CUSTOMER DIVISIBILITY IN CRM The more a company

CUSTOMER DIVISIBILITY IN CRM

�The more a company knows, or can find out, about its customers and then apply, the better it’s able to personalize and customize each experience, and so influence to loyalty behavior. Every customer touching process comes down to gathering, managing, and using data to optimize loyalty. At the peak of customer insight is the opportunity to make the customer ‘divisible’ down to an individual level.

�Most companies have some customer data, drawn principally from transactions. The feedback they get is largely reactive, where the customer initiates contact. There are tremendous gaps between information and insight. Insight means: An understanding of customer needs, problems, expectations and complaints that is thorough enough to provide value in the relationship with each customer. Companies need disciplined techniques to gather, store, share, and apply customer data so that it can be distilled into strategic insight.

� When they do this optimally, they often find that customers have multiple identities, different demographic, lifestyle, purchase, and other characteristics which can be leveraged depending upon the marketing, communication, or promotional program, new product development effort, or process improvement or modification activity being conducted. We can say that the customer is divisible. Applying customer divisibility techniques in the pre-PC days was pretty primitive stuff, more about blending art and science, Data availability, data management and warehousing, and software sophistication for profiling has made divisibility much more possible today.

� A good example of an industry which illustrates customer divisibility on a fairly large scale is the gaming business. This industry is both highly competitive and pretty advanced in how they gather and use customer data. Loyalty cards, with data generated when the players first become customers, and then updated at cashless slot machines and gaming tables enable them to overlay casino play with changing customer profiles. With a clear understanding of each customer’s likes and dislikes, patterns and preferences, can deliver targeted offers and incentives, and use the information to improve our operations.

�Knowing customer better will give company a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace. And that advantage will mean increased customer loyalty. ” Some people are known to have multiple personalities. Multiple personalities are a useful metaphor for considering the opportunities represented by customer divisibility. The same individual may have several identities, depending upon the marketing, communication, or promotional program planned, product or concept being developed, frequency and type of contact desired, or customer-related process being created or modified. This is the essence of personalization.

�With sufficiently detailed information about each customer, suppliers, marketers, sales, and service should treat divisibility as a competitive advantage. They can parlay customer data into the insight which enables them to optimize value for each customer, no matter what aspect of the customer’s individual profile, or personality, is involved.