Промышленный лизинг Промышленный лизинг  Методички 

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Larger businesses, on the other hand, rarely have business plans that focus exclusively on one life stage. They want to use life stage information to develop products and enhance marketing messages, but there are some complications. The first is that customers particular circumstances are usually not readily available in corporate databases. One solution is to augment databases with purchased information. Of course, such appended data elements are never available for every customer, and, although such appended data is readily available in the United States, it may not be available in jurisdictions with different privacy laws. And, such external sources of data indicate events that have occurred in the past, making the customers current life stage a matter of inference.

Even when customers go out of their way to provide useful information, companies often simply forget it. For instance, when customers move, they provide the new address to replace the old. How many companies keep both addresses? And how many of these companies then determine whether the customer is moving up or moving down, by using appended demographics or census data to measure the wealth of the neighborhood? The answer is very few, if any.

Similarly, many women change their names when they get married and provide such information to the companies they do business with. At some point after two people wed, the couple starts to combine their finances, for instance by having one checking account instead of two. Most companies do not record when a customer changes her name, losing the opportunity to provide targeted messaging for changing financial circumstances.

In practice, managing customer relationships based on life stages is difficult:

It is difficult to identify events in a timely manner.

Many events are one-time, or very rare.

Life stage events are generally unpredictable and out of your control.

These shortcomings do not render them useless, by any means, because life stages provide a critical understanding of how to reach customers with a particular message. Advertisers, for instance, are likely to include different messages, depending on the target audience of the medium. However, in the interest of developing long-term relationships with customers, we want to ask if there is a way to improve on the use of the customers life cycle.

Customer Life Cycle

The customer life cycle provides another dimension to understanding customers. This focuses specifically on the business relationship, based on the observation that the customer relationship evolves over time. Although each



business is different, the customer relationship places customers into five major phases, as shown in Figure 14.3:

Prospects are people in the target market who are not yet customers.

Responders are prospects who have exhibited some interest, for instance, by filling out an application or registering on a Web site.

New customers are responders who have made a commitment, usually an agreement to pay, such as having made a first purchase, having signed a contract, or having registered at a site with some personal information.

Established customers are those new customers who return, for whom the relationship is hopefully broadening or deepening.

Former customers are those who have left, either as a result of voluntary attrition (because they have defected to a competitor or no longer see value in the product), forced attrition (because they have not paid their bills), or expected attrition (because they are no longer in the target market, for instance, because they have moved).

The precise definition of the phases depends on each particular business. For an e-media site, for instance, a prospect may be anyone on the Web; a responder, someone who has visited the site; a new customer, someone who has registered; and an established customer a repeat visitor. Former customers are those who have not returned within some length of time that depends on the nature of the site. For other businesses, the definitions might be quite different. Life insurance companies, for instance, have a target market. Responders are those who fill out an application-and then often have their blood taken for blood tests. New customers are those applicants who are accepted, and established customers are those who pay their premiums for insurance payments.

Target Market

Responder

New Customer

High Value

Former Customers

Customer

Rest of World

High Potential

Voluntary Churn

Low Value

Forced Churn

Figure 14.3 The customer life cycle progresses through different stages.



Subscription Relationships versus Event-Based Relationships

Another dimension of the customer life-cycle relationship is the commitment inherent in a transaction. Consider the following ways of being a telephone customer:

Making a call at a payphone

Purchasing a prepaid telephone card for a set number of minutes

Buying a prepaid mobile telephone

Choosing a long distance carrier

Buying a postpay mobile phone with no fixed term contract

Buying a mobile phone with a contract

The first three are examples of event-based relationships. The last three are examples of subscription-based relationships. The next two sections explore the characteristics of these relationships in more detail.

An ongoing billing relationship is a good sign of an ongoing subscription relationship. Such ongoing customer relationships offer the opportunity for engaging in a dialog with customers in the course of business activities.

Event-Based Relationships

Event-based relationships are one-time commitments on the part of the customer. The customer may or may not return. In the above examples, the telephone company may not have much information at all about the customer, especially if the customer paid in cash. Such anonymous transactions still have information; however, there is clearly little opportunity for providing direct messages to customers who have provided no contact information.

When event-based relationships predominate, companies usually communicate with prospects by broadcasting messages widely (for instance in media advertising, free standing inserts, Web ads, and the like) rather than targeting messages at individuals. In these cases, analytic work is very focused on product, geography, and time, because these are three things known about customers transactions.

Of course, broadcast advertising is not the only way to reach prospects. Couponing through the mail or on the Web is another way. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States have become adept at encouraging prospective customers to call in to get more information-while the company gathers a bit of information about the caller.



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