Customer retention - dreams and reality

Professor Merlin Stone

Professor Merlin Stone, IBM professor of relationship marketing at Bristol Business School, explains how companies can improve the retention and development of profitable customers by implementing 'customer experience management'.

Customer Retention – Dreams and Reality

Professor Merlin StoneIBM Business Consulting Services

Customer Retention is one of those great topics that academics, consultants and advertising agencies like to talk about but rarely understand. My evidence for this is the statement that seems to precede every piece of academic writing on the topic: customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. Of course, it is true sometimes, but in many industries the work needed to make retention work is so arduous and complicated that many companies give up or even fail.

Of course, keeping good customers (or those likely to become...

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