Monday, December 21, 2009

Customer Analytics with Profitability Solution


In the last post ‘Revenue is means and not end’, we saw that it is important to understand the customer profitability for taking business decisions around customer acquisition and retention strategy. I had made a point that once we know the profitability of various customers; we can understand who is creating profit and who is creating a loss. When we get this information we should not directly jump to the conclusion that we have to ‘chuck’ all those loss making customers. Initially we may concentrate on the other customers and define the strategy to acquire and make deliberate attempts to retain the profit making customers. We may not take any action on ‘loss making’ customers, if we wish to, as there could be various reasons to do so.
We have seen the ‘whale curve’ diagram, which tells us the information about potential to reach a profitability level that our organization has. The same information can utilized to understand the behavior of the customers and how to use the same to maximize the profits for our organization. I am going to talk about one of the techniques, which I call as a ‘2x 2 diagrams’. It has many other names also. This is nothing but a scatter diagram using two characteristics of customers. Imaginary thresholds are created to distribute the scatter diagram into four quadrants. I found it useful for the reason that once we start using these diagrams, we can understand the reasons for the behavior of the customers and hence, we can have our strategy to tackle those customers for our better performance. I have used possible actions in those diagrams and would like to mention that these could be some actions that you can take but are not limited to those only.

1) Customer deciles

Before going to the 2 x 2 diagram I am going to talk about another way in which the whale curve can be projected. Here we have created deciles of the customers based on their profitability. Once we have created such groups, we can understand who is falling in which group. This is a kind of segmentation based on the profitability. Once this segmentation is done then we can start analyzing the behavior of those customers that are making high profits as well as that are making high losses. The reasons could be buying profitable products, less cost to serve, good payment terms, less special requests, using better channels etc. Using these various reasons we can further segment the deciles in behavior patterns. This kind of detail analysis is useful to relate the behavior of a customer to the profitability that is brought in.

2) 2 x 2 - Customer Revenue and Profit

This is based on the information available on the revenue and profit that is brought in by the customers. We start with the top-right corner (HH). Here the customer buying is high and the profits are also high. This means the customers are not only bringing revenue they are possibly buying the most profitable products or less cost to serve. This type of customers should be retained at any cost. As well analyze their other demographic characteristics and try to acquire similar type of customers in future. The L-H quadrant is where the revenue is low but profits are high. Obviously we should sell more and more with cross sell, up sell efforts, so that we get maximum of the ‘wallet share’ from the customers. The H-L quadrant shows high revenue but not such a great profit. This could be possibly because of the product mix, cost to serve, payment terms etc. We can offer them alternate products that can serve customer’s requirements and are more profitable, we can offer ‘menu based pricing’ for few of the services. We may also remove some the services that are not adding value to the customer. The lat quadrant L-L, is low revenue and low profitability. We should try to move them horizontally to increase the revenue or vertically to increase profits.

3) 2 x 2 – Cost to serve and revenue

From the earlier analysis if we find that the basic reason for difference in profitability is the behavior of the customer and particularly the ‘cost to serve (CTS)’, then we can analyze this behavior and can understand the reasons, which could be the buying patterns, special requests, channels used, changes in schedules, changes in requirements after ordering, knowledge about the product etc. Let us look at the quadrants. The L-L quadrant is where the CTS is low but the revenue is also low. We should try to sell more by cross sell, up sell strategy and keeping the services levels same. The H-L quadrant shows high CTS and low revenue. So the customer is too demanding. Here we can discuss the real requirements of the services that are needed by the customer. First of all remove all the services that are not needed by the customer. We can make our customer understand the more number of orders, frequent changes in the orders and products, special packing needs are adding costs and could be reconsidered. Then from the required one decide which can be offered by default and the other can be pushed to ‘pay per use’. The L-H quadrant is the best quadrant here and we should try to sell more and more to the customers in this quadrant with the similar level of service.

