Neil Woodcock, Michael Starkey and Merlin Stone

There is a strong correlation between business performance and customer management (CM). Most benefit is gained from viewing CM as a system, or value chain. On some commonly used measures, the scale of benefit varies widely. For instance, companies can expect to gain between 2 and 50 per cent increases in turnover from improving CM. A more reliable guide is that companies can expect a 400 per cent return on investment from well-managed programmes. However, the benefit and the payback period vary greatly with the company's maturity in customer management and the size of the investment. Lower-quartile performers need to invest more, and take more risk, to achieve high levels of benefit.