Why the cosmetic rainbow destroys customer lifetime value
Author: Elena Benitez, CEO & Founder of Gerundio.
The saturation of logos with rainbow colors during the month of June has become one of the biggest sources of cynicism in the corporate market. Many organizations operate under the false premise that hanging a flag or launching a seasonal communication campaign is enough to capture the preference of LGBTQ+ communities. However, audiences with diverse identities have extremely sophisticated radars for detecting pretense. When a company claims to connect through discourse but its operational processes, digital platforms, and service interactions segregate these people for the rest of the year, the result is not preference; it is absolute and definitive rejection.
The real challenge in the Mexican market is not a communication problem, but a lack of research and service architecture. Design for the loyalty and diversity This implies understanding that segments historically ignored by traditional business models are not seeking preferential treatment or condescending public relations campaigns. What they demand is basic interoperability: interfaces that respect their identity, processes that do not assume their familiar configuration within outdated molds, and support channels where their daily interactions do not involve constant friction or passive discrimination.
To consolidate a true Authentic loyalty, Customer Experience (CX) leaders must abandon superficial, temporary activations and begin treating diversity as a structural design imperative. When inclusion shifts from marketing departments to operational matrices and research methodologies, retention ceases to be an unattainable goal and transforms into a long-term competitive advantage.
The Risk of the Wrong Metric: Designing Under the Bias of the Average Customer
The systematic error in loyalty strategies in Mexico lies in designing based on the bias of the «average user.» Traditional demographic segmentation tools group customers using flat variables such as socioeconomic level, age, or zip code, making invisible the invisible barriers that clients face. underrepresented audiences. When product design and CX teams set up their archetypes based on statistical averages, they end up building highly exclusive services that generate deep cognitive friction on anyone who escapes the heteronormative or cisgender norm.
The impact of this bias is directly reflected in critical metrics such as churn. A customer who encounters systematic obstacles when trying to register their social name on a banking platform, or whose family structure is rejected by the automatic systems of health insurance, does not abandon the brand due to price; they abandon it because the system violates their identity. Treating these failures as isolated incidents is severe financial myopia. What is actually happening is a silent exodus of high-value users desperately seeking alternatives that validate their everyday reality.
Celebrate traffic spikes or digital engagement generated by a campaign during Pride Month.PRIDE...while ignoring churn rates in the months after is a symptom of misaligned metrics. The true cost of ignoring diversity in experience design isn't measured in social media complaints; it's calculated in lost Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) of entire communities that possess massive purchasing power and a unique willingness to recommend those brands that demonstrate real operational empathy.
[Cosmetic Focus (June Campaigns)] —> Temporary Engagement Spike —> Hidden Operational Friction —> Mass Churn
[ Gerund Focus (Inclusive Design) ] —> Reduction of usage barriers —> Authentic loyalty —> Sustained LTV increase
The Gerund Approach: Inclusion as a Structured Relationship System
In Gerund we address the inclusion in CX not as a political stance or an ethical exercise, but as a business optimization and risk mitigation discipline. We understand that strategic design demands making better decisions by simultaneously analyzing the business, the context, and the people. Therefore, we replace desk assumptions with rigorous processes of generative research applied directly to the ground.
The Inclusive design Applied to relationship systems, it is the strategic practice of systematically identifying and eliminating physical, digital, cognitive, and procedural barriers that marginalize diverse audiences, ensuring that the company's value proposition is accessible, respectful, and functional for the broadest possible spectrum of users.
Under our work methodology, the Behavioral archetypes are not defined by rigid demographic labels, but by interaction needs and vulnerabilities within the service. When we map the experience of a person from the LGBTQ+ community using advanced tools like Service blueprints, we are not looking to add extra steps to the process; our goal is to simplify the overall ecosystem to eliminate algorithmic and human discrimination. A truly inclusive experience is one that operates so smoothly and naturally that it becomes transparent to the user, achieving a state of silent engagement where brand preference is safeguarded against any purely transactional competitor.
Three principles of research and design for building authentic loyalty
To transform service infrastructure and capture real value from diverse markets sustainably, organizations must reconfigure their methodologies under the following operational guidelines:
Implement dynamic generative research processes with diverse, permanent samples.
Design and innovation teams cannot solve problems they are unable to see. It is essential to structure research cells that actively integrate underrepresented communities at all stages of product and service development. The true value of this approach lies in conducting exercises sensemaking to discover the pain points and blind spots that traditional user panels systematically miss entirely.
2. Dismantle procedural friction in data architecture and interfaces
Customer identity must be respected from the first point of contact. This requires updating databases and registration flows to validate non-binary identities, chosen names, and diverse family structures without requiring demeaning bureaucratic processes or unnecessary manual validations. Reducing the burden of effort placed on a user to be correctly recognized by the system is the fundamental pillar for mitigating early churn.
3. Design for the extremes to optimize for the collective experience
Inclusive design operates under a powerful mathematical premise: when you solve the needs of the user facing the greatest barriers in the system, you end up optimizing navigation and decreasing mental effort for your entire customer base. Setting up a customer service channel that is empathetic, clear, and unbiased for a transgender person automatically generates a much more efficient, humane, and profitable service protocol for any consumer in the market.
The Strategic Impact of Diversity in the Mexican Consumer Market
Implement a strategy loyalty and diversity With methodological rigor, it demands a profound understanding of Mexico's social and cultural context. In the country's major metropolitan areas, the contemporary consumer values corporate consistency above advertising messages. Customer experience design has become the true indicator of a brand's authenticity; users no longer buy stories, they buy interactions that confirm those stories in real life.
A truly inclusive relationship system not only protects existing revenue but also opens channels for high-yield acquisition that the traditional market simply ignores due to methodological laziness. When a bank, an e-commerce platform, or a hospitality service redesigns its processes achieving true sustained adoption from the LGBTQ+ audiences, it generates an immediate network effect due to the high level of community recommendation. At Gerundio, we don't create mass communication campaigns or design festive packaging for specific seasons; we structure end-to-end operational and digital systems because we know that authentic loyalty isn't decorated, it's programmed from the foundations of the business.
