Is it true that customer is the king? Customer is the heart of each business. From them, all business activities get their fresh blood flow which is currently called “positive cash flow” which gives energy for business activity entities.
Because of that, it is common if most activities and resources from the business entities are focused on “saving” their customer. Of course it is used for the business to grow.
Having said about “saving” the customer, it means that we talk how to satisfy them and save them, or even lift the level of satisfaction up. All businessmen who really understand that their customers are also their assets will do this. If the level of satisfaction reach at certain point, they want to get more and more. To reach that point, it is fair if the business entities have consequence to spend some money to satisfy their customers.
Referring to the first argument, that cost must be spent to keep our customers from business entities.
But the question is does the cost equal with what the companies get. After analyzing this question much further, the cost which already spent to keep the customers with the way to satisfy them can be higher than the contribution of the customers themselves.
From that way of thinking, It raises a thought to separate the customers into some categories. With separating the customers, the business entities can optimize their cost to certain categories of customers which give significant contribution to the company.
These are the categories:
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Vulnerable customers
These customers have big contribution to the company, but these customers only get bad service from the company. Customers in this category, potentially can be disappointed and move to another product. If this thing happens, it means a big lost to the company.
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Lost Causes
Customers that give low contribution to the company and those customer only get average service. It is not fair if the company gives best service to this type if the company expect more contribution from this type of customer.
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Free Riders
This type of customer only gives low contribution, but because of one and another thing, they get “more” from the company. Keeping this type of company will give more loss to the company and prevent the company to give better service to others.
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King for the company
This type of customer gives high contribution to the company and they get best service from the company. The plane’s passenger of executive class is one example of this type of customer. This type of customer is not much, but gives significant contribution to the company.
If the company already have a plan to allocate their cost and have a program to satisfy and keep their customer by treating them as king, be sure that the company only treats the truly king as a king.