How the Festive Season Shapes Customer Engagement Score
NOVEMBER 2025 | Insights into seasonal spending, behaviour, and engagement trends
The festive season brings a lot of predictable behaviours — travel, family time, summer holidays… and a temporary dip in Customer Engagement Score (CES).
If you’ve tracked CES across previous years, you’ll know the trend well: December often holds steady or even lifts slightly, but come January, engagement softens as customers pull back on spending, reduce digital interactions, and generally “switch off” from their day-to-day banking.
Before we dive into why that matters, here’s a quick refresher on CES itself.
A Quick Reminder: What is CES?
Spark’s Customer Engagement Score tracks how connected a customer is to your organisation based on 26 behavioural and product-based characteristics. It updates daily and reflects everything from account activity to channel usage, digital adoption and product take-up.
It forms a simple, powerful measure of how strongly a customer is connected to their bank — and how likely they are to stay, grow, or slip away.
Why CES Drops During January
Even before we see the latest data, we already know the story: January is consistently one of the softest months of the year for engagement. That’s because customers tend to:
Spend less after the Christmas peak
Slow their digital and branch interactions while travelling or taking time off
Delay big financial decisions until February or March
Pause new product activity, especially lending and savings adjustments
Switch off routine payments, like pausing or cancelling direct debits for gyms, subscriptions, and other lifestyle services during the summer break
With fewer of these behaviours occurring, CES naturally dips — not because customers are disengaging permanently, but because they’re temporarily stepping back from the financial habits that drive engagement.
Turning a Seasonal Dip into an Opportunity
The January lull isn’t something to fear, but it is something to plan for. A drop in CES could provide visibility into the customers likely to disengage longer-term. It can also highlight valuable segments who are still active despite the seasonal slowdown (often payroll customers, MFI segments, or digitally engaged transactors).
Understanding these shifts helps mutual banks:
Prioritise segments that need re-activation
Identify opportunities as spending picks up again in late summer
Tailor February/March campaigns to re-spark activity
Support frontline staff with conversations that resonate with where customers are right now
The key message is simple: January dips are normal, predictable, and full of insight.
With the right triggers, conversation starters, and targeted campaigns, mutual banks can use this period to re-engage customers just as they refocus on their finances for the year ahead.
If you'd like help preparing your early-year engagement plan, the Spark team can support you with journeys, reporting, and re-activation strategies built for mutual banks.