There are many traditional customer identification indicators, such as customer business status, income, market share, credit reputation, loyalty, satisfaction, etc. In the online field, these indicators are still valid. Enterprises should determine identification indicators based on their own actual situation and their own evaluation criteria. Customer identification methods in online customer relationship management systems can be analyzed from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.
(1) Qualitative analysis of customer identification. This is a method of identifying all target customers of an enterprise from a macro perspective. It is a classification of customers based on the different emphasis of value perceived by different customers. Whether creating more benefits for customers or providing cheaper products should depend on the feelings of customers. Then, based on different feelings, customers can be roughly divided into three categories: intrinsic value customers, extrinsic value customers and strategic value customers. This is very similar to the traditional customer identification method.
(2) Quantitative analysis of customer identification. Since the quantitative analysis of online customers will be introduced in the following chapters, here we mainly conduct a simple quantitative analysis based on the factor of customer life cycle value.
There are three main factors that affect the customer life cycle value, namely, customer life cycle, average customer consumption amount per time and average customer consumption cycle. To this end, the following mathematical model can be simply established: CLV is the customer life cycle value calculated from the verification period; T is the length of the customer life cycle calculated from the verification period; s is the customer consumption amount per time calculated based on customer consumption data; t is the average customer consumption cycle calculated based on customer consumption data.
It can be seen that customer value mainly depends on the length of the customer life cycle T, the average customer consumption cycle 1 and the average customer consumption amount per time s. According to the differences in these three indicators, customers can be classified into four categories: First, abandoned customers. This type of customer is characterized by three variables (T, s and t) are all at a disadvantage. Second, development customers. The characteristics of this type of customer are that two of the three variables are at a disadvantage and one is at an advantage, such as s and t are inferior, but T is superior. Third, potential customers. Compared with development customers, the characteristics of this type of customer are that two of the three variables are at an advantage and one is at a disadvantage, such as s and t are superior, but T is inferior. Fourth, high-quality customers. This is a customer who can bring a lot of benefits to the company.
This quantitative classification method is suitable for many industries that are easy to collect customer data, such as the Internet industry. The advancement of information technology has made it possible to collect various information or data about online customers’ consumption, conduct quantitative analysis of online customers according to certain indicators, and adopt various marketing strategies to maintain and strengthen customer relationships based on the results, making marketing strategies more accurate.