Customer Value at the Core of Your Business

Eight books and about 10 years ago we learned that customer value is the simple core of any company, according to Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.  Their most recent book, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, even has it's own website and invites you into the conversation about the importance of balancing the priority of developing customer trust, even though your business wants more access to private information about your customers and their behavior and attitudes.

The "laws to follow" are imperatives, not suggestions.  They are requirements that must be met if any business wants to succeed over the long term, beyond the current financial period. There are 12 laws which yield to a sorting into four groups:

1. Customer value
2. Trust
3. Workplace culture
4. Balancing short-and long-term objectives

These laws help us face the daily challenges and show us what matters and what doesn't matter.

Isn't that all we wanted, anyway?  Great customers and a simple plan for a complex world?

What all of this has to do with my customer base--national associations, certification organizations and professional services businesses will be explained, in person, as Martha Rogers chats it up with the association executives in the Chicago area at the Association Forum of Chicagoland's  Annual meeting June 17th.

I'll be there and you might want to start making some plans to get thee to what will be a memorable and action-biased conversation about trust, social networking, innovation, empowered customers and networked employees.

Comments

[David V. Greis]

Customer Service is critical in this economy and business climate. Most businesses never know the reasons why their customers leave and thererfore are sending customers to thier competition every week!

Unless you have a product that is your sole property, your customers have many options as to where to ake their purchases. Price and conveninece are no longer the driving forces behind purchases. In order to insure your future, you must address the entire customer experience.

David V. Greis
The Customer Service Training Institute
http://www.infowhse.com

[Seo]

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the value construct among both practitioners and marketing researchers. Directions for future customer value research in the area of business marketing are provided.Customer Lifetime Value seeks to maximize profit by analyzing customer behavior and business cycles to identify and target customers with the greatest potential net value over time.In "What Should You Spend to Acquire a Customer?" I argued calculating the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is the usual method for making such a determination and offered some quick alternatives for those who don't feel calculating LTV is a viable option.