4) 2 x 2 – Loyalty and Profitability

The 2 x 2 diagram of loyalty and customer profitability can be used to allocate and program the marketing campaigns. Here the H-H quadrant shows that the customers are with you for a sufficient amount of time and they are profitable too. You can use these customers as your brand ambassadors. Understand their requirements and keep them happy. The H-L quadrant is happy with your service o products, but they may not be buying with a full potential from you. So you may spend more on cross selling or up selling to them. They may not be buying the most profitable products from you, so you can try to sell alternate products to them. The L-H quadrant is there the customers are profitable but they are not with you for a long time. This could be the customers are new or they like your products but may not like the service. Understand the requirement of those customers and improve the service or try to retain the new customers that are adding to your portfolio. The L-L quadrant may not be looked into initially, unless there is large number of customers lying there or a major portion of revenue is coming from those customers. If this is true then it really a cause of concern for the organization and should be given priority.

In some industries like telecom, the value of ‘probability to churn’ is used instead of loyalty. This is the probability that the customer is likely to terminate using your services. There we can use the similar graph with an attribute ‘churn’ instead of loyalty.


Till now we have seen various attributes for analysis which are objective and historic. But we can also use the attributes which are analytical and predictive. Probability to churn is one of such attributes. We can use similar attribute that is related to profitability and is called as ‘Future profitability’. The profitability we were talking of was the ‘current profitability’. Not all the decisions can be taken based on the current profitability or the historic profitability of the customer. We also have to see the future profitability potential in the customer. The future profitability is actually made up of two parts viz. a) predictive profitability b) potential profitability. Predictive profitability is if you extrapolate the profitability because of the products or the services that the customers are using in future. Potential profitability is the profitability that is brought in because of the customers propensity to buy other products and if they do buy, the profitability band they would fall in.


5) 2 x 2 – Current and future profitability



Here we are putting the current profit v/s the future profit (combination of predictive and potential profit). Profitability solutions provide the information about the current profitability for the customers. If the organization has calculated such ‘current’ profitability for a long period they would have history about the profit. Using this information and other variables statistical models can be created to calculate the future potential of profit. This is important to understand as the customers that are unprofitable today may have potential to be profitable in future and vice-a-versa. The text book example for this is the young doctor who has started his practice recently may not look profitable today but she can have potential to bring profits in future. Also a doctor who is potentially retiring in few years may look profitable today and had provided good results in past may not be a good future potential.

If we look at the L-L quadrant where the current and future profit looks low, you may not want act on them immediately (unless this is a large portion of customers). The L-H quadrant where the current profit is low but there is good potential in future. Here you would like sell more to them by understanding there requirements. For example for the young doctor in the earlier example it may start with the credit products for the clinic and may have potential to buy house and bigger or luxurious cars etc. H-L quadrant is where the current profit is high but does not look great in future. You can maintain the current relationship with them and the marketing spend may not allocated much to them. The best is the H-H quadrant where the current and the future profit look good. The strategy could be to retain these customers at any cost and acquire customers with similar profile.

6) 2 x 2 – Predictive and potential profitability

We can also go deeper in future profitability and see the analysis of predictive profitability against the potential profitability. If we look at L-L quadrant then we can see that if both predictive and potential profitability is going to be low then the overall future profitability is going to be low and we may not wish take immediate action (as always if this is not true for the major section of customer). In the L-H section we can see that the customer would be profitable in future with the same type of products but the behavior shows that the propensity to but other product is good. This may bring future profits for the organization and you may choose them for cross selling other products. H-L section is opposite to this and shows that these customers are unlike to buy other products but they can be profitable with the current products they are having. So the organization may look at up selling. For the H-H section where they would be profitable with current products have great potential for buying new products and could be profitable with those new also. The best segment of customers to have and you can try and spend more on selling them.

We have looked at various types of analysis that we can perform using the profitability information. These attributes could be objective as revenue, loyalty etc. or could be predictive (and hence subjective) like propensity to churn, future profitability. The future historic, current and future profitability information can be used to calculate Customer Lifecycle Value (CLV) and it can also be used for analysis. For this you need correct calculation of Customer profitability and the best way to get is using Activity Based Management Concept.

