A new approach to customer value

In the recent issue of Peppers & Rogers Customer Strategist, my friend Ginger Conlon writes in the opening letter about “A Fresh Look at Customer Value“.

Identify your most valuable customers

She writes that “about 30 percent of customers deliver the majority of the average company’s profit, 50 percent add nothing, and 20 percent cost companies money”. The emphasis then becomes to focus on the 30 percent that delivers the profit.

Additionally she talks about a new way to measure customer value that Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., created called Return on Customer (ROC). It talks about customers having a value not too dissimilar from a company’s stock price. It rises and lowers over time, reacting to certain events along the way (a new ad campaign, product launch, PR disaster, etc). I suggest you read more about it, it’s a great concept.

Add in a social context

What occurs to me in all this is the importance of social in the context of determining customer value. The question always asked is, how likely is someone to refer your brand to another person (Net Promoter Score)? That question is proven to be the most telling when assessing a person’s connection with a brand.

With social media we can go one step further. It’s not how likely would someone be to refer your brand, it’s DO they refer your brand? How often are they referring your brand? To whom are they referring your brand?

Granted, some people aren’t as equipped from a social media perspective to actively promote a brand. Likewise some brands seem to go out of their way to make it difficult to let people spread their content.

Arm your social fans immediately!

The first thing I work on with clients that want to enter the social world is how to free their content, their assets, their brand. Make things easy to be shared and then show your customers how to do it.

At first it will only be a small percentage that take that step but if someone wants to market your brand because they truly like your product, why wouldn’t allowing them to do that be job number one? Remember there is no one less credible to speak about how great your company is than you, and there is no one more credible than a person telling their friend.

It’s one thing to ask a person how likely they would be to refer you. It’s an entirely different thing to embrace and arm those that already do.

1 Comment

  1. Ginger Conlon on May 4, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    Jeff,
    Customers love to talk about their favorite brands–whether they're showing off their new iPad or talking about their amazement that Shout can remove week-old juice stains or marveling at how well their new CRM application is helping to close business. Companies that recognize their brand enthusiasts and provide them with means to spread the word will have the best sales force going.



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