This reading room item puts definitions to several measures that are essential when drilling down to the detail of customer management. Definitions that are covered include initial revenue, initial costs, future revenue, future costs, loyalty (retention rate) and influence value. If you are reading Dossier 06 - Obtaining and Retaining Customers, this item is extremely useful. It also supports Dossiers 01 - Risk Management, 03 - Planning and Controlling Projects and 09 - Financial Performance.

New approaches to marketing leave behind the vulgar approaches of the last century as outlined by Nikita Kruschev to British businessmen in 1961: "When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to grow so that you can skin them again." Now, in the twenty-first century, our customers are all around us - inside our own organizations, within our partner organizations, accessible 24/7 and throughout the global village. Customer focus has swept through the commercial world and is now preoccupying the public sector and not-for-profit organizations. Customer Relationship Management is therefore a challenge to most organisations today, and for many it remains a high ideal. This article shows a way in which the theory can be implemented in practice.