ocess of determining a customer's full value is including the cost of doing business with that customer. Customers with chronic complaints to customer service, multiple service calls, and continuous sales support needs are very expensive. While we do not want to ignore these customers, we do want to reduce the investment necessary in retaining them. Utilization Behavior As we discussed earlier, it is impossible to acquire good customer profitability information to include in our customer valuation analysis but, by incorporating utilization into the equation, we can get a useful approximation of profitability. Chapter 13 Customer Characteristics The final piece we need to input into the customer value function assembly and utilization process is the development of a customer characteristics profile. Age, address, education, psychographics and, most importantly, a customer's relationship with and utilization of new technologies is a critical part of this profile mix. This profile will allow us to evaluate whether this customer will be a good prospect for future product developments or rollouts. ASSEMBLING THE CUSTOMER VALUE FUNCTION COMPONENTS Once the revenue, credit, company interface, utilization, and demographic/psychographic information about a customer has been collected, we are ready to begin organizing it and using it to support our analysis. The specific nature of the customer value function (or functions) generated will depend heavily on the kind of data available and what we are trying to do with this data. Step 1 - Definition of Variables to Be Included The first step in the development of a customer value function is identifying the variables that are going to be important to the organization. Each organizational unit has an existing base of customer information and a set of priorities; SO the details of how the function gets calculated will be unique to the organizational unit. However, experience has shown that CVFs include several of the following components. Participation of All Business Units Is C