This article is an interview with Martha Rogers, one of the world's leading experts on customer-based business strategies and growing customer value. She is an acclaimed author, a world-class speaker, and a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, the world's leading customer-focused management consulting firm.

On a definition of "customer value" - Companies need to realize that products do not account for revenue. Rather, each company has only one source of revenue - each and every customer. We can measure both kinds of customer value - what customers spend today and whether they are more or less likely to spend more tomorrow.

On customers as a company's scarcest resource - Because customers are a company's only source of revenue, the only way to grow a company is to keep existing customers longer, to increase the products or services each customer uses, or win customers from competitors. Therefore, we must think of our businesses not only in terms of ROI on our capital investments, but also in terms of Return on Customer.

On Return on Customer - Return on Customer - ROC - is a financial metric, a managerial tool, and a way of life. It measures the return we get on the customer resource. ROC is a fairly straightforward calculation, and can evaluate the real effectiveness of campaigns, programs and other business and financial decisions.

On technology's role in achieving Return on Customer - Unless you're running a mom and pop store, it's not possible to achieve ROC without comprehensive data management. You have to know as much as possible about each customer across all products, geographies, customer touch points, branches and so forth.

On best practices for allocating costs to customers - In her book, Return on Customer, Rogers explains that customers are a finite resource. Companies can always get more capital, but they cannot make more customers. Once they understand this, they'll see that ROC is as essential as ROI in understanding how to grow customer - and company - value.