Articles Tagged with: Customer Engagement
Home / Blog Archives
The AI Loyalty Stack Reimagined

The AI Loyalty Stack Reimagined: From Campaigns to Agents

The AI Loyalty Stack Reimagined

Nikita Shaha

Head of Product & Technology | Jun 11, 2026

The AI Loyalty Stack Reimagined: From Campaigns to Autonomous Revenue Agents

Perx Technologies is a B2B SaaS loyalty and customer engagement platform serving BFSI and telco clients across APAC, redefining what a loyalty platform can be — from campaign execution to Autonomous Revenue Intelligence — powered by agentic AI and purpose-built for the revenue intelligence needs of BFSI and telco organisations across APAC.

IN BRIEF
  • 99% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI agents. Only 11% have actually done it. The gap between intention and execution is where competitive advantage is being built right now.
  • For BFSI and telco, the shift from campaign-era loyalty to agent-era loyalty is not a technology upgrade — it is a fundamental change in what a loyalty programme is capable of doing.
  • Loyalty programmes that stay at the campaign execution stage are no longer a competitive advantage. They are table stakes. The question is what comes next.

Here is a number worth sitting with: 99% of companies plan to put agentic AI agents into production. Only 11% have actually done it.

That gap between near-universal intention and the reality of execution, is not a technology problem. It is a clarity problem. Most organisations know they need to move. Very few have a precise picture of what moving looks like, what it requires, and what it unlocks.

This article is about that picture, specifically for loyalty programmes in banking and telecoms. Not a general argument for AI — that argument has been made, extensively, by people with larger research budgets. What follows is something more specific: a description of what the loyalty platform category actually looks like as it transitions from the campaign era to the agent era, and why BFSI and telco organisations are structurally best positioned to lead that transition.

The Market Is Moving. Your Programme May Not Be.

The agentic AI market in financial services stood at $5.51 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $33.26 billion by 2030 — a 43% compound annual growth rate. This is not a long-range forecast. It is a description of investment and deployment already underway across global banking and insurance.

In parallel, loyalty programmes have reached a saturation point quietly undermining their value. The Open Loyalty 2026 industry report puts it directly:

"The number one challenge is differentiation — loyalty programmes have become ubiquitous, and a 'good' programme is no longer a competitive advantage. It is just table stakes."

- Open Loyalty, Loyalty Programme Trends 2026

The average consumer now belongs to 8 loyalty programmes but actively participates in only 5. The engagement gap is structural, not a consequence of poor execution.

For telco specifically: loyalty programmes drive a 43% increase in customer lifetime value — making them the single most powerful engagement-to-loyalty tool available to operators. But while 80% of telco operators offer a programme, only half of their customers are enrolled. The instrument works. The problem is reach, relevance, and response speed.

For banking, AI-powered digital experiences have already contributed to a 14% increase in retention across major banks. But that figure describes what is possible when AI is embedded deeply into the engagement architecture — not what happens when AI sits on top of a campaign-based programme designed for a different era.

43%

CAGR of agentic AI in financial services, 2025–2030
Mordor Intelligence

43%

increase in telco CLTV driven by loyalty programmes
Simon-Kucher Global Telco Study 2025

11%

of companies that have actually deployed agentic AI agents
KPMG 2026

A Question Every BFSI and Telco Leader Should Be Able to Answer

Before describing where loyalty platforms are heading, consider this question — which most teams find surprisingly difficult to answer with precision:

What is your loyalty programme actually capable of doing right now, without a human initiating it?

Not what it is configured to do. Not what it could do if you built the right campaign. What it does, autonomously, when customer behaviour signals that something requires a response.

For most programmes, the honest answer is: very little. It can send a triggered email if a rule fires. Expire points on a schedule. Surface a banner in an app if a segment condition is met. These are automated responses to pre-defined scenarios — genuinely useful, but not autonomous. Every scenario was anticipated by a human. Every response was configured in advance. The programme has no capacity to detect a novel situation and decide what to do about it.

This is not a criticism. It is an accurate description of where most programmes sit today — and the starting point for understanding what the transition to autonomous loyalty actually means.

The Four Stages of Loyalty Programme Maturity

Rather than describing platform architecture, it is more useful to describe what a loyalty programme is capable of at each stage of its maturity — and what that capability means in practice for BFSI and telco organisations.

1

Execution Capability
“We can run campaigns.”
Campaign orchestration, rewards management, gamification mechanics, engagement journeys, rules engine, APIs and integrations. This is where the majority of BFSI and telco programmes sit today. Perx-powered programmes at this stage have delivered measurable results — including helping Jenius (part of SMBC Indonesia) lift customer credit card spend 67% above Indonesia’s national average, generating US$599 million in transactions. The execution stage is not weak — but it has a ceiling: the ceiling of human campaign capacity.

2

Signal Capability
“We know what our customers are actually doing.”
Capturing real behavioural signals — card transactions, product usage events, app engagement, channel interaction data — not just reward redemptions. Banks and telcos already sit on the richest possible signal environment: every card swipe, every data session, every branch visit. The question is whether that signal is connected to the loyalty programme’s decision-making logic, or locked in a data warehouse a human accesses once a month.

3

Intelligence Capability
“We can see what the data means in real time.”
Converting live signals into actionable insight — real-time ROI dashboards, predictive forecasting, and revenue attribution that closes the loop between loyalty investment and commercial return. This is the stage where a loyalty programme stops being a marketing cost centre and becomes a revenue measurement instrument. The CFO can see in real time what the programme is worth. This is also where the commercial case for agentic AI becomes undeniable — the data is already there, structured and surfaced. What is missing is the system that acts on it.

4

Autonomous Capability
“Our programme acts on what it knows, without waiting for us.”
The programme does not wait for a human to design the next campaign. It observes live signals, detects patterns requiring a response, selects the optimal intervention, deploys it, and adjusts in real time. The human role shifts from campaign operator to goal architect: define what outcomes to optimise for, set the guardrails, and govern the results. This is the stage most organisations are planning for — and almost none have reached.

Why BFSI and Telco Are First in Line

Every industry will navigate this transition. BFSI and telco will do it first, for three structural reasons.

Reason 1: Transaction Signal Density

A retail loyalty programme sees a customer interact a few times a week. A bank sees them dozens of times a day — card swipes, app sessions, payment events, balance checks, product interactions. A telco sees continuous usage data: data consumption, roaming behaviour, plan interactions, support contacts. Agentic AI systems make better decisions when signal density is higher — BFSI and telco programmes do not need to build this environment. It already exists.

Reason 2: The Cost of Slow Response Is Measurable

In retail, a lapsed loyalty member is a missed sale. In banking, a customer who quietly reduces primary account usage and routes savings to a competitor represents tens of thousands of dollars in lifetime value in transit — often before any monthly report flags the trend. In telco, a customer in the consideration phase for switching has a narrow intervention window, often measured in days. The financial consequence of detecting these signals late is direct and quantifiable.

Reason 3: APAC Is the Fastest-Moving Market

Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing region for AI agents in financial services through 2035. Conversational AI was already integrated into over 79% of APAC banking platforms in 2025. EY’s 2026 regulatory analysis notes that institutions deploying agentic AI with strong governance frameworks are not facing additional regulatory barriers — they are demonstrating leadership in responsible AI adoption. BFSI and telco organisations in APAC are not waiting for a global trend to arrive. They are the trend.

What Autonomous Agents Actually Do

The clearest way to understand autonomous loyalty agents is through specific examples. Each represents a named, purpose-built agent designed for the BFSI and telco context — and each addresses a high-value revenue problem that the campaign era was simply too slow to solve.

