Let's Not "Manage" Our Customers - how to build customer loyalty

Circulation Management, Dec, 1999

If you're like me, you're looking forward to putting the hype surrounding the new millennium behind us and getting on with real life. But it is true that the symbolic significance of entering the 2000's is particularly appropriate at this juncture in the history of the magazine publishing industry. It's not mere hyperbole to say that we've never faced a more complex business environment or a more important crossroads. The challenges involved in embracing and exploiting the Internet alone could easily keep us busy for the next decade.

Revolutionary as it is, however, the Internet is only a means to an end--and just one of the converging factors that will radically change the specifics of the way we do business. The real, core issue as we look ahead is how we can most effectively position our brands to meet the changing needs and demands of our reader and advertiser customers. That's a big question--and one that, with all of our thinking and strategizing and experimenting, we've barely begun to answer.

Still, when you think about it, it's also the same question that's driven the industry's growth and success since Day One. We may not have been so enamored of the "branding" terminology in years past, but the goal of all of our efforts always has been to build profitable businesses by creating and growing trusted products that serve the needs of our consumer and B-to-B customer constituencies. After all, this business is hardly a stranger to the concepts of new editorial and advertising formats, spin-offs and what used to be called "ancillary products."

The trick now, of course, is to correctly identify and respond to customer needs in a time of head-spinning change. But at the risk of eliciting the "duh" response, doesn't that basically mean being willing to focus with single-minded determination on supplying value to our customers, and being willing to alter or discard existing practices to achieve that mission? Isn't that what all of the talk about "managing customer relationships" really comes down to?

Although you might have missed this in the wake of the commotion stirred up by his comments about the content of the publisher's statement, Time Inc. chief Don Logan made some much more fundamental points during his recent speech at the ABC annual conference (page 9). Foremost among them was his statement that we can no longer afford to continue treating our best customers cavalierly. His example: current renewal pricing practices, which "reward the wicked and punish the virtuous."

We may not all have the resources of Time Inc., but we should all recognize the importance of tests it's now conducting, in which subscribers are straightforwardly offered a monetary incentive for adopting the eminentiy sensible concept of continuous service. You save us money, we'll save you money. In Canada, McClean Hunter has been employing this model for some time now (CM, April 1998), and it's about time that we, too, acknowledge our customers' ability to recognize a good (or bad) deal when they see it. That goes for renewals or any other sales proposition.

Building customer loyalty by zeroing in on individual needs is probably the single most important guiding principle for navigating the uncertain future. But must we use the term "customer relationship management" to describe it? The phrase sounds arrogant and seems to contradict its own point, which is that it's the customers who are calling the shots. If we're smart, we won't try to manage our customers. Instead, we'll let them manage us, and offer what they want: respect, relevance and value.

KARLENE LUKOVITZ