Profitability From Customer Affinity is a new milestone research initiative the CMO Council is undertaking this year in partnership with CMP enterprise IT and channel publications and with the participation of top solution providers, industry experts, and leading university business schools to determine what drives customer affinity, advocacy, and attachment in the technology sector. 

The tech sector is uniquely challenged to cultivate, sustain, and optimize long-term, high-value relationships that are both profitable and mutually satisfying.  The complexities, costs, and risks of large-scale implementations, business critical deployments, and transformational outsourcing engagements frequently pressure procurement partnerships. Addressing and satisfying the multiplicity of internal customer constituencies is both daunting and unpredictable. Given the importance and value of these complex relationships, effectiveness in achieving a better return on strategic account relationships will be a key determinant of business performance in the years ahead.

The CMO Council’s new initiative is designed to help its members and the technology industry better understand how to improve return on account relationships. We will survey leading business schools, subject matter experts, and solution providers to identify what deepens, solidifies, and perpetuates customer relationships. Our in-depth qualitative and quantitative research will also explore customer views, opinions, and observations from IT buyers and specifiers, customer engagement specialists, and global marketers at leading technology firms.

The initiative will establish measures and metrics for determining customer affinity based on:

• Frequency of contact, caliber, and consistency of touch points
• Value-added services, responsiveness, business policies and practices
• Effectiveness of the customer interface and problem resolution

The initiative will also determine levels and drivers of loyalty, intimacy, retention, preference, word-of-mouth, trust, handling performance, and retention marketing effectiveness of the top 100 IT vendors, IT consultants, and integrators.

The cornerstone of the initiative will be the development of The CMP Tech Customer Affinity Index.  Similar to the value and equity rankings in BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Global Brands list, the annual Index will rank technology B2B brands on their return on account relationship effectiveness.
The CMO Council and the Marketing Division of Columbia University’s Business School will develop an evaluation framework and online auditing tool to determine the level of customer affinity, loyalty, advocacy, and attachment to leading technology and telecommunications brands by major enterprise IT specifiers and buyers.

Findings from The Profitability From Customer Affinity initiative and the CMP Tech Customer Affinity Index will be released in the third quarter of this year.