Spend Acceleration Agent

Trigger Signal

Statistically significant decline in a customer’s spending velocity vs. their own historical baseline — not a generic threshold applied universally.
Selects the optimal mechanic — a personalised spend-booster challenge, limited-time reward tier, or category bonus — without waiting for a campaign cycle. Adjusts incentive value in real time.

01

Customer Reactivation Agent

Trigger Signal

Customer crossing a dormancy threshold relative to their own historical engagement pattern — an individualised signal, not a blanket 30-day rule.
Deploys a personalised win-back sequence based on transaction history and historical response patterns. Escalates if the first intervention produces no signal.

02

Cross-Sell Opportunity Agent

Trigger Signal

Behavioural patterns indicating product adjacency readiness — a savings customer whose transactions suggest they carry credit with a competitor.
Surfaces a contextually relevant cross-sell offer at the moment of highest receptivity — not at the end of the month when convenient for the business.

03

Reward Optimisation Agent

Trigger Signal

Continuous monitoring of redemption rates, incentive cost-per-engagement, and response patterns across customer segments.
Adjusts incentive levels in real time to maximise engagement at minimum cost. Reallocates reward budget autonomously. Yield management applied to loyalty economics.

04

Campaign Auto-Pilot Agent

Trigger Signal

Ongoing campaign performance monitoring — open rates, conversions, attribution outcomes, variant performance comparisons.
Manages scheduling, targeting adjustments, and budget allocation autonomously. Replaces underperforming variants. Keeps campaigns optimised between manual review cycles.

05

Gamified Engagement Agent

Trigger Signal

Drop in session frequency, challenge participation, or reward catalogue activity — signalling a customer’s interest in the programme is waning.
Dynamically designs and launches gamification mechanics — challenges, missions, leaderboards, surprise rewards — tailored to the individual’s historical engagement patterns.

06

Foundation Evidence — Singapore's Top Neo Bank x Perx
Singapore’s top neo bank used Perx’s rules engine and gamified stamp card mechanics to generate $6.6 million in campaign-driven transactions, delivering a 2x ROI on Perx platform costs — with a 72% returning customer rate and 70% average campaign engagement rate per user, running up to 15 simultaneous campaigns. That result was delivered by the execution stage alone. A gamified engagement agent would take the same foundation further: detecting individual engagement signal drops in real time and dynamically launching the next best mechanic, without requiring a team to plan each cycle from scratch.

$6.6M

campaign-driven transactions generated

2x

ROI on Perx platform costs

72%

returning customer rate

The Competitive Landscape — Where the Uncontested Space Sits

The market is moving. Understanding where others are positioning helps identify the genuinely open space.
Platform Agentic AI Move Primary Focus BFSI/Telco Depth
Antavo Timi AI — "world's first agentic AI for loyalty." Loyalty Planner + AI Optimizer. Retail, fashion, consumer brands Limited
Capillary aiRA assistant + multi-agent campaign configurator. AI-First Loyalty framework. Retail, QSR, FMCG Partial
Salesforce Agentforce — horizontal agentic AI. Banking-specific role-based agents. All industries (horizontal) Broad, not loyalty-native
Open Loyalty No agentic AI product. Open-source execution platform. Developer/technical audience None
Perx Building toward: Autonomous Revenue Intelligence — purpose-built for BFSI and telco transaction environments. BFSI, Telco — APAC BFSI/Telco native

The white space is clear: no competitor owns “agentic AI for loyalty-driven revenue in BFSI and telco.” Antavo and Capillary speak to retail brands. Salesforce speaks horizontally. The BFSI and telco agentic loyalty conversation is, right now, unowned.

What Readiness Actually Requires

Moving from Stage 1 to Stage 4 maturity does not happen in a single step and does not require replacing everything. But it does require honest assessment across four dimensions.
Data Infrastructure
Can your programme ingest real-time transaction signals — not just reward redemptions? Is customer data unified across channels, or siloed by product line? How quickly does a customer action appear in your analytics environment?
Platform Architecture
Is your loyalty platform API-first? Can it trigger actions based on real-time events, or only scheduled campaigns? Does your rules engine support dynamically composed, individualised incentive structures?
Governance & Compliance
Can compliance constraints — communication frequency caps, incentive disclosure rules, regulatory limits — be configured at the platform level? Does the system maintain audit trails of autonomous decisions for regulatory review?
Strategic Clarity
Does your leadership have clarity on which outcomes to optimise for — revenue uplift, churn reduction, product adoption? Are your teams ready to shift from campaign management to goal definition and performance governance?
These are the actual questions that separate organisations that will implement agentic loyalty effectively from those that will pilot it unsuccessfully. In most cases, the technology is ready. The surrounding infrastructure and strategic clarity are not.

Nikita Shaha

Nikita Shaha is Head of Product & Technology at Perx Technologies. With over 10 years of experience across banking, telecommunications, and software, she focuses on product strategy, AI transformation, and large-scale technical delivery. She writes on how enterprises build intelligent, data-driven customer engagement in a mobile-first economy. Connect with Nikita on LinkedIn.

Linkedin

FAQs:

Is the shift to agentic AI loyalty relevant to telco, or primarily a banking conversation?
Highly relevant to telco. Mobile operators sit on rich, continuous behavioural data — data usage patterns, roaming behaviour, plan change signals, churn indicators — structurally similar to the transaction data environment in banking. The Customer Reactivation Agent and Gamified Engagement Agent are particularly applicable to telco churn prevention, where detecting a switching-intent signal late is measured directly in customer lifetime value.
Marketing automation executes pre-defined customer journeys — it automates the delivery of campaigns humans have designed. Agentic AI goes further: it observes live signals, reasons about the optimal response to a novel situation, and acts without a human having configured that specific scenario in advance. An automation platform sends a birthday email because it was configured to. An agentic system identifies that a specific customer is at elevated churn risk, determines the optimal intervention, launches it, and adjusts based on response — all without a pre-configured trigger for that exact scenario.

No. The four stages of loyalty maturity describe a progression, not a replacement. Stage 1 (execution capability) remains the operational foundation. Stages 2, 3, and 4 build on top of it — adding signal capture, intelligence, and automation without dismantling what your team already operates. The practical path is assessing which stage your programme genuinely supports today and planning what progression to the next stage requires.

EY’s 2026 regulatory analysis notes that institutions deploying agentic AI with strong governance frameworks are not facing additional regulatory barriers — they are demonstrating leadership in responsible AI adoption. In Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia specifically, regulators focus on governance and transparency standards, not restriction. Well-designed agentic systems operating within configurable guardrails and maintaining full audit trails are well-aligned with the direction of APAC regulatory frameworks.
The minimum viable requirement is real-time or near-real-time access to transactional and behavioural data — not just reward redemption events. Card transaction data, product usage signals, and channel interaction data provide the signal density that makes agent decisions precise rather than generic. Programmes whose loyalty data is limited to redemption events will need to address data infrastructure before agents can operate effectively.

Based on deployment data across financial services, institutions typically see initial ROI within 6 to 13 months. KPMG documents an average 2.3x return on agentic AI investments within 13 months, with top performers achieving $8 for every $1 invested. The most significant ROI compounds over 18 to 36 months as agents expand across use cases and internal expertise develops.

Key Takeaways
  1. The market is moving fast and unevenly. 99% of companies plan agentic AI deployment. 11% have executed. The competitive window for first movers is open — and it will close.
  2. A good loyalty programme is no longer a competitive advantage in BFSI and telco. It is table stakes. The next differentiator is a programme that acts autonomously on the signals it already collects.
  3. BFSI and telco have structural advantages — transaction signal density, high cost of customer inaction, and APAC’s position as the fastest-growing region for financial services AI — that make the ROI case unusually clear.
  4. The four stages of loyalty maturity (execution, signal, intelligence, autonomous) provide a practical framework for assessing where your programme sits today and what progression requires.
  5. The uncontested space — agentic AI for loyalty-driven revenue specifically in BFSI and telco — is open right now. It will not stay open.

