Successful customer value management: Key lessons and emerging trends

SummaryIn the past decade, firms have paid increasing attention to customer value management (CVM). Through customer-centric management systems, firms aim to maximize customer value. In this article, we put forth six important lessons that firms can employ for successful CVM, integrating available research knowledge and best practices: (1) use CVM to improve business performance; (2) ensure that CVM is more customer driven than IT driven; (3) adopt customer lifetime value as a core metric; (4) invest in strong analytical capabilities; (5) understand the key drivers of customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer expansion; and (6) manage channels to create customer value.

► We put forth six important lessons that firms can employ for successful CVM, integrating available research knowledge and best practices:
► We discuss three emerging trends in customer value management important for a further development of this field.
► The overarching theme across the six lessons, is that firms can only outperform competition, when they implement customer-centric strategies.