Customer Life Time Value

Marketers must have a focus not only on selling a product, but ensuring that customer satisfaction contributes to an overall positive experience with the product or service. In too many cases, multi channel marketers are sometimes too focussed on the ROI of a particular campaign to allow sufficient focus on what happens after the customer makes an initial purchase. About a year ago I purchased a Dell - while the experience of buying the new laptop was satisfactory there was no WOW factor to that transaction. Recently, and incidentally about a week before my warranty expired, the laptop went dead. My experience with their customer service team was terrible. After long waits and being connected to a call center in Asia, I was offered a "tech support" package which I could try out for $49. The package included priority service and access to a North American support team. (Their words NOT mine!) In order to save myself additional aggravation and to quickly get the laptop running, I paid the fee and after several hours my laptop was back in shape. Lesson learned here - with Dell - if I want customer service after purchase I have to "pay for it." No thanks.

According to Wikipedia, "In marketing, customer lifetime value (CLV), lifetime customer value (LCV), or lifetime value (LTV) and a new concept of "customer life cycle management" is the present value of the future cash flows attributed to the customer relationship. Use of customer lifetime value as a marketing metric tends to place greater emphasis on customer service and long-term customer satisfaction, rather than on maximizing short-term sales." Are you listening Dell???

Needless to say - they've lost my CLV, LCV and LTV. My next computer is a going to be an Apple. Cause they do it best.

Check out this new ad from Apple - pretty good summary of Microsoft's approach to the market as well.