Thinking Through What This Means for Your Programme?

At Perx, we are building our perspective on autonomous loyalty in public — one piece at a time. If you are a BFSI or telco marketing leader thinking through what this means for your organisation, we would love to hear where you are in that thinking. No pitch. Just a conversation.

Start the Conversation

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Gen Z Isn’t Disloyal — They’re Just Waiting for a Reason to Stay

Praveen Vadla

Senior Marketer | Jun 4, 2026

Gen Z Isn't Disloyal — They're Just Waiting for a Reason to Stay

IN BRIEF
  • 20% of Gen Z plan to switch their primary bank within six months — not from dissatisfaction, but from a lack of compelling reasons to stay.
  • 76% of Gen Z act on personalised financial guidance — yet only 42% recall ever receiving it. This gap is where loyalty is silently lost.
  • Satisfaction is no longer a proxy for loyalty. Relevance is — and relevance must be earned continuously, at every interaction.
  • Southeast Asia’s Gen Z is still forming primary financial relationships. For banks and fintechs, this window is open — but narrowing fast.

Here’s a number that should stop every bank CMO mid-sentence: 20% of Gen Z customers plan to switch their primary financial institution within the next six months. Not because they’re dissatisfied — but because nothing is compelling enough to make them stay.

Research from brand experience firm Adrenaline confirms what many in Southeast Asia’s financial sector have quietly sensed: Gen Z isn’t inherently disloyal. They’re selectively loyal — and the bar for earning that loyalty has fundamentally shifted.

Key Statistics:
60%
of Gen Z use multiple financial providers simultaneously [1]
77%
say a brand’s purpose directly influences their support [2]
76%
act on personalised guidance — when they actually receive it [3]
42%
recall ever receiving personalised guidance from their bank [3]
That last gap is where the loyalty battle is being lost — quietly, consistently, at scale. Perx Technologies is a B2B SaaS loyalty and customer engagement platform purpose-built for financial institutions and telcos across APAC, helping them close that personalisation gap through intelligent, gamified, data-driven engagement.

The New Definition of a Primary Relationship

In Southeast Asia’s hyper-connected markets — where super apps, digital wallets, and neobanks compete for the same screen time — ‘primary banking relationship’ no longer means the institution that holds a customer’s salary. It means the one that feels most relevant to them, right now.

Gen Z holds accounts with an average of two banks and two digital wallets simultaneously. [1] They are not confused — they are deliberate. Each provider is chosen for a specific job it does well. The question for traditional banks and fintechs is whether they are earning the right to be the relationship that deepens over time.

Deloitte’s research reinforces this: Gen Z and millennials show the highest risk of switching from their primary bank — even when satisfaction levels are high. [4] Satisfaction is no longer sufficient. Relevance is the new retention metric.

“Value must be reinforced continuously across channels and touchpoints. Brand positioning, community engagement, and transparency in fees and policies are no longer peripheral — they are core drivers of retention.”

Adrenaline, Winning Gen Z: A Data-Driven Brand-to-Branch Playbook for Financial Leaders (2026) [2]

Engagement Is a Discipline, Not a Feature

What Gen Z responds to isn’t more products. It’s relevance — delivered at the right moment. Personalised offers tied to real behaviour. Rewards that reflect what they actually care about. Recognition that their financial life is evolving, and that their institution is evolving with them.

GEN Z ENGAGEMENT BENCHMARKS:

Insight Statistic Source
Want personalised onboarding 72% The Financial Brand [5]
Switch providers 2–3× more than parents Gen Z vs. older generations Mastercard [6]
Prioritise mobile-first simplicity 66% eMarketer [7]
Influenced by brand purpose 77% Adrenaline [2]

Mastercard’s 2025 data shows Gen Z switches providers two to three times more often than their parents — frequently triggered by real-time engagement gaps, not price. [6] This is an operational challenge with a content-and-experience answer: institutions that deliver personalised, rewarding journeys don’t just retain Gen Z customers — they deepen them. They cross-sell themselves. They refer. They advocate.

THE PERX CONTINUOUS ENGAGEMENT LOOP

Perx helps financial institutions move beyond one-off transactional touchpoints toward a continuous engagement cycle:

  • Acquire: Gamified onboarding journeys that convert from day one
  • Activate: Behavioural triggers that surface the right reward at the right moment
  • Monetise: Intelligent rules engines that drive higher spend and cross-sell
  • Retain & Grow: Adaptive rewards and milestone recognition that reinforce loyalty at every life stage

The Window Is Open — For Now

Southeast Asia’s Gen Z is still forming its primary financial relationships. Preferences are not yet fixed. Trust is still being established. For banks and fintechs, this is not a future problem — it is a present opportunity that narrows with every quarter of inaction.

eMarketer’s latest data shows traditional banks still hold the primary account stronghold among Gen Z — but 66% prioritise mobile-first simplicity, and the hybrid model (mobile + human touchpoints) remains the winning formula. [7] Institutions that deliver both digital fluency and personal relevance will own this generation’s financial relationship for the decade ahead.

The institutions that will lead are not necessarily those with the most branches or the largest marketing budgets. They will be the ones that made every interaction worth staying for — early enough to matter.

FAQs:

Why is Gen Z loyalty so hard for banks to retain?
Gen Z is selectively loyal, not inherently disloyal. They simultaneously use an average of two banks and two digital wallets, choosing each for a specific purpose. Satisfaction alone doesn’t create stickiness — relevance does. Banks that fail to deliver personalised, timely, and rewarding experiences lose ground to more agile competitors, even when there are no active complaints.
Gen Z responds to personalised guidance delivered at the right moment. Research shows 76% act on personalised financial advice — but only 42% recall receiving it. They also respond to gamified experiences, purpose-driven brands, and mobile-first interfaces. Rewards that reflect real behaviour and transparent, values-aligned communication are key drivers of deepening loyalty.
Banks can reduce Gen Z churn by: (1) deploying personalised onboarding journeys from day one, (2) using behavioural data to surface contextually relevant rewards and offers, (3) establishing gamified engagement loops that reinforce the relationship between transactions, and (4) embedding purpose-driven messaging that resonates with Gen Z values. Platforms like Perx are built specifically for this challenge, enabling BFSI institutions to run intelligent engagement at scale without heavy IT dependency.
Primarily experience. Mastercard’s 2025 research shows Gen Z switches providers two to three times more often than older generations — and the trigger is typically a real-time engagement gap, not pricing. When customers don’t feel recognised, rewarded, or understood, they switch to a provider that does — often a neobank or super app with a more responsive experience layer.
Gamification is one of the highest-performing tools for Gen Z engagement. Elements like challenges, milestones, streaks, and progress-based rewards transform routine financial interactions into experiences that reinforce loyalty. Perx’s gamification-in-loyalty content has achieved the highest citation share in its competitive set (~47%), reflecting the broader market demand for actionable frameworks in this area.

Sources & Further Reading:

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Why Segmentation Is No Longer Enough: How Agentic AI Closes the Personalisation Gap

Azmeen Ansar

Azmeen Ansar

Head of Marketing | Apr 14, 2026

Why Segmentation Is No Longer Enough: How Agentic AI Closes the Personalisation Gap in Financial Services

Most banks know their customers better than those customers know themselves. The problem has never been the data. It’s been the operational capacity to act on it — for every customer, individually, at the right moment. Agentic AI is how that gap finally closes.

