Toward the end of the month, my phone reliably reminds me that I have used almost all of my mobile data. Not the kind of notification you calmly ignore, but the kind of irritating little ping that ruins your coffee. First, I blamed myself. Then my kid. Then I did something I usually only do after being nagged for long enough: I opened my mobile provider’s app and checked what I was actually paying for.
When I opened the provider’s page, I almost spat coffee all over my keyboard. Same plan, same phone, same contract - except new customers were getting it for €14 less per month. That is €168 a year. For the privilege of having paid them regularly, on time, and without making a fuss for ten years. So I called customer support. I got a friendly voice and an even friendlier rejection: this offer is only available to new customers. Existing customers, apparently, get something else. The comfort of being taken for granted.
Looking back, it was not the amount that annoyed me most. It was the logic. As if loyalty were something to be punished, not nurtured. And then I remembered a conversation I had a few years ago with a CMO at a Slovenian telecommunications company.
I suggested a simple rule. Once a customer has been with you for ten years, they become royalty. Wherever they find a better comparable offer on the market, you match it. No negotiations. No threats to leave. No humiliating call to customer support. Ten years of loyalty should mean something. He looked at me and said something I still find hard to forget: “If we do that, we’ll be out of business within a year.”
Let’s put it this way: at least he said the quiet part out loud. The model this industry runs on is not built around rewarding loyalty. It is built around monetizing inertia. Companies make money from customers who stay because switching feels like too much effort. Promotions are reserved for people willing to move. New customers get fireworks. Existing customers get the annual price increase.
And this is not just a story about mobile providers. It is a fairly accurate description of how many companies understand growth.
In the US, there is a good term for this: loyalty penalty. It describes a practice where existing customers end up paying more, or receiving worse terms, than new customers. The company talks about loyalty in public, while its pricing rewards disloyalty in practice.
In B2C, this is easy to spot. A package for new users. A switching bonus. The first six months at a lower price. Free installation. A special offer for new subscribers only. Existing customers can watch from the sidelines and feel like fools for staying too long.
In B2B, the same logic is simply more polished. A new client gets a first-year discount, free onboarding, attention from the senior team, and the feeling that the company is really making an effort. An existing client gets a price increase, stricter terms, slower responses, and an annual review meeting where someone explains that costs have, unfortunately, changed.
Here is the trick: many of your “loyal” clients are not loyal because they adore you. They stay because switching is painful. Because it would require an internal project. Because they would have to review contracts, data, integrations, processes, and responsibilities. Because someone in the organization would have to take a risk. That is not loyalty. That is friction.
If you mistake friction for a relationship, sooner or later you will make an expensive mistake. You will start raising prices, tightening terms, and reducing attention because the numbers show that clients are staying. Then one of them will wake up. Then another. And once they wake up, they do not leave slowly. They leave with resentment.
The most dangerous part of this logic is that it often works in the short term. That is why management finds it so difficult to walk away from it. Passive clients pay regularly, do not complain, and do not raise alarms. Switchers, on the other hand, create the feeling of movement. New logos. New revenue. New meetings. New charts. On paper, everything looks good. Until you look at who is funding whom.
Loyal clients often finance discounts for people who do not know you yet. Long-term customers fund campaigns for people who may leave again as soon as a better offer appears. The most stable relationships finance the least stable ones. That is not a loyalty strategy. It is a hidden tax on patience.
In our practice, this pattern usually reveals itself through three questions. Does a new client get better terms in the first year than a comparable client who has been with you for five years? Does a client have to threaten to leave before you finally take them seriously? Does marketing spend most of its energy on people who are not yet customers, while treating those who already pay as a given?
If the answer is yes three times, you do not have a loyalty program. You have an acquisition program funded by existing customers.
That is why, when I read the “Loyalty Program Trends 2026” report, the most interesting shift for me was in the objectives. Among more than 170 loyalty and CRM experts, 59% named improving Customer Lifetime Value as their main goal. Reducing churn was at 44%, increasing ROI at 35%. This is no longer the language of promotional campaigns. This is the language of relationship economics.
