Customer worth and customer lifetime value: What's the difference?
Expert Martha Rogers defines customer worth and customer lifetime value and explains how they are different.
Now, if we compare the idea of "lifetime value" with a customer's "worth," we are possibly into a semantic difference. It is possible that at some organizations the term "worth" will simply mean the same thing as lifetime value, or it's possible that what we mean is how much the customer could be spending somewhere, whether it's with us or another company. For example, if a bank is measuring a customer's worth, then that customer is being evaluated on what the total assets of their holdings would be. Then, we could use that as a basis to start thinking about share of customer or something similar.
So, it's not that customer worth and CLV are not linked, but lifetime value is probably more directly related to the customer's value to the company and that is interlinked with the value of the company to the customer, whereas customer worth might be something that's really more about the customer's value to himself.
Hear more in Creating Customer Value, a SearchCRM.com monthly podcast series with Peppers and Rogers.