Angels and Demons: Profiling Customers for Fun and Profit

Friday, March 8th, 2019 (No comments yet)

Angel Customers & Demon Customers (The book that started it all)
(See online!)

With the proliferation of data about customers on an individual level due to technology such as cookies, web bugs, and RFID (ie Spychips), companies have discovered a more valuable way to manage their assets. Customer profiling.

A new customer management policy has grown popularity in the business world which assigns customers the ominous labels of Angel and Demon.

Angels

This pleasant sounding label belongs to a customer who doesn't comparison shop, buys high-margin items, always picks up "extras" (such as extended warranties and accessories), uses store credit, etc. Basically, anyone who brings the store profit.

Demons

Imagine a point system, where every purchase made was given positive or negative points based on profitability. Now imagine that any interaction you have with a company could be tallied into your profile based on how much time and resources they need to spend on you. Here are some things that might count against you:

Submitting a rebate
Using your extended service plan
Making any purchase without a certain percentage of high margin accessories
Refusal to buy add-on services (such as a free Internet trial or movies-by-mail)
Spending an over-average amount of time making the purchase decision
Refusing to be upsold into a higher-end model
Complaining about the store to management, to consumer watchdogs, or government agencies

Best Buy, a major electronics retailer, is one of the early adopters of these types of systems

After compiling the results of your score, you may be offered terms of credit, pricing, or specials based on that score. For example, "Special price for our 'Platinum' grade customers only!" (where platinum is another word for "angels"). Another example might be putting better customers in a priority queue for customer service by phone. Though only Best Buy (that I know of) has looked at the angel/demon methodology, there's nothing to stop companies from using the profiles on you they already have to do the same.