Article at a glance:

Going the distance with telecom customers

Share prices in the US telecom sector have tumbled from their 2000 highs but are still hard to justify without much higher margins. The most common options for improving them are either hard to pull off or difficult to convert into a sustainable advantage. Telcos should consider an alternative that can deliver returns as high as consolidation or cost cutting: maximizing the value of an existing customer base through customer lifetime management (CLM).

The take-away

Financial-service players pioneered CLM, but the technique can also help telcos (or companies in any other sector) capture and analyze customer information and use it to market to customers based on their expected long-term value.