Customer loyalty was valued as a very useful metric to assess the value of a customer some fourteen fifteen years ago. Loyalty was defined in terms of time, amount and frequency of a customer in shopping with an organisation. However, it ignores whether such engagement is profitable. V. Kumar and his associates ( Georgia State University ) came up with a new metric to value the customer. It is related to profit generation through a customer in future. They collected transaction database of the customers buying. They also calculated the spending the company does on these customers e.g. say direct marketing costs. They then calculated the gross margin for each product sold. These three pieces of data collectivity led them to a Customer Lifetime Value ( CLV ) metric. Many companies adopted this metric. One telecom company got rid of 1000 unprofitable customers. Those were calling call centres frequently, and each such call cost the company dear. And their total spend on telecom service was lower than the amount the company spent on them. Such customers can go to a competitor, but in that case the competitor too will become unprofitable.