Finally wish you happy holidays. Hope you have done well in 2009 and best wishes for 2010.

20 comments:

  1. Dear Rajendra,

    The article is a very good way of building customer profitability performance management.By bringing in planning for these, it would make it a great customer performance management framework.
    Happy New year to you as well

    Regards
    Muthu Ranganathan

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  2. Hi Rajendra,

    Your analysis is strong and the insights sound. However, I would place cost to serve as the primary determinant of customer profitability. Basically, as I see it, it is not the customer who is profitable or not, it is the way we acquire, serve, manage and terminate the relationship which makes them either profitable or not.

    Best Regards

    Anil Weereratne
    Quadraco-global.com

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  3. Dear Rajendra,

    The article is a nice one.

    However, may I also add that the approach to Customers also depends greatly on which type of market you are in - sellers' market or buyers' market. Obviously, in buyers' market (with very high level of competition) the buyers become more and more smart in response to each of your strategy and will come out with new demands and are very difficult to manage.

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  4. Actually what you are saying in very correct. Customers behave in their own way. What I am trying to put here is, understand that customer behaviour, analyse the same so that you can use the analytics to use to your benefit.

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  5. Rajendra,

    Very nice article and series of posts. The value you are promoting is not widely understood and needs promotion like this. Everyone can debate the details but the real issue is education and a wider understanding of the value.

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  6. The word "decile" is not familiar to me. I like your creative uses of a matrix to encourage new ideas for creating profitable growth.

    Most of my customers have cut costs, not waste, to the bone. I encourage you to include VA and NVA in your thought process.

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  7. Instead of targetting the customers i do beleive that proper home work is required to reduce cost by eliminating the less benefited
    expenses.Take the exemple of Telecommunication business.The revenues are reducing day by day due to more & more competetion.So instead of identifying the profitable customers i am of the opinion that cost management by reducing the unwanted activities is very much needed . However, i should appreciate your views

    Thanks
    CMA ASIM SAHA

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  8. Excellent article.
    Not too familiar with the methodologies.. but I could as a layman understand thee theory. Very well put! very powerful 2 x2 's
    Thanks
    Murali

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  9. I like the customer deciles graph!
    The other 2x2's are always a good idea too.

    Graphs like this help when it comes to the next step of mobilizing actual change based on ABC/M information.

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  10. In an environment where the cost to provide the service/product is primarily fixed (telecommunications comes to mind) the key question about customer profitability is how much of the fixed cost pool is covered by the revenue generated by the customer.

    ABM can be very useful in assigning fixed costs at the customer (or category of customer) level. Cost control is key, as is understanding how much revenue per customer is necessary to cover costs.

    In such an environment, any customer that covers ongoing cash costs and contributes in any way to the fixed cost pool is worth keeping....but sooner or later, you have to have enough highly profitable customers to pay the overhead and make some money.

    Interesting article.

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  11. Another interesting graph to plot is cumulative profit on the vertical axis against cumulaive revenue on the horizontal with the customers sorted in the sequence of highest to lowest of the ratio profit/revenue. The curve is thus a plot of the '% return' from highest to lowest. The line between any two points thus shows two vital factors about that customer. Quite often when the curve goes negative it could indicate that most of the overall profit erosion comes from a small increment of volume. What's then worse is finding that increment of business has positive gross margins (the easy measure to work out) and that the sales force are bonused on gross margin. This is a common false strategy where increased volumes are seen as 'growth' but it is business with negative net margins. A mobile phone wholesale business we worked for was on this path until the ABC model proved how disasterous their growth strategy had become.

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  12. Rajendra

    I like your deciles based on the continua profitability and revenue. It especially illuminates that some customers are money losers where you suggest looking for opportunities to move these customers into a different quadrant. I would propose yet another strategy for some of these customers - let the competition spin cycles on them.

