Enterprising companies around the world are increasingly developing and implementing customer-centric growth strategies, based on deepening relationships with their customers to emphasize long-term satisfaction over short-term sales conversions. With these strategies, the key indicator of success is customer lifetime value, a measurement of the customer’s value over the life of the relationship. Other key metrics include share of wallet, products per customer, average revenue per user (ARPU), loyalty, retention, and on-boarding conversion rates.

The challenges of implementing a customer-centric strategy can be addressed along two dimensions: do you have the right insight into the customer and do you have the ability to respond to the needs and interests of the customer based on that insight? An organizational self-assessment will identify the key challenges and opportunities for any organization:

(1) Customer-specific offers. Rather than pushing products, does your organization have enough
insight about the customer to create offers based on the individual needs of those specific
customers at the moment of interaction?

(2) Consistent customer experience. Does your company provide a consistent experience for each
customer-initiated contact across multi-channel touchpoints, defined as the web, call center,
kiosk, or retail outlet? Does your company take advantage of this opportunity to understand
the geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics of customers and build trust
and strengthen their emotional ties to the company?

Leading customer-oriented companies see every customer interaction as an opportunity to retain a valued customer, increase revenue, build loyalty, or strengthen a brand. These enterprises look to customer relationship management solutions to help them connect with customers, anticipate their needs, and deliver the products and services they want when they want them.

The need for customer insight and responsiveness to that insight is the foundation and driving rationale for the emerging CRM concept of continuous customer dialogue through multi-channel touchpoints. This concept is discussed further in the rest of this whitepaper