Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty

THE BEST CUSTOMERS, we're told, are loyal ones. They cost less to serve, they're usually willing to pay more than other customers, and they often act as word-of-mouth marketers for your company. Win loyalty, therefore, and profits will follow as night follows day. Certainly that's what CRM software vendors--and the armies of consultants who help install their systems--are claiming. And it seems that many business executives agree. Corporate expenditures on loyalty initiatives are booming: The top 16 retailers in Europe, for example, collectively spent more than $1 billion in 2000. Indeed, for the last ten years, the gospel of customer loyalty has been repeated so often and so loudly that it seems almost crazy to challenge it.
But that is precisely what some of the loyalty movement's early believers are starting to do. Take the case of one U.S. high-tech corporate service provider we studied. Back in 1997, this company set up an elaborate costing scheme to track the performance of its newly instituted loyalty programs. The scheme measured not only direct product costs for each customer but also all associated advertising, service, sales force, and organizational expenses. After running the scheme for five years, the company was able to determine the profitability of each of its accounts over time. Executives were curious to see just what payoff they were getting from their $2 million annual investment in customer loyalty.
The answer took them by surprise. About half of those customers who made regular purchases for at least two years-- and were therefore designated as "loyal"-- barely generated a profit. Conversely, about half of the most profitable customers were blow-ins, buying a great deal of high-margin products in a short time before completely disappearing.
Our research findings echo that company's experience. We've been studying the dynamics of customer loyalty using four companies' customer databases. In addition to the high-tech corporate service