PNC Bank’s Victoria Dravneek: Loyalty is Moving From Points Programs to Full Relationships
WASHINGTON, DC — Loyalty programs have long been defined by what they give customers; points, rewards, redemptions. Victoria Dravneek thinks that framing is giving way to something broader and more demanding.
“Loyalty is all about building relationships with your clients. It’s not only the value you’re giving them in terms of points or rewards, it’s that entire relationship beyond marketing,” Dravneek, head of Loyalty Strategy and Platforms at PNC Bank, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Epsilon Loyalty Summit. “How do you service the customer? How do they feel when they walk in your store? What happens when things go wrong? Are we doing things to go above and beyond to really make that a great experience?”
That shift from transactional to relational loyalty is already underway in financial services, where card-centric programs have gradually expanded to encompass a customer’s entire relationship with an institution. Dravneek sees the same evolution accelerating across industries.
AI enables proactive, predictive relationships
The most significant near-term change Dravneek anticipates is a shift from reactive to proactive customer engagement, driven by the ability to bring contextual data into conversations at scale.
“We’re going to become much more proactive and predictive with our clients than we are today, especially if we’re able to leverage the masses of data we have to provide additional context to the conversations that we can have with them,” Dravneek said.
The analogy she reaches for is a face-to-face conversation between two people who know each other well. Each person brings history, preferences, and context that shapes what gets said and how. AI makes that quality of contextual awareness possible beyond the physical encounter.
Measurement is getting closer to real time
The core metrics of loyalty are satisfaction and retention. Those values haven’t changed. What’s changing is the precision and speed with which they can be measured.
“In terms of retention and the deepening and the attribution to a loyalty program, it was much more loose in the past. You would have much more directional metrics. We’re able to get a lot closer now,” Dravneek said. “As we’re able to really digitize that more and more, we’re going to be able to do that real time.”
Match pair analysis and grading match analysis currently require significant time and human involvement. As those processes become more automated, campaign-level loyalty attribution will become standard rather than exceptional.
Loyalty’s 80 percent rule
Dravneek’s takeaway from convening with brand loyalty leaders across sectors is that the fundamentals are more universal than the vertical differences suggest.
“Loyalty is about 80% the same across multiple industries. We’re all trying to move behaviors in a certain way, and we’re using similar tools to do that,” Dravneek said. “The other big takeaway is really thinking about the interconnectedness and how AI plays into that. It’s going to make our worlds even more connected than they are today.”
You’re watching Loyalty as a Growth Engine: Powering Lifetime Customer Value, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Epsilon. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
WASHINGTON, DC — Loyalty programs have long been defined by what they give customers; points, rewards, redemptions. Victoria Dravneek thinks that framing is giving way to something broader and more demanding.
“Loyalty is all about building relationships with your clients. It’s not only the value you’re giving them in terms of points or rewards, it’s that entire relationship beyond marketing,” Dravneek, head of Loyalty Strategy and Platforms at PNC Bank, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Epsilon Loyalty Summit. “How do you service the customer? How do they feel when they walk in your store? What happens when things go wrong? Are we doing things to go above and beyond to really make that a great experience?”
That shift from transactional to relational loyalty is already underway in financial services, where card-centric programs have gradually expanded to encompass a customer’s entire relationship with an institution. Dravneek sees the same evolution accelerating across industries.
AI enables proactive, predictive relationships
The most significant near-term change Dravneek anticipates is a shift from reactive to proactive customer engagement, driven by the ability to bring contextual data into conversations at scale.
“We’re going to become much more proactive and predictive with our clients than we are today, especially if we’re able to leverage the masses of data we have to provide additional context to the conversations that we can have with them,” Dravneek said.
The analogy she reaches for is a face-to-face conversation between two people who know each other well. Each person brings history, preferences, and context that shapes what gets said and how. AI makes that quality of contextual awareness possible beyond the physical encounter.
Measurement is getting closer to real time
The core metrics of loyalty are satisfaction and retention. Those values haven’t changed. What’s changing is the precision and speed with which they can be measured.
“In terms of retention and the deepening and the attribution to a loyalty program, it was much more loose in the past. You would have much more directional metrics. We’re able to get a lot closer now,” Dravneek said. “As we’re able to really digitize that more and more, we’re going to be able to do that real time.”
Match pair analysis and grading match analysis currently require significant time and human involvement. As those processes become more automated, campaign-level loyalty attribution will become standard rather than exceptional.
Loyalty’s 80 percent rule
Dravneek’s takeaway from convening with brand loyalty leaders across sectors is that the fundamentals are more universal than the vertical differences suggest.
“Loyalty is about 80% the same across multiple industries. We’re all trying to move behaviors in a certain way, and we’re using similar tools to do that,” Dravneek said. “The other big takeaway is really thinking about the interconnectedness and how AI plays into that. It’s going to make our worlds even more connected than they are today.”
You’re watching Loyalty as a Growth Engine: Powering Lifetime Customer Value, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Epsilon. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