The data has never been the problem

A bank with two million retail customers can see when a customer’s spending velocity drops. It can identify which customers have explored a savings product three times without opening an account. It can flag, with reasonable precision, which customers are six weeks away from going dormant — before it happens.
This is not hypothetical. Most financial institutions already sit on exactly this intelligence. The data is there. The insight is there.
What has been missing is the operational capacity to act on it — for every customer, individually, at the moment it matters.
The institutions that have closed this gap have done so by rethinking the execution layer entirely. Agentic AI is how they got there.

Why segmentation hits a ceiling

For years, the standard architecture of customer engagement in financial services has been built on two pillars: segmentation and scheduled campaigns. The logic is sound. Different customers have different needs, and addressing those differences is better than ignoring them.
But this architecture has a ceiling — and most institutions have already hit it.

Segments are not individuals. A segment of ’25–34 year olds with a savings account’ might contain customers at radically different lifecycle stages, with different financial behaviours and different reasons for not having upgraded their product. Sending them all the same message at the same time is not personalisation. It is a better-than-average guess.

Scheduled campaigns miss the moment. Customer behaviour is continuous. Engagement windows open and close in real time — when a salary lands, when a spending pattern shifts, when a product is first explored and then abandoned. A campaign scheduled for the 15th of the month does not know that the optimal engagement window for a specific customer was the 8th. By the time it fires, the moment has passed.

SRules-based systems stagnate. A rules engine configured at deployment reflects what the institution knew about customer behaviour at that point in time. Customer behaviour evolves. A static rule set degrades in precision over time unless constantly maintained — which requires resources most teams do not have.
Detect
The agent monitors behavioural signals in real time: transaction patterns, app interaction depth, feature adoption, reward redemption behaviour, lifecycle stage, and early dormancy indicators. It does not wait for a scheduled reporting cycle. It watches continuously and identifies the signal the moment it appears.
Decide
Based on pre-configured rules and learned patterns, the agent determines what action is most likely to drive the desired outcome for this specific customer at this specific moment. Not this segment. This customer. The decision accounts for that individual’s history, current behaviour, channel preference, and the business objective the institution has defined.
Act
The agent fires the engagement — a personalised mission, a spend challenge, a reactivation sequence, a reward adjustment, a cross-sell prompt — through the appropriate channel, at the appropriate time, calibrated to the appropriate reward value for that customer’s tier and behaviour profile.
This cycle does not run quarterly. It does not run weekly. It runs continuously, for every customer in the base simultaneously.

What this looks like in practice

Institutions that have deployed agentic engagement have reported consistent, material outcomes across markets:
70-90%
activation rate
Agentic-led activation journeys reach 70–90% completion — compared to the industry average of 28–42% on traditional static onboarding flows. The difference is not better campaign design. It is real-time signal matching: the journey adjusts to individual behaviour rather than expecting individual behaviour to conform to a fixed journey.
2-12x
MAU increase
Monthly active user counts have grown between 2x and 12x across deployments. Customer interaction frequency has risen from an average of 2.1 events per user per month to 9.3 — reflecting the difference between customers who receive relevant engagement at the right moment versus those who receive broadcast communications on a schedule.
8-21x
ROI
Return on engagement investment has reached 8–21x across live deployments, with reward costs held to 0.6–2.1% of total transaction value driven. Precision in signal matching means reward spend is concentrated where it drives the most behavioural change per dollar — not distributed evenly across a segment.

The signal layer: where meaningful personalisation begins

Agentic AI is only as intelligent as the signals feeding it. In financial services, the signal layer is unusually rich. The challenge is not data scarcity — it is signal prioritisation and real-time accessibility.

The five signal types that carry the most value for engagement decisions:

  • Transactional — real-time spend data revealing what customers buy, how often, and where. A shift in transaction frequency in a specific category is often an early indicator of a lifecycle change that, acted on promptly, represents either a risk to manage or an opportunity to capture.
  • Engagement — how far a customer navigates into a product feature before abandoning. The difference between a customer who viewed a savings product for four seconds and one who reached the application screen before dropping off requires a materially different response.
  • Lifecycle — where a customer is in their relationship trajectory: accelerating toward deeper engagement, plateauing, or beginning the slow withdrawal that precedes churn. Identifying this early is what makes proactive intervention possible.
  • Redemption — what rewards a customer selects and how quickly they use them. This is a precise, survey-free map of individual preference and perceived value that directly informs incentive calibration.
  • Event — time-sensitive moments such as salary credit, loan repayment completion, or a first international transaction. An engagement fired at the right event signal lands in a context where the customer is already thinking about their finances. The same engagement fired on a scheduled cadence may simply be noise.

Why human oversight is not optional in financial services

Agentic There is a version of the agentic AI story that positions human involvement as a bottleneck to be eliminated. In financial services, this framing is not just wrong — it is commercially counterproductive.

The institutions that have achieved the strongest long-term outcomes from agentic engagement have not removed humans from the process. They have been precise about where humans add the most value — and built their architecture around that precision.

Strategy and objective ownership. An agent optimises toward a goal. Humans define what that goal is. No AI system should be determining what a financial institution is trying to achieve with its customers. That is a strategic decision, and it belongs with people who carry accountability for it.

Rule governance. The parameters within which an agent operates must be human-configured and reviewed. This is not a constraint on the AI’s effectiveness. It is the governance layer that makes the AI trustworthy at scale.

Anomaly review. Well-designed agents flag actions that fall outside expected parameters before executing them. A human reviewer at this point catches the edge cases that no rule set fully anticipates.

Regulatory accountability. Regulators are tightening requirements around automated decision-making in financial services — specifically around explainability and accountability. Every automated action in a human-in-the-loop architecture traces back to a human-approved rule. That auditability is a compliance requirement.

The bank’s loyalty manager can see every active journey in a live dashboard. They can pause it, override it, or adjust the underlying rule. They have not been removed from the process. They have been elevated within it.

What this means for financial services leaders

The question facing financial institutions is no longer whether to deploy AI in customer engagement. The capability exists, the evidence is strong, and the competitive pressure from institutions that have already moved is real.

The more important question is how to deploy it in a way that is genuinely personalised rather than merely automated — that scales without losing precision, and that operates within the governance and accountability structures that financial services demand.

The answer is neither full manual execution nor unchecked autonomy. It is agentic AI operating within a human-governed architecture, where machines execute at the speed and granularity that individual personalisation requires, and humans govern at the level of strategy, rules, interpretation, and accountability.

The institutions that get this right will not just run better engagement programmes. They will build a capability that compounds — becoming more precise, more effective, and more commercially impactful with every customer interaction.

That is what personalised at scale actually means.

Download ebook

Personalised at Scale: How Agentic AI Is Redefining Customer Engagement in Financial Services. Includes the complete Detect-Decide-Act-Optimise framework, behavioural signal guide, human-in-the-loop governance model, and live deployment benchmarks from 30+ markets.

