Customer lifecycle management, or CLM, helps to ensure that customers receive exclusive and personalized services during their journey with the brand. It allows various businesses to enhance customer engagement, thereby bringing their experience with the brand to a higher level.
Customer lifecycle management is made up of 5 main steps:
- Approach
- Acquisition
- Development
- Retention
- Loyalty
The heavily competitive nature of marketing requires brands to always be one step ahead of their rivals in several areas by bringing customer buying experience to the next level. As a result, it will improve customer satisfaction rates.
Customer lifecycle management is a model that helps to analyze a customer’s journey from the introduction of the brand to establishing a rapport to the actual purchase. Then, their further experience with the product, all the way up to determine whether the customer will be willing to stick to the brand for additional purchases.
Benefits of Customer lifecycle management
Following are some of the benefits of CLM for businesses:
CLM as a business strategy
Customer lifecycle management pushes the entire setup to get synchronized towards enhancing customer experience to a different level. Which not only addresses their current buying needs but also anticipates their future buying desires. CLM goes beyond creating more value for the customer so that they remain loyal to the brand.
CLM gives a competitive advantage
CLM enables the business to capture data on customer buying behavior, which helps define suitable strategies for effecting recurring sales. Such data provide valuable inputs to determine unmet customer needs, buying patterns and expedite resolution of any concerns raised. The objective is to make the customer hold on to the brand.
Simplification of operations through CLM
Businesses have a vast amount of data that may be overlapping or not in a structured form. CLM helps to rearrange this in a central location so that marketing, sales, and operation teams can access it and work in close sync to meet its overall objectives. It simplifies the processes, increases visibility, and enables a brand to be more pragmatic in their work.
The possibilities of extending warranties
CLM plays a critical role concerning those warranties which are due to expire shortly. It is done by messaging customers to extend the existing expiring warranties by paying a small amount. Warranty extensions increase business revenue for the brand but being proactive also helps to foster faith and confidence in customers’ minds.
Ability to add a service agreement where there was none
Sometimes, when a customer has made a purchase, the product might come as defective or does not work. Here, the brands can win over the competition when they offer a service agreement to the customer to either repair it free of cost or replace it quickly. If such customers have ease of faster replacement, they will have a better experience with the brand.
Timing your offers as products reach the end of their lifecycle
CLM enables brands to assess product purchase history and when it is reaching its end of the life cycle. Therefore, it gives them new buying offers at the right time in the form of a big purchase decision or an instant buy. A close study of such a database will make the brand more proactive and reach out to customers to help them make a buying decision.
Cross-sell and up-sell
There may be some customers who are planning to scale up their purchase or scale it down. A well-structured database with the brand will help to identify such customers. It will reach out to them and offer them the most desirable solution at the right time. It will help customers to achieve their goals.
For brands, the bottom line is to provide the customer more value for their money spent at each stage of the life cycle. Every brand cherishes loyalty from customers, which becomes possible through years of efforts in engagement with buyers.
CLM builds empathy with customer needs
By engaging with customers at different stages of the customer lifecycle, brands come to know customers’ experiences for products and services. These inputs help brands devise strategies and remain competitive in the market.
CLM helps to speak product value
Armed with adequately structured data, it becomes possible for the brand to communicate with the customer at different stages of their journey. Further communication is required with customers as they have different needs and desires when planning to buy or buying from a brand during different phases of their customer lifecycle. Customers will respond differently, which significantly helps the brand devise strategies to nurture a lasting relationship.
CLM increases the lifetime value
CLM helps to prolong customer relationship lifecycle as there is a higher possibility of fostering a more engaging relationship between brand and customer. During the entire period of customer engagement with a particular brand, the brand becomes dependable, which helps customers solve most of their problems in their personal and professional lives directly or indirectly.
There is a creation of solid bonding, which is made possible through engagement over a long period. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the brand becomes a part of the family. Such trust is built on empathy, transparency, a proactive approach, and assisting the customer wherever and whenever possible during the customer life cycle.
Takeaways
Wisdom has started dawning upon the businesses because nurturing customer relationships is just like nurturing a plant and helping it grow to become a tree. It calls for great patience and a high degree of maturity for the brands to make it possible for customers to have a long association with a brand.
It is needless to say that maintaining an existing customer base is cheaper rather than acquiring new customers. Therefore, unless brands do not add more value for money, customers will not stay with the brand for a long time. It is of paramount importance that during the entire customer relationship cycle, there are different stages where brands need to have a different set of communication with customers to progress to the next level.