Customer-centric strategies are most effective when supported by a strong customer lifecycle model. But how does an organisation encourage the migration of customers from lower value stages to higher value stages of the lifecycle?

One important tool in accomplishing this, and ultimately driving up customer value, is to develop customer journey maps. Journey maps allow an organisation to visualise the journey the customer may go on in order to increase share of wallet and loyalty, and to actively encourage this journey to take place.

A leading financial services firm has engaged Customer Connect Australia to enable the development of customer journey maps for corporate members. The development process has highlighted activities that may actually damage customer engagement, as well as stimulating new ideas to strengthen the customer relationship and increase resistance to customer attrition.

One of Australia's leading telecommunications providers has engaged Customer Connect Australia to develop and deliver a range of 1-day CVP workshops to all customer-facing account management, solutions engineers and senior consulting staff. The program is being rolled out throughout Australia, ultimately spanning over 400 staff in eight states and territories.

The CVP program is particularly popular with account-level staff as it results in two distinct deliverables for attendees. Each account team member learns and practices the methods that represent global best practice in CVP development, allowing the team to work together with a common language in the future to develop the best CVP possible. The second deliverable of the day is a real CVP for their nominated account; this is often taken by the account team and used shortly thereafter in the next proposal or sales presentation.

Customer Connect Australia has developed and conducted a number of 2-day Client Value workshops for a global financial services company. The workshops are for developing leaders in the organisation and cover such diverse topics as best practices in value management, customer insights, value propositions and developing trusted advisor relationships.

The program is currently running twice annually through Macquarie Graduate School of Management.

Managing customer relationships over time requires a clear framework to assess the growth of these relationships. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to develop a customer lifecycle model which tracks customer through a series of stages such as prospect, new customer, repeat customer, engaged customer and loyal customer. Loyal customers or advocates are worth the most to an organisation, in both their own lifetime value and the value of the referral business they generate.

Customer Connect Australia has developed a five-stage lifecycle model in conjuntion with one of Australia's largest superannuation and investment companies. The model indicates that loyal customers are worth approximately ten times the lifetime value of new customers, which is in keeping with metrics from other industries and reinforces the importance of using such models to drive customer marketing efforts.

The customer lifetime model will be used by the superannuation company in customer strategy development, analytics and insight, increasing customer intimacy and ultimately to increase the lifetime value (economic value) of the customer asset

Customer Connect Australia has assisted a leading Australian university in the evaluation and selection of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The new system is to be implemented across the university over time, encompassing all key "customer" or stakeholder relationships.

One of the most significant complexities in this program is the integration or migration of the wide range of existing, disparate CRM "min-systems". The strategy is clear, however, in that customers expect to be recognised and treated with respect across all of their dealings with the university, necessitating an integrated view of communications, goals and activities. This is expected to present a particular challenge across multiple faculties and departments.

Customer Connect Australia has been engaged to support the development of customer and segmentation strategies, together with customer value frameworks, for a leading superannuation company.

Central to this work is the acknowledgement that customer strategy should guide product, channel and competency development in a customer-centric organisation. This means being clear on which customers we choose to serve, customer value propositions at the segment level and operational enablers for these value propositions.

Customer strategies are designed to drive key performance indicators such as customer acquisition, retention rates and share of wallet which ultimately lead to business outcomes such as growth and profitability.

A large global automotive company, responsible for some of the best-known car brands in Australia, has engaged Customer Connect through MGSM to run their 2-day "Ultimate Customer Experience" program. The company strives to create the best customer experiences in their industry, and future leaders participate in the interactive program in order to develop their understanding and capabilities in customer experience.

The program covers topics such as customer excellence, customer value, going "beyond satisfaction", loyalty and leadership in a customer centric organisation.

Customer Connect has recently completed work with one of Australia's leading telecommunications companies, to develop a customer value proposition (CVP) that focuses on customers rather than products and services. This work involved a wide range of people across multiple departments, ultimately consolidating the work of close to 100 people into four strong value themes.

The value proposition is supported by organisational capability statements and an evidence library to enable account managers to develop account-specific value propositions. The organisation-wide CVP is being implemented internally and in thepublic domain via the web site and high level customer communications.