Once the customers and segments are defined, then core objectives and measures are developed.
Core objectives and measures are those that are common across all organizations.
There are five key core objectives: increase market share, increase customer
retention, increase customer acquisition, increase customer satisfaction, and increase customer
profitability. Possible core measures for these objectives, respectively, are market
share (percentage of the market), percentage growth of business from existing customers
and percentage of repeating customers, number of new customers, ratings from customer
satisfaction surveys, and individual and segment profitability. Activity-based costing
is a key tool in assessing customer profitability (see Chapter 11). Notice that
customer profitability is the only financial measure among the core measures. This measure,
however, is critical because it emphasizes the importance of the right kind of customers.
What good is it to have customers if they are not profitable? The obvious answer
spells out the difference between being customer focused and customer obsessed