Article • 10 min read
What is customer value? Definition, formula, and importance
Customer value is how much a product or service is worth to a customer. Here’s how companies can enhance their value to improve the customer experience and increase satisfaction.
Last updated November 25, 2024
Customer value definition
Customer value is the perceived benefit a consumer views a product or service as compared to its cost. It includes all the costs and benefits associated with a product or service, such as price, quality, and what the product or service can do for that person. Consumers may also consider the monetary, time, energy, and emotional costs when evaluating the value of a purchase.
Today’s consumers don’t care only about price or quality—they also want the product or service they buy to solve a problem or need. And with endless shopping options at their fingertips, buyers are looking for companies that consistently deliver value.
Businesses that understand customer value can better tailor their offering to expertly meet their consumer’s needs. Doing so can build customer relationships and, therefore, boost their balance sheet. In this guide, we detail customer value and how you can use it to provide a better customer experience (CX).
More in this guide:
- Why is customer value important?
- How to measure customer value
- 9 tips for increasing customer value
- Frequently asked questions
- Create customer value with Zendesk
Why is customer value important?
Customer value is important because it helps businesses understand their customers and drive profitability.
Delivering customer value is key to maintaining long-term relationships with existing customers and earning repeat business. It’s an important part of meeting customers’ needs and expectations and learning how they change over time. Knowing how customers feel about your product and the service experience you offer is key to building customer loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value.
How to measure customer value
You can measure customer value by considering three main variables. Here are the most important questions to ask yourself:
1. Ask customers a small set of questions
To track customer value, you need to communicate directly with them. First, develop a small set of questions that will allow you to gauge the value you’re delivering. For example, you could ask customers how your product or service helped them achieve their goals or how your company could improve or provide more value.
Next, find the right medium to ask those questions. Many companies opt to gather customer feedback by sending out regular surveys via email or by calling customers directly.
2. Determine customer benefits and customer costs
Along with qualitative questions, you should also pose quantitative questions to evaluate the value of your products or services. To start, you could ask buyers to rate how satisfied they were with their purchase based on a scale from 1 to 5. Then, you can take the average numerical rating and determine whether or not your company is delivering high value. Once you have your feedback, list how your team delivers or falls short on customer value.
3. Determine if the benefits outweigh the costs
Once you’ve collected feedback, you can start to see whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Benefits can be variables like convenience, quality, and brand reputation, while costs are things like price, time investment, and emotional stress. While measuring your customer value takes time and effort, the insights you’ll gain will be invaluable.
To calculate customer value, you’ll need to subtract total customer costs from total customer benefits.
There are two key types of customer benefits: product/service value and service experience value. Other types of customer benefits can include social value, personal value, and psychological value.
Since benefits and costs tend to be qualitative, you’ll want to assign a metric to the different benefits and costs to see if one outweighs the other.
Explore Zendesk AI
See how Zendesk AI capabilities can help you create customer value and build long-term loyalty.
9 tips for increasing customer value
Acting on feedback is just as important as getting it. Use feedback to identify areas of improvement and formulate a plan for delivering more value.
1. Personalize your support interactions
Show every customer your value by tailoring the support experience to their unique needs and delivering personalized customer service. Doing so can help you boost the CX, increase customer loyalty, and create meaningful customer connections.
A few ways you can personalize your support interactions include:
Addressing customers by name
Providing curated product recommendations that align with the customer’s search or purchase history
Referencing customer data to provide support based on past interactions and the consumer’s history with your company
A great way to get started with all of this is to use autonomous digital agents like AI agents. These advanced bots can personalize interactions, deliver 24/7 support, and resolve consumer interactions from start to finish. In fact, according to the Zendesk AI-Powered Customer Experience Trends Report 2025, 91 percent of CX Trendsetters believe AI can effectively personalize experiences. So, if you want to easily and effectively personalize every customer interaction, embrace the power of AI.
2. Provide support on multiple channels
Provide support on a variety of channels—such as email, phone, live chat, and messaging—so customers can reach you on the platforms they prefer. Find the channels your target audience uses regularly, then make sure you adopt them.
