CRM came out of a good insight; we have to know our customer and have an integrated way of dealing with them. But businesses took a good insight and ran it through the standard old logic-that is, it has to be done in a low-cost, automated way. So customers were reduced to an integrated database, and communications were organized around zip codes and postal codes; that’s not a relationship. Businesses asked: How can we exploit that data to sell more and be more efficient, and invade their privacy and manipulate them more effectively? Hundreds of billions dollars have been spent, and no study can show that these investments added to the bottom line. It was the same for reengineering; it was supposed to get you closer to the customer, but it failed. Lower costs, centralization, and call centers also create organizations that are more automated, more distant, and more adversarial. That’s been the pattern over the last 40 years, and it’s created a growing chasm between business and the marketplace. To overcome this chasm and really take the individual seriously, we can’t use the current tools and the current business model. A very big shift is needed.
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