We all know with the New Year upon us that it is time for the annual ritual -- that of the New Year's resolution. How many times have you and I made them only to let them peter out by spring, if not earlier? Well, this year I have made some resolutions and I promise to keep them! As of the January 6, I am already well on my way.

The tradition of the New Year's resolution goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar. The Romans named the first month of the year after Janus, the god of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He was always depicted with two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back. That way he could look backward and forward at the same time. At midnight on December 31, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and forward to the new.

Businesses can also make resolutions through both their short-term and long-term strategies. Think for a second about what resolutions your company could make to your customers. After working with many organizations, I have my short list, and I will start with 3 because we all know if you make too many resolutions they fail. Keep the list short and you have a fighting chance.

Resolution 1: I promise not to treat every customer the same.

In loyalty lingo this would mean truly understanding the unique experiences that your customers want and desire. Technically speaking, it would also mean that you have developed a good segmentation model that is driving your customer strategy -- taking in to consideration your market, and the strategic value of different types of customers to your business. We discuss this in some detail in the Net Promoter Certification Course, both from the standpoint of your customer economics as well as recruitment and sampling strategies.

For B2B businesses this can mean truly understanding the value of different types of accounts to your business and the value of the individuals within that account -- identifying the decision makers, purchase influencers, end users, etc. In a B2C setting, this would mean identifying the unique demographic and psychographic qualities of various segments, or the combination of segments that define groups of customers that have similar expectations.

I would argue that many companies today put very little effort into customer segmentation, or have created such a simplistic segmentation model that it is almost useless. Many organizations find it very difficult to create strategies and deliver experiences specifically geared toward a particular customer segment. Most feedback is insufficiently segmented to provide the necessary detail -- so all customer strategies end up looking alike.

Resolution 2: I promise to get good information about my customers, once and for all!

Cleaning up a customer database is an ongoing exercise, and often an ongoing exercise in frustration. When I discuss trustworthy data in our certification courses, I typically ask the class what percentage of the data in their customer database is accurate and reliable -- on average participants have less than 50% confidence in this data. I did once have a participant say he was 100% confident in his customer database. As a start up they only had 7 customers! But incomplete data is much more common. The most accurate piece of information typically is billing information -- good to be able to collect money from customers, right? But it goes quickly down hill from there. CRM is used for a variety of purposes, from sales, to marketing to billing. Most CRM systems cannot easily handle the varying needs of complex businesses and multiple functions, so they have morphed into something with 3 heads and 10 arms.

So how do organizations get a handle on the problematic customer database? Well, unfortunately it takes hard work -- this of course is usually what makes a New Years resolution fail. If it were easy, you wouldn't have to make the resolution in the first place. Many organizations try to resolve the clean up of the customer database centrally. They believe that if they can just get a core team to take the time to clean it up, then everything will be OK. But we know that won't work -- it must be handled in a decentralized fashion. Getting sales, support, and other functions in your organization to take ownership for good customer data it is the only way to fulfill this resolution.

Resolution 3: I promise to get all my employees refocused on the customer.

At a time when we don't think we can get one more piece of bad news economically, companies need to keep their focus on their workforce. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in December released a new poll that shows 48 percent of organizations laid-off employees in 2008. Even worse, 60 percent of organizations surveyed said they expect to lay off employees in the next 12 months.

While many companies must take these kinds of measures to stay viable, they also need to keep their remaining workforce focused. Reinvestment in your workforce is a long-term strategy -- yes, a resolution that may need to last beyond 2009. Investing in employee training and realigning employee objectives to a customer-focused mission will mean that you can do more with the employees you have. Plus, it will keep them more energized around your organization's long-term goals.

Those are my thoughts as we leave 2008 behind and look forward to new opportunities in 2009. What are your company's top customer resolutions for the New Year?