To deliver a more effortless customer experience, go a step further by offering omnichannel support and connecting conversations across channels. With an omnichannel solution like Zendesk, interaction history and context travel with the customer from channel to channel, allowing agents to provide better, personalized support.
3. Create a robust onboarding program
Start users off on the right foot by building a comprehensive customer onboarding guide. If possible, assign each account to a support agent who can show customers how to implement your product, answer any questions, and make sure they’re comfortable using it.
For products that require ongoing support, you’ll want to assign a customer success associate to each account. This person should have specialized knowledge about the product and serve as a continuous source of strategic guidance. They must check in consistently, provide best practices, and develop a true partnership with their clients.
4. Prioritize customer success
While support teams are essential for resolving short-term customer issues and technical problems, customer success teams are equally important for ensuring buyer happiness. Rather than focusing on solving problems as they come up, customer success managers anticipate their client’s needs and help them achieve their long-term goals using a company’s products or services.
Having staff dedicated to helping customers succeed makes it easier to provide personalized experiences, increase retention, and even find opportunities to cross-sell and upsell. But you’ll have to leverage customer data to stay informed about how their needs might change and how you’ll be able to meet those needs. That may mean using data analytics to spot trends and see where common problems arise, creating a robust knowledge base to address frequently asked questions, or investing in a CRM to track your evolving customer statistics over time.
5. Address patterns in support issues
Success managers should share any customer problems they regularly see or hear about with the rest of the support team so the group can brainstorm potential solutions. You should also consider collecting customer feedback and data regularly to gain increased visibility into any recurring issues and take steps to address them.
For example, if you notice that 30 percent of your customers run into the same issue with your product, you might proactively send an email explaining how to fix the problem so they don’t have to call support. You can also offer customer self-service options—such as FAQ pages, help centers, or AI agents—that make it easy for customers to solve their own issues.
6. Make sure customers know you’ve heard them
You may already send out surveys and act on customer feedback to make improvements. But take it one step further by following up with customers who shared input to let them know how you incorporated their feedback. Customers will be happy to hear that you took their ideas and suggestions to heart and used them to make positive changes. It also shows that you champion your customers at every step of their journey—adding to your value.
7. Find opportunities to surprise and delight
Establish a strong, long-term connection with customers by regularly finding ways to wow them. For example, empower your support team to go above and beyond for each customer by giving them the freedom to offer a certain number of discounts each month or surprise a customer with a free gift. You should also make sure you’re providing quick and easy resolutions, self-service support, various channels for customer service, and personalized experiences. All are crucial components of a customer retention strategy.
8. Acknowledge and reward customer loyalty
Customers love to feel seen and appreciated. Recognize your most loyal buyers by offering them a discount or promotion at the end of a support experience. Or, consider launching a loyalty rewards program to show customer appreciation.
A customer loyalty program rewards buyers with discounts or freebies after they reach specific benchmarks, like being a customer for one year or spending a certain amount of money. Loyal customers are rewarded simply for continuing their buying habits, further deepening their ties to the business and giving them added value they can’t find at competitors. When creating a loyalty program, choose rewards that are enticing to your particular audience. Listen to your customers and let them be your guide.
9. Give your customers a sense of community
Everyone enjoys feeling like they’re part of a community. Foster this connection with your brand by building a customer community forum where buyers can go for product support, Q&As, and feedback. This forum can live on your website or social media page and also feed into your larger, cross-channel support strategy as a self-service option for customers.
Online forums help create a sense of community by connecting users to others with similar needs and interests. This often translates to customers feeling more supported by the brand, which increases your value. Additionally, if you give forum users the space to share their knowledge or expertise, they may turn into longtime brand advocates.
Frequently asked questions
Create customer value with Zendesk
People often measure a business’s success by its sales. But to guarantee long-term success, you need to make your customers feel like your product was worth the purchase. You can do this by having a good perceived value, an excellent product, and an outstanding customer experience—and we can help with the latter.
With Zendesk, we can help you build long-term customer relationships. From AI agents to advanced analytics, we give you the tools you need to create meaningful connections, scale your service offering, and stay flexible through change.
Learn more about how we can help you boost your CX and build customer value.