Get the ebook

FAQs:

What is agentic AI in customer engagement?
Agentic AI refers to AI systems that do not simply analyse or recommend — they act. An agent perceives a behavioural signal, makes a decision, executes an engagement action, observes the outcome, and adjusts. This loop runs continuously, across the entire customer base, simultaneously — enabling genuine personalisation at the scale of millions without manual intervention.
Traditional marketing automation executes pre-defined campaigns on schedules. Agentic AI operates in real time — detecting individual behavioural signals, making decisions for specific customers at specific moments, and adjusting based on observed outcomes. The result is engagement that responds to individual behaviour rather than expecting customers to conform to a fixed campaign structure.
Based on live deployments across 30+ markets: 8–21x ROI on engagement investment, 2–12x monthly active user increases, and reward costs held to 0.6–2.1% of total transaction value. These outcomes reflect the precision that real-time signal data makes possible — reward spend concentrated where it drives the most behavioural change per dollar.
Detect monitors behavioural signals in real time. Decide determines the optimal action for this specific customer at this moment — not this segment. Act fires the personalised engagement through the right channel at the right time. Optimise observes the outcome and adjusts the next decision accordingly. This cycle runs continuously for every customer simultaneously — no manual intervention required between cycles.
In regulated financial services, every automated action must trace back to a human-approved rule — providing the auditability that regulators increasingly require. Beyond compliance, human oversight governs strategic objectives, rule configuration, anomaly review, and insight interpretation. Institutions with robust human governance have maintained reward cost efficiency at 0.6–2.1% of transaction value precisely because agent behaviour boundaries are clearly defined.
Five signal types carry the most value: Transactional (spend patterns, frequency, merchant category), Engagement (app navigation depth, feature exploration depth), Lifecycle (customer trajectory — accelerating, plateauing, or drifting toward churn), Redemption (reward selection as a precise preference map), and Event (salary credit, loan repayment — time-sensitive windows of elevated financial attention).

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Unlocking Loyalty Success: Why Partnering with Experts is Key to Successful Loyalty Programs in 2024

Unlocking Loyalty Success: Why Partnering with Experts is Key to Successful Loyalty Programs in 2024

Boost your program’s success by collaborating with loyalty experts

Gillian Setiawan

MarTech Blogger | Sept 10, 2024


Capturing and retaining customer attention is more challenging than ever. With the average human attention span now at 8.25 seconds – shorter than that of a goldfish (9 seconds) – businesses must develop innovative strategies to engage their customers meaningfully and consistently.

An effective way to achieve this is via a well-designed loyalty program. By leveraging the expertise of professionals in the field, firms can create robust loyalty programs that not only retain customers but also foster deep connections, driving long-term growth.

 

The Importance of Loyalty Programs in 2024

In 2024, loyalty programs have evolved from being a mere add-on to a critical component of any company’s customer retention strategy. A well-crafted loyalty program fosters an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, building trust and enhancing the overall customer experience. This ultimately leads to increased revenue and improved data quality that can be harnessed for future growth.

Moreover, in the competitive battle for customer attention, it’s crucial to note that acquiring a new customer costs five times more than re-engaging an existing one. This underscores the importance of investing in a robust and effective loyalty program, making it more vital than ever.

 

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

While loyalty programs offer numerous benefits, not all are created equal. Here are some pitfalls to watch out for:

1. Complexity
Overly complicated loyalty programs, such as those with confusing rules or long-winded reward collection processes, can deter customers from actively engaging with the brand. Currently, about 31% of consumers find it too difficult to earn rewards from their loyalty programs.

2. Lack of Engagement

A loyalty program that doesn’t engage customers will fail to keep them interested. Without regular interactions, nudges, and incentives, customers may not see the value in participating. With 80% of customers believing that the experiences provided by a company are as meaningful as their products and services, firms must continue to innovate and delight in order to keep their consumers happy.

3. A One-Size-Fits-All Approach

A generic loyalty program that doesn’t consider the unique needs and preferences of different customer segments will struggle to maintain interest and relevance. Nowadays, personalization is key! Offering customers a way to choose their rewards, for example, not only delights and engages them, it also provides the firm valuable insights into their consumers’ preferences. In fact, 71% of customers expect personalization, and 76% mentioned an inclination to switch to a competitor if they don’t get it. 

Choosing the Right Loyalty Partner(s)

To create a successful loyalty program and avoid common pitfalls, partnering with true loyalty experts is essential. Here are some key qualities to look for in a loyalty partner:

1. Experts in the Field
Loyalty experts bring extensive experience and a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t in loyalty programs. They provide insights and strategies tailored to each firm’s specific needs and customer base. Their established relationships and industry connections can also offer firms the opportunity to reach a wider audience, engage in cross-promotions, and benefit from pre-existing customer trust.

2. Simplicity

Successful loyalty programs should provide customers with a simple and frictionless experience. This involves offering clear, straightforward processes for earning and redeeming rewards, and an intuitive, user-friendly interface to significantly enhance customer satisfaction, for example, to encourage active participation. 

3. Localisation
To truly be effective, loyalty programs must be tailored to resonate with diverse international customer groups. Addressing local preferences and cultural nuances is key to enhancing the relevance and appeal of the program. As noted earlier, partnering with experts who have experience with international audiences can then be highly beneficial for achieving successful localisation and maximizing the impact of a firm’s loyalty initiatives.

4. Customer Engagement at the Core (i.e., Gamification)

Effective loyalty programs place customer engagement at the forefront. Gamification elements, such as challenges, leaderboards, and rewards for specific actions, can significantly boost engagement and make the program more enjoyable for customers. In fact, integrating gamification has been shown to increase user engagement by up to 50% compared to traditional marketing efforts, demonstrating its effectiveness in fostering deeper connections and driving active participation.

5. Transparency

Transparency is the foundation of building and sustaining any successful partnership. Encompassing more than mere openness, it involves a commitment to honest communication and accountability. By partnering with loyalty experts who are transparent about costs, for example, firms can ensure they know exactly where and how their investments are being spent, minimizing the risk of unexpected issues.

6. Security

Despite extensive efforts to protect customer data, firms remain at risk of data breaches. In fact, data breaches increased by 20% from 2022 to 2023, underscoring the critical importance of security in today’s digital age. Therefore, reliable loyalty partners must implement robust security measures to safeguard customer data and ensure the integrity of firms’ loyalty program.

7. Innovation (i.e., Artificial Intelligence)

In the realm of loyalty programs, artificial intelligence (AI) can help enhance customer experiences and streamline program operations. For example, by leveraging AI to analyze past customer behavior and predict future actions, businesses can make more informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition. This proactive approach allows companies to tailor their loyalty programs more effectively, setting them apart from others in the market.

Conclusion


In 2024, a well-designed loyalty program can be a powerful tool for retaining customers and driving repeat business. By partnering with loyalty experts who understand the intricacies of creating engaging and effective programs, firms can avoid common pitfalls and ensure that their loyalty programs deliver significant value to their customers. This ultimately helps them build thriving programs that foster long-term customer relationships and business success.

The Perx Advantage


With international exposure, versatile gamification features, and a globally recognized dual ISO certification, Perx stands out as a leading partner in the loyalty space. Our secure, proven solutions are designed to effectively engage your customers and elevate your loyalty program to new heights.

Book a demo today to see how Perx can transform your loyalty strategy!

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Global businesses have driven over 10 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

Request demo

The image is of man and severel hands reaching out to him, indicative of reaching to the customers

The Forgotten Customer: Still a Ticking Time Bomb?

The image is of man and severel hands reaching out to him, indicative of reaching to the customers

The Forgotten Customer: Still a Ticking Time Bomb?

Drive Long-Term Growth by Re-Engaging Forgotten Customers

Gillian Setiawan

MarTech Blogger | September 10, 2024


In 2018, our founder Anna Gong shed light on a critical issue affecting many businesses: the Forgotten Customer. These are loyal customers who receive little to no engagement from the companies they support, whether through emails, phone calls, or other forms of communication.

Six years later, this issue still persists. With 68% of customers leaving a company because they feel neglected, addressing this issue is crucial for long-term success.

