Dell which emerged from the last economic downturn stronger, thanks to the customer experience.
• The proper customer metrics to be focused on during a recession.
• How outsourcing and self-service applications factor into both cost cutting and the customer experience.

A chief customer officer needs to be like Tom Sawyer, says Jeanne Bliss, author of “Chief Customer Officer, Getting past Lip Service to Passionate Action.”

The role of chief customer officer, customer experience officer, or simply a group of people responsible for the voice of the customer with in an organization, has been around for many years and is gaining traction. However, creating the position and finding the right person to fill it comes with some challenges.

In this 15-minute podcast Bliss discusses:

• How an organization knows if it’s ready to appoint a chief customer officer (1:35)
• The typical responsibilities associated with the position and how progress is measured (3:15)
• Where chief customer officers get their authority (5:00)
• The biggest hurdles for chief customer officers (6:27)
• How to “turn the lights on” in an organization (8:12)
• Where the initial commitment to the customer must come from (10:15)
• Where things have gone wrong for organizations with chief customer officers (11:45)
• How different business models should change their approach (13:10)

He also questions the fascination with metrics in marketing.

Rogers co-founded the Norwalk, Conn.-based Peppers & Rogers Group, a customer-focused management consulting firm.