What is customer lifecycle management?
What is customer lifecycle management?
What is customer lifecycle management?
Customer lifecycle management is the process of assigning metrics to each stage of the Customer Lifecycle to analyze and monitor business performance. The customer lifecycle can be thought of as an arc that builds from a customer first learning about your company and products toward the final goal: customer loyalty.
Customer Lifecycle stages
Awareness
The customer becomes aware of you and begins the first customer journey of what will hopefully become many. Perhaps your customer learned about your company through a social media post, an advertisement, or a reference from a friend.
Consideration / Engagement
The next step for these potential customers is to consider a purchase. Here, companies can help educate potential customers by creating a solid knowledge base, by providing a chat option to answer questions, and by offering information through blog posts, webinars, and other marketing materials in order to ease the customer into the next step. Customer engagement is key here.
Purchase
Once someone has engaged with you either through creating an account or making a purchase, they become part of your company’s Customer Relationship Management record. That valuable data can be used to inform future marketing efforts as well as fine-tune the customer experience.
Retention
Retention is about keeping the conversation going and using data to anticipate what the customer might need at each lifecycle stage.
Customer Loyalty / Advocacy
Loyalty happens when all this works well together. That’s when you have a customer who is a brand ambassador—they will look first to you for products and services they need that you can provide while urging friends and family to buy from you, too.