The Customer Experience

Customer Experience (CX) encompasses the customers’ perceptions of how a company treats them. It includes every interaction they have with the business – from browsing the website and speaking with customer service to using the firm’s products and services. A positive CX can differentiate your brand in a competitive market, fostering deeper connections with your customers and boosting loyalty.

 

 

 

Why is Customer Experience Important?

 

1. Proactive CX Fosters Loyalty & Repeat Purchases

In 2018, Anna emphasized that many companies engage with customers reactively rather than proactively. Customers typically receive attention only when they are on the verge of leaving or after they have had a negative experience. Engaging customers only during crises or at the point of churn is insufficient. Today, companies need to adopt a proactive strategy, sending personalized messages that delight customers and make them feel valued.

With 80% of consumers more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences, and 78% stating that such communication makes them more willing to repurchase, it is clear that proactive, personalized engagement is crucial in today’s digital age.

2. Positive CX May Reduce Marketing Budget Waste

Anna also pointed out that it costs companies five times more to acquire a new customer than to engage an existing one. This principle holds true today. While attracting new customers is important, catering to the needs of existing customers is arguably even more crucial.

In fact, with 65% of a company’s business coming from existing customers, and loyal customers spending 67% more than new ones, it is essential that companies allocate sufficient marketing budgets toward delighting customers they have already built relationships with to see higher returns on investment.

How Can Companies Re-Engage Their Forgotten Customers?

1. Data Utilization

As Anna mentioned, many companies have amassed significant amounts of customer data but use it reactively. To truly engage customers, businesses must leverage this data proactively.

Taking Netflix as an example, they utilize historical customer behavior to predict viewing preferences and recommend content. This not only boosts engagement, but also makes customers feel understood, convincing them to remain loyal.

By analyzing customer data, companies can gain insights into individual preferences and needs. Predictive analytics can help anticipate customer behavior, allowing businesses to surprise and delight customers with personalized offers and experiences they didn’t know they wanted.

2. Personalization

With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), personalization is now more achievable than ever. Companies that utilize AI to deliver personalized experiences at scale are better positioned for success.

Similar to the Netflix example, Amazon also leverages machine learning and AI to continuously refine its product suggestions based on user interactions.

Such real-time AI helps tailor future interactions, making customers feel more valued and understood with every interaction.

3. Gamification

Gamification has emerged as a powerful tool to enhance customer engagement. By incorporating game-like elements into the customer experience, companies can make interactions fun, engaging, and memorable.

Duolingo, for example, utilizes quizzes, rewards, and leaderboards to make language learning enjoyable. These interactive features not only keep customers engaged but also foster a sense of loyalty.

4. Omnichannel Offerings

Offering seamless, omnichannel experiences can also set your business apart. Omnichannel refers to providing a consistent shopping experience across all channels, including in-store, mobile, and online.For example, Singapore Airlines, through its partnership with AOE-integrated airports and shopping malls, allows customers to easily shop, pre-book, enhance in-flight options, and earn loyalty points in real-time. With 70% of all purchase decisions made at the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) stage, it is crucial for businesses to be present online when customers are researching products.

In fact, according to Adobe, companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy a 10% year-over-year growth, a 10% increase in average order value, and a 25% increase in close rates.

Conclusion


The Forgotten Customer remains a pressing issue for businesses today. To overcome this challenge, companies must prioritize proactive engagement by leveraging data, personalization, gamification, and omnichannel offerings to create exceptional customer experiences. By focusing on delighting existing customers, businesses can drive loyalty, increase revenue, and build lasting relationships that stand the test of time.

The Perx Advantage


Are you still neglecting your loyal customers? Take action by evaluating your customer engagement strategies and adopting a proactive approach to create exceptional experiences that drive loyalty and growth.

With versatile gamification features, AI-powered campaigns, predictive analytics, and a plethora of adaptive rewards, Perx could be your trusted partner!

Book a demo today to see how Perx can help you strengthen relationships with your existing customers.

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Global businesses have driven over 10 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

Request demo

Banner on How Gamification Hacks Cognitive Biases to Drive Customer Stickiness Blog

How Gamification Hacks Cognitive Biases to Drive Customer Stickiness

Banner on How Gamification Hacks Cognitive Biases to Drive Customer Stickiness Blog

How Gamification Hacks Cognitive Biases to Drive Customer Stickiness

Azmeen Ansar

Ever wondered why you can’t resist those loyalty points or why you keep coming back to that app with the daily challenges? Spoiler alert: It’s all about how gamification taps into your brain’s cognitive biases.

Yep, we’re talking about the hidden forces that drive your and your customers’ behaviors and how smart businesses are using them to keep you hooked.

Let’s dive into this fascinating world where cognitive bias meets fun and discover how these biases play a starring role in gamification strategies.

The Magic of Loss Aversion

Picture this: you’ve earned 100 points on your favorite app, and suddenly there’s a challenge that could make you lose 50 of them if you don’t complete it. Panic mode activated, right?

That’s loss aversion in action. We hate losing more than we love gaining. Gamification leverages this by setting up scenarios where the fear of loss propels us to engage more actively.

How Perx Gamifies This: The biggest bank in the Philippines used Perx to combine loyalty programs and gamified strategies, driving customers to readily redeem their points for vouchers. These vouchers were from partner merchants who also benefited from the bank promoting their brand to its 19 million customers. This led to an earn-burn ratio of 32%, well above the industry average.

The Endowment Effect: Your Digital Treasure

Ever felt super attached to those virtual coins or badges you’ve collected? Welcome to the endowment effect. Once something is ours, we value it more. Gamified apps give you rewards upfront, making you feel like you’ve got something valuable that you don’t want to lose. It’s not just a digital badge; it’s your badge.

How Perx Gamifies This: Many of our clients engage with their customers daily, thanks to the Perx platform that enables them to award badges for positive actions. Singapore’s leading telecom brand uses a similar approach, awarding points for each day the customer logs into the app and plays a game. Another client awards badges for transaction streaks, resulting in a monthly engagement rate of over 60% on their loyalty apps.

Social Proof: Keeping Up with the Joneses

Why do we care about leaderboards and social sharing features? Because we’re hardwired to look at what others are doing and follow suit. Social proof is a powerful cognitive bias that gamification taps into. Seeing your friends or peers achieve higher levels or unlock cool rewards drives you to do the same. After all, nobody wants to be left behind.

How Perx Gamifies This: Through gamified quests and leaderboards, we’ve helped our clients motivate their customers to unlock higher rewards by taking actions that grow business. For example, with our telco clients, we launched quest campaigns that encouraged customers to sign up for higher plans while showing where they stood on a game leaderboard. This led to the brand’s campaigns having over a 90% completion rate with over 85% returning users for in-app engagements.

Commitment and Consistency: The Journey Matters

Started with a small goal and now you’re deep into a complex challenge? That’s the commitment and consistency bias at work. Once you commit to something, you’re more likely to follow through. Gamified systems cleverly start with easy, achievable goals, gradually leading you to bigger challenges, ensuring you stay engaged throughout the journey.

How Perx Gamifies This: The largest digital bank in Singapore uses stamp campaigns powered by Perx to entice its customers to use the bank’s card for everyday transactions. By providing stamps for referrals, foreign transactions, and even just buying their morning coffee, the brand generated a minimum of $6.6 million in 6 months with a 70% average campaign engagement rate per user.

Ben Franklin Effect: The Power of Asking for Help

Ever noticed how asking someone for a small favor can make them like you more? That’s because of something called the Ben Franklin effect. When we do someone a favor or oblige a request of theirs, even if they are total strangers with whom we have no previous connection, we are likely to be fond of and trust them. This creates the basis for a strong and possibly lasting positive relationship. Gamified systems use this cognitive bias by incorporating feedback surveys and small tasks that ask for user input. By engaging customers in this way, they feel more valued and invested in the process, strengthening their connection to the brand. It’s a clever way to turn simple feedback into a powerful tool for engagement.

