At Home Redesigns Loyalty Programme Using Member Feedback

What happened

US home décor retailer At Home is overhauling its loyalty programme, and it is doing so by building customer feedback directly into the redesign process rather than treating the programme as a finished product handed down to shoppers. According to reporting from Customer Experience Dive, the retailer is using member input to shape which rewards, perks and structural changes make it into the next iteration of the scheme.

Rather than a one-off relaunch, At Home is framing the programme as something that evolves continuously, with member sentiment acting as an ongoing input rather than a post-launch survey exercise. The approach positions loyalty as a living service that shoppers help define, not a static rewards menu.

Why it matters

For retail and service leaders, this is a useful signal on how loyalty programmes are being rethought: less as a discounting mechanism and more as a co-designed relationship. Building feedback loops into the redesign itself — rather than bolting on member research after launch — reflects a broader shift toward treating loyalty as an ongoing product managed with the same rigour as an app or a digital channel, iterated against real usage and preference data rather than assumptions made at head office.

It also reflects the practical reality that loyalty economics only work if members actually value what's on offer. Programmes designed in isolation from members risk optimising for margin protection over relevance, which shows up later as poor redemption rates or member churn. Involving customers earlier reduces that risk, and signals to members that their voice has tangible influence — itself a driver of engagement.

The Renascence take

The interesting part of this story isn't that a retailer asked customers what they want — most do. It's the decision to treat loyalty as an evolving product with customers embedded in the build process, rather than a fixed benefit structure validated after the fact.

Most loyalty redesigns fail quietly because they're built around what the finance team can afford to give away, then tested on customers as an afterthought. At Home's approach flips the sequencing: build the evolution mechanism first, let real member behaviour and stated preference shape the specific rewards. The behavioral principle at work is agency — members who feel their feedback visibly changed the programme are more likely to trust and stay engaged with it, independent of the actual monetary value of the rewards. Operators chasing loyalty relaunches should ask themselves a harder question than "what rewards should we offer": do we have a real mechanism for members to keep shaping this after launch, or are we just running another one-time survey and calling it co-design?