Why understanding customer risk is ultimately a financial problem Customer retention is often discussed as a matter of satisfaction. Keep customers happy. Respond quickly. Improve support. Reduce friction. All of those things matter. But from a business perspective, retention is also an economic system. Every customer relationship has value. Every intervention has a cost. Every failure to act has a potential consequence. And every decision about whether to contact, compensate, prioritise, escalate or ignore a situation involves trade-offs. This means that Customer Experience should not be separated from financial reasoning. A modern Customer Intelligence platform should help answer questions such as: Which customers are at risk? How much revenue is exposed? What is the expected value of intervening? Which interventions have historically worked? How much should the organisation spend to protect a relationship? Which problems are causing the greatest financial damage? Which customers rep...
What a week! There are weeks when everything follows a reasonably predictable routine. You wake up, deal with whatever needs your attention, make some progress with your projects, complain about a few inconveniences, and eventually go to bed with the comforting impression that life is more or less under control. And then there are weeks like this one. What started as an entirely ordinary Monday turned into a rather unpleasant combination of house renovations, airport collections, family visits, persistent rain, an unexpected illness, several days in bed, and an interesting conversation that connected me with another piece of my father's past. It was certainly not the week I had planned. In fact, the entire experience derailed practically everything I intended to accomplish, including writing this very blog post. I had other subjects waiting, several ongoing projects demanding attention, and a renovated house still requiring an apparently endless collection o...