How Perx Gamifies This: Surveys are part of our clients’ regular campaign rosters. By launching journeys that collect feedback and additional preferences from customers, our clients get first-party data on their customers. Proactively collecting customer insights demonstrates that their opinions are valued, and rewarding their participation instantly nurtures a deeper sense of loyalty, satisfaction, and long-term engagement with the brand.

So, next time you find yourself hooked on an app or eager to earn more points, you’ll know it’s not just the game—it’s your brain in action. And that’s the magic of gamification.

At Perx Technologies, we’re passionate about understanding these cognitive biases and using gamification to create engaging, rewarding experiences for the end-users. This way, we help businesses build stronger connections with their customers, driving loyalty and engagement in ways that feel natural and fun.

Want to amp up your game? Reach out to us and let’s get talking.

In the meantime, experience what it would be like to engage with a global hospitality brand that uses Perx to gamify every interaction with their customers.

Click here for a demo.

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Global businesses have driven over 10 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

Request demo

Why curated customer loyalty reward triggers keep multi-demographic audiences engaged

Why curated customer loyalty reward triggers keep multi-demographic audiences engaged 

Grace Alexander

MarTech Blogger | June 6, 2022


Customer engagement isn’t a one-and-done process. Capturing attention is only the first step when it comes to building lasting relationships between brands and their audiences. The most successful companies in this regard are those that actively fight back against disengagement and loss of interest using lifestyle marketing.

When businesses offer a narrow selection of rewards and loyalty offerings, they’re at heightened risk of losing customer attention over time. Having a variety of potential incentives for customers is a powerful advantage for a business, as is using automated triggers to guide each individual to the rewards that best suit them. 

Why do some customers lose interest in rewards? 

Simply having a rewards program is no longer a major differentiator for a business. Rather, a company that is serious about loyalty must consistently prove that its rewards offerings have value and meaning to customers. 

 Engagement is the goal of a customer rewards program, and that in turn is contingent on offering rewards that fit audience interests and meet or exceed their expectations. There are a few traits that can determine whether a rewards program fires up consumers’ interest or is quickly forgotten: 

  • Does everyone get the same rewards? If there’s only one rewards progression, a company may find itself failing to connect with a significant portion of its potential audience. Consumers today are very diverse, so an ideal rewards program will offer customized incentives to hold interest. 
  • How frequently are rewards given? If a business offers a low-frequency rewards program, requiring numerous interactions before consumers receive anything valuable, they may find that interest is low. The vague promise of future value is not very compelling to customers, so brands should reach out often. 

As Hubspot noted, the most effective companies at building loyalty achieve this goal by giving generous rewards often and fully integrating these programs with their overall sales processes. Rather than tacked-on additions, these businesses’ rewards offerings are fundamental parts of the way they sell their products and services to customers. 

Hubspot suggested that when organizations achieve a high level of integration between rewards and the rest of their business, the rewards program ceases to be its own separate entity. Rather, these businesses simply offer their loyalty incentives at all times, inviting customers to engage more deeply. 

How do you counteract customer disengagement? 

It’s one thing to create an environment conducive to audience engagement. It’s another to actively fight back against parts of the customer journey where buyers may fall out of touch with businesses. When working on this type of engagement strategy, it’s important to remember that nearly any interaction can be customized to keep customer interest. 

 Customer behaviors follow patterns. By collecting interaction data, businesses can map out the paths their audiences are taking. Do people typically disengage after a certain amount of time? Is there a supplemental experience that could make an ongoing connection more fun or entertaining? 

 McKinsey & Company Partner José Carluccio recommended that companies look into their breakage patterns, determining which segments of their customer bases are not engaging with loyalty programs. Figuring out which types of customers aren’t staying engaged is the first step to improving the relevance of rewards offerings and triggers. 

 Once businesses have determined where customers are disengaging, as well as which groups of consumers are most likely to break off engagement with the brand, they can respond by adding new elements to the program. Carluccio recommended offerings such as periodic reminders to clients that they have unredeemed rewards as well as more redemption options, potentially even including charitable gifts. 

What is the value of customized customer rewards triggers? 

One potential cause for disengagement — or a lack of engagement in the first place — is the use of rewards triggers that don’t match up with how segments of a company’s audience actually interact with the brand. Customization can resolve this issue, attaching loyalty points to nearly any activity and bringing a wide swath of customers into closer contact with the brand. 

 Companies can reward both online and offline interactions with custom rewards triggers. In-store purchases, app engagements, sign-ups for services, logging in to accounts — these and more can help customers earn points in a rewards scheme. 

 The ability to create a highly customized rewards-earning process helps businesses engage with their audiences in two ways. On one hand, it allows brands to reach their customers where they are, offering points for their preferred interaction styles. On the other, it lets organizations map out preferred customer journeys, encouraging certain types of activities. 

 To start creating these better-directed customer journeys, brands can map out the ways their customers prefer to interact with their rewards offerings. American Express recommended using diagrams of consumers’ dealings with organizations, across multiple channels and over time, to identify the gaps where disengagement is most likely to occur and target those weak spots. 

Businesses that understand how their customers interact with their offerings, and how they’d like to, are well-positioned to update their rewards triggers. Creating new sides to a loyalty program can open up the strategy to a wider selection of customer groups and demographics than ever before. 

Perx customization helps your brand thrive 

No two brands are exactly alike, which means customization is always relevant from a rewards and loyalty standpoint. This is one reason to choose the Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform as the backbone of your organization’s rewards and loyalty program. 

 The Perx platform’s Rules Engine allows a high level of control over rewards triggers, right out of the box. By designing a system of tailored rewards based on what various groups of customers actually want for your business, you can deliver a rewards program with fewer obvious points of disengagement and a smoother customer journey overall. 

The value of a rewards strategy is at its greatest when consumers actually want to use it and engage with it. Customization via a powerful rules engine puts this goal within reach for your brand. Request a demo of the Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform to see this solution in action. 

Recommended for you

previous arrow
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx
80 Key Customer Loyalty Stats & Trends to Watch in 2026 | Perx

Blogs

next arrow

Global businesses have driven over 10 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

Request demo

The Right Customer Engagement Trick? Treat Them Right!

The right customer engagement trick? Treat them right!

Despite the fact that the campaign was launched a decade ago, it continues to haunt me.

Sundeep Keramalu
Director, Marketing Content | November 01, 2021

Was Coke crazy to put random people names on its ‘#ShareACoke’ campaign? Yes. No. No. Yes. Yes, when one considers the campaign’s general desperation. No, when you consider how it made people feel. And no, when you consider the campaign’s stated purpose. And yes, when you consider how Coke was catapulting addiction to new heights.

While Coke’s amazing taste is refreshing, we must keep in mind that even the great ice age reached a point where it was no longer cool.

Share A Coke was no doubt a sweet campaign. That is, having your name appear on a billion-dollar brand. How frequently do you see that? What bothers me is that Coca-Cola is a well-known brand. It has its own name. It has taken decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to get to this point. And suddenly, it was willing to gamble with its identity by putting random, unknown names on its bottles to boost sales for one summer in Australia? It is self-evident that Coke has the absolute right to do anything it wants with its bottles. But, if you know that your product is not exactly health-beneficial and has addictive elements, you want to enable your customer to be disabled from being addicted — not the other way around.

Brands cannot capitalize on the unconditional condition unless they are willing to allow their customers to explore the condition of conditionality.