    Joseph Brady

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  13. Hi Rajan,

    This is a great article.

    Some suggestions:

    You may like to re-word "Retain at any cost" as "Must retain or can’t lose" because the term "at any cost" sounds a bit contradictory.

    Also you may like to consider the concept of cross pricing as many times cross sell gets done due to a smart cross price.

    Another thing is around the “predictive and potential” -> the 2x2 is not reflecting/ delivering the right objectives per quadrant (at least to me).

    One more thing here is alignment with ever changing market demands, competition, future products and business plans of both the organization as well as the customers, along with the stated future potential.

    Like you have covered "Wallet share" you may also like to touch upon “market share - customer acquisition"

    Having said this, however, it’s a fantastic write-up. Look forward to more of these.

    Warm regards & season’s greetings,
    Nitin

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  14. Quite an insightful post on customer profitability. In many situations it makes sense to stay away from labelling customers as "profitable" or "loss making" - especially when business slows down and the cost structure includes a significant portion of fixed charges and under-utilised capacity. One may argue that the so-called profitable customers will become unprofitable if we lose volumes contributed by the loss-makers. At the end of the day cost allocation makes sense (and easier to sell to decision makers) if we can identify customer-specific activities clearly. Otherwise, it is more productive to target a cost structure that is aligned to the competitive position aspired by the company. That is look at customer needs, how do we serve those needs, do our activities add value to the customer (i.e. the customer can perceive those values and is willing to pay for them) and how do we flex our fixed costs as the business situation changes (variable components of payouts and termination clauses in contracts).

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  15. Hello Rajendra,

    Very informative article. In UK, Supermarkets have a Customer Loyalty Card where a customer swipes it whenever he pays for his purchases. The Supermarket knows exact what their customers are purchasing and they analyse the data. They send coupons which can be redeemed on the next purchase. The coupons are targetted (they try to upsell) based on your purchases and encourage you to spend more thereby increasing their profits (pt.6) of your article.

    Customer Acquisition
    is what the Sales campaign does. E.g. Digital Camera companies advertise, buy a camera and get £50 rebate when you register on their website online. Then you get emails on their new products, accessories etc. So an informed and targeted customer, you buy more from them.

    So companies are able to analyse their individual customers by giving a small carrot of loyalty card or rebates then up-sell or cross more products.
    ----
    If you use a case study (hypothetical), it would help your readers to grasp these new concepts better.

    Regards,

    Santosh Puthran

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  16. Nice work Rajendra. For more in-depth discussion of metrics and measurement management you may wish to refer to the articles published by the Canadaian Marketing Association and the American MAnagement Association for Financial Services' Journal of Performance Management I wrote a few years ago. They can be accessed at no cost at our site http://www.objectivebusiness.com .

    I write a blog on Customer value and Customer profitability at http://customerprofit.blogspot.com/ as well.

    One note of caution - these strategic quadrants based on value metrics are a very crude basis for customer management strategy. There are other dimensions that should be take into account. For example geo-demographic and psychographic analses whould also be included at a minimum.

    Good luck in the new year. I am very supportive of all efforts to enlighten managers of the power and pitfalls of these tools. Thank yo0u for your efforts.

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  17. A nice one.
    Customer is the real target in today's world and analysing the customer's properties and potentialities -a great idea whether qualitatively or quantitavely or a combination of both.
    Revenue>>Cost>>>Profit analysis an overview and customer is the most crucial segment to that chart. Therefore, one does need to know the Cost to the Customer and Revenue from the Customer and to work out optimally equilibuirium as not to lose if we earn something over and above the fixed cost.
    Once again thanks to such horizon on which we can adjudge customer's potentiality.

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    ReplyDelete
  19. Your article is very informative about Customer Analytics with Profitability. I am bookmarking it for my future reference.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Hi very informative article. How did you create those diagrams in the article? What software is that something like creately ?

    ReplyDelete