by Mike Reiber
The conventional call to action is to focus marketing and sales efforts on the good customers and get rid of the bad customers. Is it really this simple? I think not. A better call to action is build better and deeper relationships with customers by understanding their needs and what they value.
Traditional CRM systems categorize customers by their purchases. Those that purchase the most with the fewest returns are the most highly prized. What about the others? That depends. Some may be ignored. Others may be terminated as clients because they cost too much to serve based on the profits they generate for the enterprise.
A better approach may be to learn more about "the others."
At Axiom, we use segmentation modeling and perceptual mapping to help us organize based not only on profit opportunity but on unmet customer needs and behaviors around which our clients can easily and affordably develop new product and service offerings. Our recommendations almost always involve a portfolio approach to various customer segments. The goal is to identify groups of segments which are interested in our clients' services and product for similar reasons. A second richer goal is to uncover what prevents them from spending more. Longitudinal tracking studies, social network analysis and even 1-800 customer service lines are all valuable tools which we use to answer this question. We find this information helps unlock the creativity of our client cross-functional teams so they can develop better and more customized CRM solutions.