One Customer, Divisible

One Customer, Divisible goes beyond simply optimizing customer relationships and approaches to customer management and loyalty to emphasize a key leveraging factor largely missed by many organizations-that of using individual customer data on a purchasing situation and/or venue specific basis to provide the highest level of perceived value for each customer. To apply customer data strategically in a relationship program, companies must understand the good and bad of how data are identified, gathered, stored, managed, shared, and applied. Specifically, what information should they obtain from and about customers, and how should they manage and use it, on a customer-specific and situation-specific basis?

Customer management has evolved to the point that micro-segmentation, data integration, and software for personalized communication and support are both available and affordable for companies of all sizes and industries. Yet, it is clear that few organizations have embraced the opportunities this affords them to create sustained kinship and engagement with their customers. Many programs have crashed or receded due to data-related issues, taking with them the benefits that can be realized through closer and more long-term customer relationships.

One major, strategically differentiating application for such data is customer divisibility, which is a principal theme of the book. Companies typically develop basic customer segmentation for use in their sales, marketing, and customer service activities. However, customers tend to be more complex than that, having needs and requirements specific to the types of purchase or service usage occasions. Suppliers, even if gaining some improvement in their customer-related processes through better segmentation, will still be competitively vulnerable until and unless they have more insight into situation-related customer needs, problems, expectations, and complaints.

Customer divisibility can be accomplished if the supplier knows its individual customers well and optimizes value for them. More than one-to-one relationships and marketing, it is understanding the customers' changing and different needs, and then providing perceived benefit, venue-by-venue and situation-by-situation which will generate strategic and profitable advantage.