文档介绍：Q4_Wireless_v5 9/9/03 4:18 PM Page 82
Q4_Wireless_v5 9/9/03 4:18 PM Page 83
83
Going the distance
with
customers
Adam Braff, William J. Passmore, and Michael Simpson
Carriers can increase their profits—by getting more value from existing
customers and being more selective about new ones.
service providers in the United States face a sea of troubles.
T In wireless, the days of double-digit market growth are over, leaving
competitors to fight for one another’s customers. In wireline, real revenues
for local and long-distance calls are falling petition from new
entrants is taking market share from incumbents. Cable operators are suf-
fering from weak balance sheets, petition from direct-broadcast-
satellite services, and sharply rising programming costs. Not surprisingly,
share prices in the sector have tumbled from their highs in 2000, but even
today’s depressed prices are hard to justify without much-improved margins.
Unfortunately, most industry CEOs are focusing on margin-improving tech-
niques that are either hard to pull off (such as consolidation and truly differ-
entiated products) or difficult to convert into a sustainable advantage (such
as cost reductions). But the service providers have so far underappreciated an
alternative: maximizing their new and existing customers’ lifetime value.
Q4_Wireless_v5 9/9/03 4:18 PM Page 84
84 THE McKINSEY QUARTERLY 2003 NUMBER 4
The value of this approach, known as customer lifetime management
(CLM), has been proved by several leading financial-services CLM
involves capturing and analyzing data about customers for the purpose of
marketing to and serving them on the basis of the value they are expected
to create during their “lifetime” with pany. Leading practitioners
annually develop and test thousands of new offers targeted at narrowly
defined customer segments and rapidly scale up only the most essful
ones. carriers can secure petitive advantage by