How are you treating your customers? Do you have open lines of communication with them so that you really know how they feel? Are your customer loyalty programs attracting and retaining customers or driving them away?

On a recent trip from Calgary to Houston I was bumped out of the Air Canada “Elite” line because my ticket didn’t show my Aeroplan flight rewards status. My wife and kids categorized this as a #firstworldproblem but for those people that travel a lot, not having the loyalty status you have earned is a big deal for quite a few reasons!

For example, I use my status to get into the airport lounges between flights. Besides food and beverages, there is usually a nice place to work complete with free, high speed internet. This means I can usually get a few hours of productive, uninterrupted work completed at each connection and this means less work when I get to my destination. This one feature is really important to me!