The goal of any brand is to make the customer fall in love with it unconditionally. Unfortunately, brands cannot capitalize on the unconditional condition unless they are willing to allow their customers to explore the condition of conditionality.

Simply put, to receive anything, you must first offer something. While Coke’s amazing taste is refreshing, we must keep in mind that even the great ice age reached a point where it was no longer cool.

The ethical question remains whether a brand can go as far as to entice consumers to purchase a product simply because it bears their name.

To keep consumers’ hearts warm for the brand, even a “cool” brand must step up and do something genuinely cool that also ends up being a warm gesture for the brand. Coke’s “nice” gesture was to put people’s names on its bottles. Of course, Coke, like any other marketing campaign, had its own agenda. Putting random people’s names on its bottles would be akin to a jilted Bollywood lover in one of those 90s movies engraving the name of the lady in his blood — since she does not feel the same way about him or, worse, has no idea who he is to begin with! Coca-Cola did not want a one-sided relationship. During the summer of 2011, it sought to increase sales in Australia.

Influential personalities and multimillion-dollar deceptive marketing messages are damaging to one’s willpower when it comes to resisting unhealthy and harmful lifestyle choices.

As much as people enjoyed seeing their or their loved ones’ names on Coke bottles, the question we must ask is if it was the proper experience. True, the ethical question remains whether a brand can go as far as to entice consumers to purchase a product simply because it bears their name. However, when a brand is aware that its product is bad enough to be a good pesticide, I believe it should refrain from influencing people in this way — from persuading them to share something this bad.

As it is, influential personalities and multimillion-dollar deceptive marketing messages are damaging to one’s willpower when it comes to resisting unhealthy and harmful lifestyle choices. In any event, when compared to Kendall Jenner’s ‘Live for Now’ Pepsi fiasco, Coke’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was more thoughtful and positive.

When you are a brand that is bad for the body and bad for the mind, you cannot give people any more reasons to buy it than they need. There is a very thin line to walk. This means that you should not compel your customers to adopt your brand. Rather than that, develop incentives for people to adore your brand. There is a significant difference, but the line is really thin. I am not being a snob and slamming the idea of sharing a Coke with a close friend. It is just that you would not want to share anything harmful to your health with someone you care about. That contradicts the point of the campaign’s purported goodness.

Brands that make essentially harmful products to one’s health have additional avenues for customer engagement. Coke tricked its customers into purchasing more Coke. And, mind you, this was done in the name of “treating” its customers. Did not expect this from you, Coke!

Even for a beauty brand that wants to reward its customers, it cannot be skin-deep in its approach to rewarding them.

As much as we would like to believe that the #ShareACoke campaign was an engaging sales-increasing, brand-building, emotionally-engaging campaign, the reality is that it was not as engaging as it could have been. So, the deal was that Coke gave a platform for people to share a virtual Coke with pals or, if they were lucky, find a bottle of Coke with their or their friend’s name on it.

All of this, you see, is still quite transactional. In the end, it is just a name on a bottle! That is all there is to it. When the campaign ended, the transaction concluded. When you invest millions of dollars in advertising a campaign, you spend far more to market and nurture the campaign so that people remember it.

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beauty of a reward is in the embrace of a participant.

Rewards cannot be superficial. Let me give you a perspective. Beauty is considered superficial, right? But even for a global cosmetics brand that wants to reward its customers, it cannot be skin-deep in its approach.

How did a global cosmetics giant under Louis Vuitton increase its in-store sales with the Perx Platform? They did not go around handing out random rewards or sample cosmetics to the passing crowd. Instead, they incentivized regular in-mall footfall to visit their stores

It was a simple and straightforward approach. With smartphones being the single common denominator across shoppers in developed countries, QR-coded posters were placed throughout a highly popular mall. Customers were rewarded every time they scanned the QR code. However, to receive the reward, they had to enter the store — the point of sale.

The dynamic campaigns connected offline footfall, incentivizing them to walk into the store, where purchases were built and launched using the Perx platform. In addition, Perx’s advanced gamification and engagement mechanics transformed the whole experience into a gamified and instantly gratifying one.

Before launch, the brand researched customer footfall and buying patterns before designing the experience around them. They wanted to reward them for their intention to buy something from the brand. Even if they did not intend to do so, the dynamic mobile engagements influenced them to engage with the brand. In other words, I am attempting to convey that, in light of the example, the reward offered should not be based merely on the customer’s pleasure; rather, it should be based on the customer’s intent.

It is true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, Coke’s #ShareACoke campaign might have made the day for some of its customers. But at the end of the day, we must remember, while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beauty of a reward is in the embrace of a participant.

A disconnect or a pause between you, the brand, and your customer will cause them to seek another brand that meets their requirements.

While each beginning and each campaign should have a conclusion, the reality is that engaging customers is a continuous process. Brands are required to engage in a never-ending cycle of evolution, progress, and improvisation. A disconnect or a pause between you, the brand, and your customer will cause them to seek another brand that meets their requirements. This is why brands must focus on engaging their customers in ways that transcend beyond transactional interactions — something that keeps the connection going for a long, long, long time — how about forever!

Treat the relationship with your customer as though it were a long and happy marriage and not a one-night stand.

Treat the relationship with your customer as though it were a long and happy marriage and not a one-night stand.

Given that you have read this far, we are here to assist you if you are looking for a superpower to build that long-lasting, deeply-engaging relationship with your customers. Now keep in mind that we do not help you treat your customers just for the heck of it. Instead, we assist you in treating them genuinely and sensibly – you know, for the right reasons!

We work on making sure your customers do not just remain customers, instead we turn them into level-headed superfans.

It all boils down to giving you the satisfaction of knowing that you as a brand did not trick your customers and that you treated them appropriately. And understanding that will help prevent your conscience from being haunted.

Here is to a #CleanConscience!

Recommended for you

previous arrow
Discover Perx’s Maker-Checker Workflow | Streamline Operations & Ensure Compliance
Discover Perx’s Maker-Checker Workflow | Streamline Operations & Ensure Compliance

Blogs

next arrow

Global businesses have driven over 10 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

Request demo

Perx-Logo-2024
An ISO/IEC27001:2013 and ISO 27018:2019 certified cloud solution
gdpr compliant perx
PRODUCTS
PRODUCTS
RESOURCES
COMPARE
COMPANY
COMPANY
RESOURCES
SAY HELLO

contact@perxtech.com
(65) 6631 8533

Facebook Icon-Twitter-X Linkedin Instagram
SAY HELLO

Perx Technologies Pte Ltd

20A Tanjong Pagar Road
Singapore 088443

contact@perxtech.com

An ISO/IEC27001:2013 and ISO 27018:2019 compliant cloud solution

Perx-Logo-2024
Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram
SAY HELLO

contact@perxtech.com
(65) 6631 8533

Perx-Logo-2024
Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram

An ISO/IEC27001:2013 and
ISO 27018:2019 certified cloud solution
gdpr compliant perx
SAY HELLO

contact@perxtech.com
(65) 6631 8533

PRODUCTS
RESOURCES
COMPARE
COMPANY
COMPARE

An ISO/IEC27001:2013 and ISO 27018:2019 certified cloud solution

© 2026 Perx Technologies. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy  Llm.txt   Terms of Service   Cookie Policy

gdpr compliant perx

Privacy Policy

Llm.txt

Cookie Policy

Terms of Service

© 2026 Perx Technologies. All rights reserved.

© 2026 Perx Technologies. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy

Llm.txt

Cookie Policy

Terms of Service

Loyalty Engagement Platform Built for the Mobile-first Economy
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.