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Do you know which customers are getting ready to take their business elsewhere?

Technology can help—but only so much. The rest is up to you and a handful of data geeks.

By Erik Sherman

As with most companies, Grand & Toy likes increasing numbers—just not when those numbers represent lost customers. The office products reseller was watching customer churn rates rise from single digits to the midteens in some segments. Competition was fierce and business customers, which generate 80 percent of the company’s revenue, were heading out the door.

Management decided to take a hard look—at data. Lots of it. The company rolled out a custom "defector detector," using analytic software from Clarity Systems, which gave employees a Web-based "traffic light" that defined three stages of each customer relationship: solid (green), problematic (yellow) or sinking (red).

"Anyone in any of our locations can go in and pull out reporting," says Grand & Toy Director of CRM and E-Commerce Mike Duggan. Companies that hadn’t placed an order in half a year began receiving reactivation offers. Marketers started to use an Epiphany campaign-management system to address problem customer segments and then loaded the information into the company’s Siebel CRM system to direct employees on how to treat specific customers.

Full Story: http://www.cmomagazine.com/read/030105/in_the_shadows.html

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