If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I frequently talk about the “gold mine” of information that resides in operational data. Leveraging the information can improve marketing ROI dramatically … and quickly. Another buried treasure among all that data is information that can help you detect customers at most risk for defection.

The critical first step in minimizing defection is gaining a full understanding of customer behavior that leads to attrition. Once you have this information, you can develop an “early warning sytem” profile and model.

These are used to score all customers on a monthly basis that then trigger interventions, based on customer value. The profile and model integrate various data factors, such as: purchase frequencies, customer lifetime, seasonality and demographics to identify customers most vulnerable to competition.

An important note: ALL Interventions should be scaled to customer value.

Do you know which of your customers are most likely to leave you for the competition? If not, time to dig into that data.