No, this is not about online dating.  I am referring to the growing use of consumer scores to help companies determine how much time and energy to invest with individual customers.

We’re all familiar with credit scores that yield a single number meant to reflect how dependably you pay your bills. A high credit score can mean easy access to credit, often at lower interest rates that reflect your low re-payment risk. A poor credit score can mean limited access to credit and loans, in addition to higher interest rates.

The folks behind the credit scores have been relentless in their work to find new markets for their product. With the notion that a credit score is also a reflection of someone’s level of personal responsibility as well, credit information is increasingly used in hiring decisions. You’ll also find credit scores used to determine pricing for such things as automobile insurance, the insurance companies having concluded that if you pay your bills on time, you likely drive carefully as well.

But credit scores are not the only consumer scores out there. In parallel with credit scores, a number of companies have been building out consumer scores based on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). The CLV concept has been around forever. What’s changed recently is increasingly easy access to a wide variety of input datasets (a/k/a/ “signals.") that work to increase the precision of these scores, along with increasing computer power that makes it possible to access and act on these scores in real-time.

And how are these scores used? A recent Wall Street Journal articles suggests that CLV scores are increasingly used by companies to determine how they will interact with their customers. A higher scoring customer may actually get faster and better customer service. Companies will offer bigger incentives and better deals to their best customers in order to retain them. CLV scores start with numeric calculations of the likely dollar value of a customer over the entirety of the projected relationship (and yes, your score typically declines as you get older because … less lifetime). More recently, these relatively simple calculations have been enhanced with demographic overlays and a wide array of lifestyle and even behavioral data points. For example, customers who complain too much or call customer service too often may have their scores reduced as a result.

Currently, companies implement their own CLV scoring systems, sometimes with the help of third-party vendors. CLV scores as a data-driven way to make sure better customers are treated better sounds benign. Where it could take a more worrisome turn is if a third-party vendor tries to centralize all of this information to build a single CLV score for all consumers. This would be a fraught undertaking, especially since it would likely not be subject to any regulatory scrutiny and control. Such a scoring system would also look uncomfortably similar to the social credit system recently introduced by the Chinese government, the implications of which are not yet fully understood but are likely to be profound.