Even more interesting: investment is moving away from classic promotions and offers. Personalization, loyalty program development, and automation are moving to the front. Among the trends expected to have the greatest impact on loyalty marketing over the next two to three years, gamification and predictive segmentation are at the top.
Translated into business language: companies are slowly realizing that loyalty cannot be built on discounts alone. A discount can trigger a purchase. It is rarely the reason a customer stays. That distinction matters. If you reward only the purchase, you will get more purchases when the reward is high enough. If you reward only the threat of leaving, you will teach customers to threaten. If you reward only new customers, you will train the market to keep switching.
The question, therefore, is not whether you reward customer behavior. The question is which behavior you are actually funding.
I still think my suggestion to that mobile provider was healthier than most of its campaigns. Once you have been with us for ten years, you become royalty. If you find a better comparable offer anywhere on the market, we will match it. Not because you are the loudest. Not because you called support and threatened to leave. But because you have earned that status.
That would genuinely break the existing model. And that is exactly why it is interesting. Because the existing model assumes that loyal customers do not look around. That they do not have time. That they are too busy. That they will not deal with the bureaucracy of switching. That they will swallow worse terms for another year because they have more important things to do.
In B2B, this logic is even more dangerous. You do not lose loyal clients because of one competitor’s discount. You lose them through the accumulation of small signals that you have started taking them for granted. One slower response. One careless price increase. One meeting where you sell them something new, but never ask whether the old thing still works. One offer for newcomers that is better than theirs.
Then a competitor appears with a 10% lower price and a promise of a “painless migration.” Maybe the migration is not painless at all. But by then, the promise is enough. The client has already checked out emotionally.
When the conversation turns to solutions, most teams instinctively say: let’s create a loyalty program. Then they create points, a card, an app, or another discount tier. That is often not a loyalty program. It is just a more structured way to reduce margin.
A good loyalty program does not reward transactions alone. It rewards behaviors that build a better relationship and stronger economics. Paying on time. Using the service more often. Referring others. Participating in improvements. Responding to feedback. Exploring new categories. Staying active between purchases. Building long-term collaboration.
That is why modern loyalty programs are starting to look less like discount tables and more like systems of behavioral incentives. Progress. Status. Access. Priority treatment. Personalized benefits. Missions. Challenges. Experiences that competitors find harder to copy than a 10% discount.
The best benefits for the best clients should not be the same benefits any newcomer can get during a campaign. They should be benefits that have to be earned.
Take 12 minutes. Not 12 days. And answer three simple questions.
• Does a new client today get better terms than a comparable existing client?
• Do long-term clients discover better terms by themselves, or do you inform them proactively?
• Does a client have to threaten to leave before you finally take them seriously?
If any of these questions stings, there is probably a reason.
Rewarding customer behavior is a powerful tool. But only if you know which behavior you are rewarding. If you reward switching providers, you will get more switching. If you reward waiting for promotions, you will get more waiting. If you reward threats to leave, you will get more threats.
But if you reward loyalty, engagement, and long-term value, something else begins to happen. Customers do not stay simply because switching is inconvenient. They stay because they feel that over time, they are gaining, not losing.
Companies often think they are rewarding growth. In reality, they are rewarding disloyalty. Marketing hunts for new leads. Sales puts out fires. Finance collects a tax on inertia. And the relationship slowly starts to rot. Then, one day, everyone says churn happened suddenly. It did not.
My provocation for B2B decision-makers is simple: stop funding the future by punishing the past. Take part of your acquisition budget and redirect it into benefits for those who already pay you. That does not necessarily mean a discount. Sometimes it means a better response, priority access, proactive analysis, faster onboarding for a new team, or simply the feeling that you are not taking them for granted.
Today, call one of your most important clients. Not to sell them something. Call to show them they have not been wasting their loyalty on the wrong supplier. I did it.