News

Amsterdam, 22 March 2006

ESSILOR WINS PRESTIGIOUS GARTNER CRM EXCELLENCE AWARD 2006 FOR EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA (EMEA) WITH ALLIANCE CONSUMER LOYALTY PROGRAM BY LOYALTY LAB


The goal of the program is to enable independent opticians to manage their customer relations and loyalty marketing at an advanced level. This further enables them to distinguish themselves from the competition within the optical branch. The program, centrally managed by Loyalty Lab, consists of a mix of database facilities, communication tools and individual marketing advice.

On Wednesday, 15 March 2006, Gartner announced that Essilor Benelux and Loyalty Lab The Netherlands won the Gartner EMEA CRM Excellence Award 2006 with their Alliance Consumer Loyalty Program. This award is extended to companies that have developed and successfully implemented a customer relations management (CRM) program. The Alliance Consumer Loyalty Program realized a strong growth in customer loyalty, turnover and profit for the more than 130 participating independent opticians. Loyalty Lab and Essilor developed the Alliance Consumer Loyalty Program in 2003.

Alliance Consumer Loyalty Program

Opticians can devise their customer programs on the basis of customer profiles and individual advice. The program´s central management allows the individual opticians to compare results with the other participants and to adapt them where necessary. All relevant, actual and individual statistics are accessible to the participating opticians through an online dashboard. T-Systems takes care of the datawarehousing, system integration and hosting of the CRM application. The CRM application is based on the SSA CRM powered by Epiphany.

Ron de Bruijn, General Director Essilor Benelux: “Thanks to loyal opticians and supported by professional CRM programs, we are now able to connect consumer information with product choice, to measure the effectiveness of various tools and to gain customer feedback. These professional programs have given us a decisive competitor’s edge in the optical branch.”

Jasper van IJssel, Commercial Director and one of the founders of Loyalty Lab:“As founders and executors of this program, we are very proud of this distinction. Essilor staunchly dared to introduce the program with us. The opticians proved their progressiveness by participating in the program and they are now well serviced in their marketing and sales activities.”

Hein Vrins, Marketing Manager Essilor Benelux: “The presented case proves that CRM can be successfully implemented by smaller retail companies. This is an example of cooperation among the distribution chain and combined marketing activities. Consumer value is always the final determinant factor, which the results of the program have undoubtedly proven.”

Gartner CRM Award
The Gartner CRM Awards has been extended since 1999. Companies such as Telecom Italia Mobile, Yorkshire Water, KLM and BankInter have won the EMEA CRM Excellence Award. Three companies were selected from the many entries submitted for the EMEA CRM Award 2006. Ceska Bank, British Telecom and Essilor Benelux each presented their cases during the final round at the Gartner CRM Summit in London. This leading seminar counted 350 participants who were left to make the choice of the company that had developed the best CRM program.