In order to retain the right customers, offer an excellent customer experience, improve customer loyalty and ultimately grow your business, you have to know your customers better than ever before. A critical component to knowing your customers is to understand the customer life-cycle.
WHAT IS THE CUSTOMER LIFE-CYCLE?
The customer lifecycle is the different stages a customer goes through with your business over time. Below is a view of the key stages to be aware of:
It is important to remember that customer behaviour changes over time. As behaviour changes, so does the value a customer represents to your business Understanding and managing these key stages enables powerful customer engagement opportunities that will drive significant business growth and profitability.
WHY UNDERSTANDING THE CUSTOMER LIFE-CYCLE IS CRITICAL
You cannot change the customer life-cycle. Over time each of your customers will go through it.
However, a deeper “understanding” of your customers will allow you to exploit the customer life-cycle in two fundamental ways.
- You can EXTEND a customer’s life-cycle – keep them active and purchasing for longer.
- You can GROW their value within their normal life-cycle – get them to purchase more within the same period.
“It’s not a case of one or the other, but rather a combination of both”
Each life stage represents an important phase in your customer’s journey with your business and creates key areas of opportunity if leveraged appropriately. Ignoring these phases means wasted potential, which could become major pain points for your business in the future.
THE COMPLETE PICTURE
Customer behavioural analysis and segmentation create complete customer profiles that help you understand, react to, and measure your customers’ behaviour at every touch point across multiple channels. These profiles are layered, much like an onion, with the customer life cycle forming the foundation layer.
The additional layers that are critical to complete the full picture of customer behaviour include:
- Understanding CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT = “the ability to drive repeat behaviour”
- Understanding CUSTOMER VALUE = “where to invest time, effort and money”
- Understanding CHANGING CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR = “a pro-active, surprise & delight vs. reactive, often too late approach”
Every layer of customer behaviour provides hugely actionable insights in themselves. However, when all the dimensions are combined the insights become even more powerful, allowing you to engage more effectively with your customers in the most targeted and appropriate way.
Click here for more information on each dimension.
SOUNDS GOOD … BUT HOW DO YOU DO IT?
Customer behavioural analytics, segmentation & modelling will drive your understanding of when, how often, how much and what customers buy or do when they interact with your business. It provides the complete picture of how your customers are behaving when they interact with your business.
Analysing customer behaviour is one of the most basic, yet powerful marketing concepts that is often forgotten or simply not used.
“Once you understand how your customers behave you can influence, react to or change their behaviour using the most appropriate form of relevant and targeted customer engagement or communication.”
You can’t change a customer’s age, sex, gender, income or product preferences, but you can certainly influence or change their behaviour.
HOW DO I GET TO KNOW MY CUSTOMERS?
Customerlink will give your business a competitive advantage through the power of customer behavioural analytics and segmentation – the quickest and most cost-effective way to:
- Understand your customers
- Create complete customer profiles
- Generate actionable insights
- Engage with your customers in a targeted and relevant way
- Grow your business.
Don’t have customer data? We can still help you!
