There is a lot of discussion lately about "return on customer experience," an idea we think should be almost directly aligned with our Return on Customer concept. Buzz-Talk's blog has an excellent summary of many of the more recent findings in this field. Unfortunately, the "proof points" that get the most attention in Buzz-Talk's and other discussions of customer experience management have to do with comparisons of the overall economic and financial performances of CXP leaders and CXP laggards.

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Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is an interesting and well-informed article discussing Martha Rogers' and my Return on Customer metric in the most recent issue of the UK's Marketing Week magazine. David Reed, who covers the "data strategy" beat for the magazine, writes that while the data side of marketing has benefited greatly from a renewed attention to the financial metrics of success, particularly ROI, this might be a short-term blessing for the discipline. What he means is that ROI metrics typically look at campaign or product profitability figures, but have little to say about the long-term value created (or often destroyed) by marketing efforts. On the other hand, he says, the ROC metric does capture long-term value, because it incorporates changes in customer lifetime value (LTV). [Note, please that Martha and I have trademarked the terms "Return on Customer" and "ROC." We grant permission to people to apply these terms to their own analytics efforts when we deem the terms are used correctly.]

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Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (1)

Let's grant that behavioral loyalty is what pays the bills, but that attitudinal loyalty is also important, especially when it can be used as an indicator of higher behavioral loyalty. I think that's the general, if not unanimous, conclusion of the discussion on this topic.

And when it is positioned as a straight yes-or-no proposition, the concept of customer loyalty, as a behavior, is relatively easy. A magazine subscriber who elects to renew her subscription at the end of the first year is engaging in loyal behavior.

Continue reading "Is Lifetime Value a More Useful Metric than Loyalty?" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (2)