Capitalize on Annual Planning to Manage Customers as Assets

Annual planning is a missed opportunity for driving customer profitability inside the corporate machine.   The silos usually pick their projects and plan their budgets independent of one another.

Without common accountability targets, actions will continue to be planned tactically, based on the individual annual plans of the silos. Companies need an ongoing roadmap to define where they want to make progress in customer profitability, customer loyalty, and customer experience delivery.

Do You Capitalize on Annual Planning to Manage Customers as Assets?

1. Do you do a loss review prior to planning to know which customers left and why?
2. Do you evaluate trending of customer issues prior to planning to identify priorities?
3. Do you take stock of customer segments and their profitability prior to planning?
4. Do you convene a forum of cross-company groups to determine the customer priorities for the upcoming year?
5. Do results of those forums impact annual plan investments?

Annual planning customer-centered goals may include, for example:

• Taking a strategic look at how much prospecting for new customers or business needs to be done every year to replace the revenue lost in the previous year.
• Establishing annual goals for the movement of customers from one level of purchase behavior to another.
• Identifying the priority customer experiences requiring cross-company efforts to fix or differentiate the end-to-end  experience.

Without these types of customer-centered goals, the company continues to focus only on business outcomes; wheel spinning continues, and companies continue to stand still regarding customers without knowing exactly why.

Take Action: Uncover Ways to Drive Customer Profitability 
1. Utilize data – surveys, new research and customer metrics
2. Utilize customer feedback – social media, customer councils, responses to experience
3. Utilize real time outcomes – complaint trending, segment movement, operations metrics, social media listening and employee listening
4. Unite the silos to start with the customer experience priorities FIRST, and then dole out the work, tactics and budget to the operations.