223: Transforming Loyalty Programmes with Innovation and Trust with Len Covello Navigating the Customer Experience

Len Covello, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Engage People, leading the long-term technology vision of the company and is responsible for driving continued innovation in the loyalty sector. He is an innovator in the technology space and a thought leader in loyalty. 
Len started his first technology company at the age of 18 and most recently was the Director and Chief Technology Officer with Access (formerly LRG Rewards). His passion is web-based application design and development across a wide variety of business applications, particularly in user interfaces and process automation. 
He's an active member of Forbes Technology Council, a cornerstone of the Engage People executive team and member of the board of directors.
 
Questions
·     We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today?
·      Now, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what Engage People does?
·      What are your views, and you can tell me, since you're a loyalty expert in terms of like cross exchanges. So, let's say for example, you have loyalty points from an airline, but you're able to use those loyalty points from the airline at a hotel, or maybe for an attraction that you'd like to visit. Have you seen those kinds of activities happening, is that something you see happening in the future?
·      If you are to give our listeners maybe one or two trends that you see emerging in 2024 and beyond as it relates to loyalty and rewards and using it as a currency on its own, what would those be?
·      Now could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
·      And could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.
·      Can you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
·      Now, if you could choose one word or one attribute or characteristic that you believe a leader needs to have in order to have a team that is intrinsically motivated?
·      Where can listeners find you online?
·      Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.
Highlights
Len’s Journey 
Me: We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, could you tell our listeners how it is that you got to where you are today?
 
Len shared that it's one of those stories, he doesn't think it's a straight line to get here, when he was quite young, as mentioned that 18 he definitely enjoyed working with computers, building applications. But he was always tied to the user experience, he was always tied to that ability to make things run a little more efficiently. So, he started building just web applications, very crude back in the day, so, internet was still pretty young. And started building these solutions for different organizations and eventually met with a company that was in the loyalty space. 
And they provided basically legacy loyalty, so, for those of us that remember you used to get a catalogue sent to your house, and it had some items that you could redeem from, and you'd either phone in or potentially fill out a form. And they talked with that organization about all the things they could bring there and that's what really started the prec