I’ll be honest with you, I avoided writing about the customer lifecycle management for as long as I did for a reason. I’d see someone else’s article, or some trending topic in the field that would inspire me to talk about this, knowing full well I absolutely must at some point anyhow. But every time I came to this, I’d get stuck with the same problem – there’s not a lot to say about this one, despite its importance.
Moving Forward:
Nonetheless, I’ve put off this customer lifecycle management discussion for long enough, so we’ll just have to pick the bones of this completely clean and hope we get a meager meal of this subject.
The customer lifecycle is important, but it’s pretty simple once you get down to it, and we’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me point out that if you’re new to any business career, you’d best get used to “everything lifecycle blah blah”, because the consensus of business science experts just love to shape every repeated set of events or tasks into this form, even in cases where it doesn’t really suit it.
This one’s on the fence on whether a lifecycle model really works for it or not. This I what we’re given though, so we better like it.
Understanding this Thing:
Ok, I want to assume you’re a little familiar with the concept of the customer journey or the customer experience, which are the same thing. They follow the stages a customer goes through as they move from first learning of a product and their need for it, to researching and possibly trials, and finally commitment, delivery, and any support needed.
Well, the customer lifecycle is a segment of the customer experience, merely the last couple steps, basically.
It primarily deals with subscription service companies, as for consumer products, it’s pretty linear and one-off, even for loyal repeat customers.
Managing it Right:
A customer’s lifecycle should begin anew on its own, as a customer renews their subscription or the like. However, if they do not, then reaching out and keeping in touch with them to remind them they forgot about you is actually an important thing to do.
Along with this, being proactive and contacting customers occasionally to ask them how the service is treating them and if they have any complaints or suggestions, goes a long way to drive positive as customer service abates negative.
Beyond that, it’s all about timing, as usual. It’s pretty easy to manage your timing though, given the span of a lifecycle is the span of service available, in this kind of context. Other than this, if you’re already on top of the customer experience as a whole (if not, I recommend reading our stuff on that before moving further), you’ve pretty much got this down.
Was there a Point:
Yes, the point to this was that customer lifecycle management is ridiculously simple on a conceptual level, and it’s more about proactive engagement on either end of the cycle that matters, as the rest of it kind of moves in its own way. The only additional thing to be concerned with is service rendered analytics, but that’s actually, itself, a heavy topic for another day.
