One of the basic objectives of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or Customer Relationship Management, is to retain customers for as long as possible and achieve the highest volume of business with them. However, this will require varied and multiple decisions and strategies, directed towards the various groups of clients that make up its database.
View a customer portfolio, like a cash flow. In it there is a cash income, which is maintained for a certain period of time, and then at various speeds exit. One of the treasurer's responsibilities is to achieve the highest profitability with the money available for a period of time. Something similar happens with the customer portfolio, which in practice causes almost all CRM management decisions.
A client portfolio is not something static, it has an inflow (new clients that enter), a group of clients that remain in the business, which are made up of people with different dates of income as clients, and finally a group of customers that tends to be smaller, which decants over time for various reasons.
The first thing a CRM and / or marketing manager who intends to do CRM management must do is classify the various groups of clients that make up his portfolio. This sense, consider that each market has its particularities, therefore the classification and the variables that will be considered to achieve it may vary. In fairly general terms, depending on the nature of the business, and the products and / or services that are marketed, customers no older than one year can be defined as new customers or children. Not all customers who have one or a few shopping experiences will stay in business for more than a year, those who do so will become part of a second group, which can be called teenagers.
This group of clients already knows the business, they know how to select, however one of the tasks of the marketing staff is to direct it and ensure that they continue to buy and migrate to the next group. These clients are generally made up of people who are over the age of two and less than two. In that period of time, some will cease to be, for multiple reasons, those who continue, will become the most valuable group in a client portfolio: mature clients.
This group stays because they know the benefits of buying in that establishment, or the brand they usually buy, they know exactly what they want and what they will get. But like everything in life, at some point several of those clients will become part of the last group, that of the old or veterans.
This last group continues to buy, maybe a little less, and at some other time they will leave. As the reader will have observed, the flow is complete, and it is the responsibility of the marketing manager to ensure that this flow is healthy, which occurs when quality of new clients migrate towards adolescence, and then a significant amount of these migrate to maturity, a less significant group towards old age. He must ensure that the clients that leave are compensated by excellent clients that are recruited and carry out the cycle described above. This implies that you must generate successful recruitment strategies and retention strategies - true customer management! Which implies a lot of creativity, especially in the retention stage.
