l business units regardless of that business unit's current objectives. A very good customer who is not a good prospect for the sale of a new product is not a bad customer. Neither is a historically good customer bad just because of a few missed payments. Base segmentations provide the organization with the ability to set standards for the treatment of groups of customers, which the customer touchpoint units can then carry out. It also allows the firm to set limits on what touchpoint units can do with or about customers. Fundamentally, base segmentation is what provides the managers of the CRM organization with the means to oversee how their charges are being handled. Structure of Base Segmentation To be effective, we must impose a number of constraints on this segmentation approach. Chapter 12 Base Segmentation - All-Inclusive and Mutually Exclusive First, the base segmentation must be all-inclusive. All customers and prospects must fit into one of the segments. Otherwise, the company will end up with customers that do not fit into the system. Second, the segmentation scheme must enforce mutual exclusivity. In other words, no customer can belong to two or more segments. It is basically a one-person, one-segment model. This is the only way that consistency in treatment and measurement of results can be attained. Basis for All Recombination Going to the trouble of creating these base segments and assigning customers to them does not do us much good if we do not provide the mechanism for mapping the members in each of these segments into the many other segmentation schemes that the organization requires. We need to make sure that all of these other segmentation schemes map back to the base and that, no matter what other segments the customers belongs to, they are always understood to belong to their base segments as well. Building a Base Segmentation Scheme Base segmentation schemes will be unique for each organization since other types of consumers and business models require that customers be viewed in different 