Customer Accounts: The Right Service for the Right Customers

2 min read

17. February 2026

It can impact a company's competitiveness when it tries to satisfy all customers on the same terms. A "one-size-fits-all" strategy means that the company over-services some customer groups and under-services others — and that is neither profitable nor competitive.

The company needs to differentiate its attention and service if it wants to increase customer satisfaction.

Does the company's smallest customer receive the same attention as its largest customer?
Is the largest customer entitled to more services?
How does the company ensure the right service for the right customers — in a profitable way?

If you break away from one-size-fits-all, you create more happy and profitable customers.

What is a customer account?

A customer account provides an overview of revenues and expenses for each individual customer. A customer account is an effective management tool for leadership and sales when the big strategic lines need to be drawn up.

Sales has a handle on earnings per customer, but often the costs are wholly or partially invisible, including the so-called cost-to-serve expenses.

Why should you create a customer account?

Many sales departments are reluctant when it comes to analyzing their customers. The truth is that if you primarily manage by the top line (Gross Profit), you end up over-servicing the wrong customers — at the expense of more profitable ones.

The company should ask itself: which customers can we not afford to lose? How do we improve the profitability of each individual customer through small changes?

Read how Frederiksen Scientific customer-aligned its supply chain.

The simple customer account

Start simple with a customer account that takes into account the most basic elements.

Revenue

Minus minus costs of goods

Minus direct costs (delivery, discounts etc.)

Minus cost-to-serve

Often the calculation of cost-to-serve is postponed, as the hidden costs are the most difficult to allocate and communicate.

A simple account that includes freight costs and discounts given by salespeople is often a good place to start.

The hidden costs

Costs can be visible and invisible. Examples of invisible costs, better known as "cost-to-serve," are:

Sales visits
Delivery
Development of customer relationships
Account Management
Order handling by phone, web and in store
Customer service/customer support
Transport

Avoid beginner mistakes

It is extremely important to start with as simple an analysis as at all possible.

Many cost-to-serve expenses, for example the costs of a service center, must be shared among multiple customers, and therefore it can be difficult to calculate correctly per customer.

Start with the numbers you can obtain, and make the calculation more advanced over time.

Why spend time on a customer account?

Once all the cost-to-serve expenses have been allocated to your customers, you will be able to draw up a customer account for each individual customer, complete with revenues and expenses.

Beyond the obvious purpose of identifying how much each customer contributes in monetary terms, there are other benefits to working with customer accounts:

Compare individual customer performance against a customer segment, whether based on geographic location, size, or type of company.
You can identify improvement opportunities in customer accounts — for example, whether you can reduce costs on a specific customer.
Compare the performance of your salespeople.

Another important purpose is to segment customers based on their contribution to the company's overall bottom line.

This allows for the development of differentiated customer management strategies that take into account whether a customer is highly profitable and should be defended at all costs, or whether the customer is loss-making and needs to be improved as quickly as possible.

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