Organizations spend significant time and money building benefits designed to attract customers, strengthen memberships and encourage long-term loyalty.
Discounts. Rewards. Exclusive offers. Cash back. Member perks. Special access.
On paper, the value can be compelling.
But there is a problem that often receives far less attention: offering a valuable benefit does not guarantee that people will actually use it.
A benefit can look impressive during enrollment and still disappear into the background of a customer’s everyday life. Over time, that creates a gap between the value an organization provides and the value its customers actually experience.
Recent research shows just how significant that gap can be. Deloitte’s 2025 Consumer Loyalty Program Survey found that the average consumer is enrolled in eight loyalty programs but actively participates in only five.
For businesses investing in loyalty and engagement, closing that gap may be just as important as deciding which benefits to offer in the first place.
The Difference Between Having Value and Experiencing It
Consider how many benefits consumers can have access to across credit cards, employers, professional associations, insurance providers, retailers, subscriptions, travel programs and financial institutions.
Remembering what is available, where to find it and how to use it can quickly become another task.
That’s where a strong benefit can lose its impact.
If customers have to search for instructions, remember complicated rules or change their normal behavior to participate, even an attractive offer can become easy to ignore.
This creates an important distinction for organizations:
Benefit availability is not the same as benefit engagement.
The customer has to experience the value for it to influence how they feel about the organization providing it.
Friction Doesn’t Have to Be Obvious
When businesses think about friction, they may picture major problems: a broken checkout process, a difficult website or poor customer service.
But smaller obstacles can be just as important when it comes to benefits.
An extra login. A redemption deadline. A complicated points calculation. An offer buried inside an app. A perk that only applies in very specific circumstances.
Individually, these may seem minor. Together, they can make participation feel like work.
Deloitte’s research reinforces the importance of making redemption simple. Forty percent of respondents said they sometimes forget to redeem their rewards, and the report identifies clarity, simplicity and flexibility as opportunities for improving the experience.
The easier the experience becomes, the less attention participation requires.
Relevance Is Only Part of the Equation
Personalization has become a major focus across customer experience and loyalty.
And for good reason. A relevant benefit is generally more compelling than one with little connection to someone’s needs.
But relevance alone doesn’t solve the participation problem.
Adyen’s 2025 U.S. retail research found that consumers can view loyalty programs as more hassle than they’re worth when the rewards feel irrelevant or the experience fails to meet expectations. The same research points to meaningful promotions and streamlined experiences as important parts of the value exchange.
Imagine receiving a valuable restaurant offer for a place you already visit. The offer is relevant. But if using it requires remembering a code, opening a separate portal before paying or following several unfamiliar steps, that relevance may not be enough.
Now imagine the value is incorporated naturally into a transaction the customer was already planning to make.
The benefit hasn’t necessarily become more valuable financially.
It has become easier to use.
Everyday Behavior Creates an Opportunity
One way organizations can address underused benefits is by looking at what customers already do instead of continually asking them to adopt new behaviors.
People already buy groceries, eat at restaurants, shop for clothing, make home purchases, book travel and spend across dozens of other routine categories.
Connecting benefits to existing behavior can make engagement feel less like a separate program and more like a natural extension of everyday life.
This can be particularly relevant for organizations that may not interact with their customers or members every day.
An insurance provider, association, employer or membership organization, for example, may provide meaningful value but have relatively few natural reasons for frequent interaction.
Benefits connected to everyday activity can create additional opportunities for that value to be experienced between major touchpoints.
Awareness Still Matters
Even an easy-to-use benefit cannot drive engagement if customers forget that it exists.
Enrollment should not be the last time someone hears about what is available to them.
Organizations can reinforce value through timely reminders, relevant offers and simple explanations of how benefits work. The goal isn’t necessarily to communicate more frequently. It’s to communicate when the information is useful.
A reminder that arrives when someone can immediately act on it has a very different purpose from a generic message about benefits they might use someday.
Over time, those interactions can help move a benefit from something customers vaguely remember receiving to something they actively recognize as part of their relationship with an organization.
Measure Participation, Not Just Enrollment
There is also a measurement issue behind the participation problem.
Enrollment is easy to celebrate. A growing program can look successful based on registrations, eligible members or total accounts.
But those numbers don’t necessarily reveal whether people are experiencing value.
Organizations may need to look further: Are customers completing a first action? Are they returning? Are they using benefits across different situations? Does engagement continue beyond the initial enrollment period?
Deloitte’s findings illustrate why that distinction matters: despite high enrollment, consumers actively engage with fewer programs than they join.
These questions shift the focus from how many people have access to how many people actually participate.
The Best Benefit May Be the One People Actually Use
Customer benefits do not necessarily need to become bigger, more elaborate or packed with additional features.
In many cases, the greater opportunity is making existing value easier to discover, understand and use.
For organizations, that means thinking beyond the benefit itself and considering the entire experience surrounding it.
Is the value obvious?
Does participation fit naturally into the customer’s life?
Can someone understand how it works without navigating unnecessary steps?
And most importantly, are customers actually using it?
Because ultimately, the value of a benefit isn’t defined by what appears on a list of perks.
It’s defined by what customers experience.
