Using Survival for Customer Value Calculations
The customer value calculation is theoretically quite simple. The value of a customer is the product of the estimated future revenue per unit time and the estimated future duration of the customer relationship. This just has one little challenge: knowing the future. We can make informed guesses using historical data.
How far in the future? One possibility is “forever”; however, a finite amount of time—typically, one, two, or five years—is usually sufficient. The future revenue stream is a guesstimation process. Typically, the goal is to understand customers, not a full financial profitability model, with all the checks and balances of corporate accounting.
The choice of revenue instead of profit or net revenue is intentional. In general, customers have some control over their revenue flow because revenue is related to product usage patterns. Plus, because customers are actually paying the money, they pay much more...