Winning a new customer is a victory that should be celebrated. However, building a sustainable business model around one-off purchases is tough. To thrive, you need to promote customer loyalty and transform consumers into lifelong supporters of your brand.
Mastering customer lifecycle management (CLM) is the key to building these relationships.
What Is Customer Lifecycle Management?
Customer lifecycle management is monitoring and curating every stage of the customer journey. It begins with a person’s first contact with your brand and continues through renewal. It includes:
- Lead acquisition and onboarding
- Service delivery and support
- Engagement, retention, and upselling
- Renewals and long-term relationship-building
Before effectively managing the customer lifecycle, you must understand and have visibility. That represents the biggest challenge for many organizations. They are working with antiquated technologies and encumbered by data silos, which limit visibility between departments.
Bridging the gap between sales and service empowers your team to view and manage the entire customer lifecycle. They can collaborate on tasks like lead generation, nurturing, and loyalty-building.
From One-Time Buyer to Recurring Revenue
Service-based businesses thrive on renewals and account expansions, or add-ons. A consistent, data-driven approach to customer lifecycle management can turn one-time buyers into loyal advocates who support your brand for months or even years. So, where does that data come from?
You are probably already collecting a lot of the information you need. Now, all you need to do is bring it together. Focus on unifying insights from your CRM, PSA, and financial systems to:
- Track satisfaction and service outcomes
- Identify up-selling opportunities
- Proactively manage renewals
- Align delivery and support with customer goals
The more data sources you use, the more your insights will be complete. Once you have enough information, translate it into reports about the customer lifecycle. Focus on both big-picture analytics and more granular insights.
Why Visibility Matters
Without visibility into the entire customer journey, tailoring your services around client needs or resolving pain points early is nearly impossible. For instance, you won’t know when or why customers fall out of the sales funnel. Similarly, you’ll have a tough time detecting and fixing attrition challenges.
Unifying customer data provides real-time insights that drive retention. You can detect concerning trends before they significantly impact your bottom line and protect your business from high customer turnover.
More importantly, CLM data analytics helps you better understand your audience’s wants and needs. Once you have those answers, you can tailor your marketing and sales strategies to align with your customer base’s preferences.
CLM Metrics You Need to Watch
We can all agree that tracking customer lifecycle management data points is essential. The question is, which numbers should you be paying attention to? Here are a few of the metrics that matter most in the context of CLM:
- Net revenue retention
- Customer health scores
- Churn rate
- Average lifetime value
You can also examine insights, such as customer acquisition costs, to compare the expenses associated with acquiring new clients versus retaining existing ones. Each of these metrics provides an important piece of the puzzle. Together, they help you understand the entire customer journey, including points of friction customers encounter along the way.
Optimize CLM With Certinia
Certinia is a robust PSA and ERP built 100% on the Salesforce platform. Its cloud-based solutions deliver real-time insights, enabling your business to monitor, understand, and optimize the customer lifecycle.
If you are already part of the Salesforce ecosystem and ready to enhance your technology capabilities, Certinia is a great option.
Now, you only need a reputable deployment partner to help you complete a seamless implementation. Enter Singularity Consulting, the Certinia experts. Our team can help you identify the right applications for your needs, plan the deployment, and provide post-implementation support to promote a strong ROI.
Contact Singularity Consulting to schedule a consultation.
