• Type of care: Self-service or individual, personal advice? Additional services free or subject to charge?

• Channel management: Which channel is preferred by which customers?

• Sales: What up-selling offers do customers receive based on their purchase interests?

Besides the detailed analysis of the current situation, the future-oriented question regarding the targeted development of the customer groups must be answered: which profiles have development potential? Which ones are already especially profitable today or can become so in the future? Which groups have a value which is consistently too low for the company?

Future-oriented service differentiation should function in multiple dimensions. The groundwork is initially laid by a value-based differentiation of the scope of services: basic services covering needs, extensively automated, for customers with low or negative CLV who display little or no potential for development; excellent service with outstanding products for high-value customers with long-term potential for loyalty and value development. A more detailed differentiation of the service according to the individual, “soft” aspects – e.g., purchase offers, additional services, channel offers – as recorded in the customer profiles comes into play within a service portfolio defined for a customer value segment.

Specific, active channel management according to customer value and preferences!

An important leverage point for increasing efficiency in customer service can be found in the expanding communications channels. Substantial potential for the customer service of the future can be exploited by channel utilization and allocation oriented to value and needs.

Value-based: comprehensive and personal customer advice should focus on the customer groups with high profitability and great development potential. Customers who are currently unprofitable and are predicted to generate low turnover in the future should be managed more by using standardized service with a high degree of automation so as to keep the costs which cannot be amortized as low as possible.

Need-oriented: there are many users, especially among the younger buyer groups with an affinity for online services, who actually prefer self-service and similar facilities as interaction channels because of the greater convenience they perceive here. Based on high levels of automation and the very low utilization of personnel capacities, self-services represent the least expensive service channel for the company. Customers who have this preference should be actively managed in this channel because it fulfills their desire for fast service independent of fixed times while at the same time incurring the comparatively lowest service costs for the company.