Have I lost it? A contribution to the dbm_rm dicussion group
A contribution to the DBM_RM mailing list I founded and was maintaining at the time.
I don’t know if you read Gerry McGovern’s New Thinking newsletter, but the latest one dealt with customer ownership, owning the future and such like.
What I read couldn’t be left unchallenged, so I wrote back. Now I would like to ask you whether I have lost it completely or whether you, fellow professionals, sympathize with the general notion of my response.
Would love to hear from you.
Helmar
Dear Gerry,
as someone who knows more than just a thing or two about relationship marketing, or as I prefer to call it, Database Marketing and Relationship Management, I feel compelled to respond to your latest NT issue, and challenge you at the same time to publish it in your next issue.
Why? Because nothing in marketing is more misleading and confusing, if not downright dangerous, than to purport (?) and spread the misinformation about ‘customer ownership’.
A largely unachievable, sometimes even false image is being created in the mind of the marketer, leading him down a path to nowhere – unless he has knowledge of the complete picture. But this complete picture is nowhere mentioned when there is talk about ‘customer ownership’ (and such), which to me has become a hollow phrase and buzzword void of any sense and meaning. Allow me to tell you why:
| OWNING THE FUTURE
| =================
| On the Internet, whoever owns the relationship with the
| customer owns the future.
I believe it is high time spreading this nonsense comes to the abrupt end it deserves.
Customer ownership has become the holy grail of marketing, yet none of the oh-so-smart consultants and self-proclaimed marketing gurus realize that ‘ownership’ simply doesn’t exist. Period. The relationship between a company and a customer can at best be one of ‘friendship’, and this implies that it can come to an end at any time for any reason.
(Example: I stopped being ‘loyal’ to BBS systems with the advent of the Internet. Not their mistake at all, just a ‘shift’ making their service irrelevant. The same can happen to any product or service in existence at any stage!)
Moreover, I believe that less than 0.5% of all companies who think that CRM and the promised ‘ownership’ is the way to go actually have both the business philosophy and the necessary infrastructure (in the broadest sense) in place to make anything resembling ‘friendship’ happen, never mind ‘ownership’ and the resulting ‘loyalty’.
| increasingly becoming commodities but relationships can remain
| unique.
That’s mere theory. Theory also says that there is enough renewable energy on this planet, so there’s no need to tap those that do not renew. Reality tells us different, though.
Fact is that a relationship is a relationship. And as much as companies want to believe there is a relationship between a product or a company and the customer, fact is that it’s at best an ‘affinity’, while a real relationship ONLY exists between the customer and another *human being* at the company.
Like it or not, relationships exist between people, and if a company wants to establish such, they need to make sure they have all the elements in place that allow such a personal relationship to grow and prosper. This is often diametrically opposed to profit-maximization!
| For the following reasons perhaps:
| To save time
| To ensure that they consistently get value for money
| To achieve a sense of comfort and security
This is only half-true. The missing element here is: to save money and protect me from economical and social ‘damage’.
By implication, this includes advising the customer NOT to buy something, the very same way a friend advises me NOT to go and see that movie.
| Simple really: To gain that customer’s loyalty. Why does it want
| to gain that customer’s loyalty? So that it can sell more
| products to that customer more profitably.
Aha. Now we come to the bottom of all this: the abuse of the word ‘relationship’ under the guise of wanting to sell MORE. So it’s largely NOT about satisfying customer needs or helping her in her decision-making; it’s about MORE MORE MORE.
No need to tell you that this is exactly what has brought this Planet to its current sorry state, right?
As mentioned above, a real relationship between a customer and a company also means that the ‘company’ tells the customer NOT to buy this or perhaps try something else instead – even from a competitor (unless that company can organize it and thus moving into plain service delivery).
… and respect and openness and honesty! And all this needs to
be mutual in order to work.
| relationship is based on knowledge. Before a customer will
| enter into a relationship with a company, they must feel that
| they can trust that company and the products and services it
| delivers. However, from the company’s point of view,
| establishing trust merely allows them to play the game. To
| win the game in a profitable manner, they must build up an
| effective knowledge base on the customer. Equally, they must
| help the customer acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the
| company, its products and services.
That’s the type of thing folks like Peppers/Rogers are telling everybody that comes their way. But it’s more than that – far more, in fact! Knowledge alone means nothing. The company can have as much knowledge about the customer as it desires, and the customer may have acquired ‘comprehensive knowledge of the company’, but if the human interaction between the two – revolving around trust, respect, openness and honesty – fails, this knowledge is worth NOTHING. This is also why so many companies fail miserably in their CRM efforts, although they have invested millions in technology and training. They just missed a vital element – people.
Companies have to make provisions for a personal relationship to develop, otherwise all the technical sophistication and marketing intent are nothing but a monumental waste of resources – time, money and otherwise. However, it sure keeps CRM companies and consultancies alive.
| plentiful. Every day, information becomes more plentiful, and
| time becomes more scarce. The first thing a customer shops for
| on the Internet is a place that will save them time while
| delivering them the information they require.
‘Require’. The word ‘require’ implies a closed cosmos. But the Internet is an open cosmos, so while you were looking for a special antibiotic that does a little less harm than others to your sick child, you may stumble across Colloidal Silver, this natural, powerful and dirt-cheap agent that kills about 650 viruses without doing harm to the child at all.
Initially you ‘required’ something less harmful for your child; now you found something that not only helps more, but also doesn’t do any damage and is cheaper.
IOW, if you use the Internet, no place that has been set up with the purpose and intent of ‘delivering […] the information [you] require’ actually *does*, because it is a closed cosmos with the specific purpose of directing your attention to what they have to sell, not necessarily what is good for you – or your child.
| save you time while helping you find the information you want.’
| Add to this the fact that Yahoo! is often one of the first
| places a person goes to on the Internet, then you have strong
| foundations for a solid relationship.
Yahoo is a bad example, because Yahoo is nothing but a directory, and nobody at Yahoo is trying to sell you anything. (Banners have long proved to be a waste of money). Sure, Yahoo saves us time, but so do AltaVista, HotBot, … and the right browsing tools such as Opera. ‘Find what you want’ doesn’t apply, because sometimes you only learn from these directories or engines what you really want (and not what you initially wanted) – after a change of mind. (see above antibiotics example)
| Web yet. But people are increasingly spending their time on the
| Web, and time, as we know, is money. Time is the Gold Standard
| of the Digital Age. It is rising in value just as fast as
| Internet stocks are, and will continue to rise in value long
| after many of these stocks have crashed to earth.
Nice semantics. Fact is that 90+% of the world’s online population is using inferior technology (MS Windows) that wastes their time on an unprecented scale, and they surf the Web with a browser (MSIE) that is so one-dimensional, sluggish and inflexible that the expression ‘saving time and money on the Net’ is nothing but a farce.
Linking into this is another interesting aspect: everybody tries to make us spend more time on the Internet. More content, more this, more that. Now firstly this is NOT what in my eyes would qualify under ‘saving time’ and secondly, nobody (except the guys at Fast Company) has grasped that the Net is there not to create more virtual communities and chat rooms, but to co-ordinate and set up the REALTIME (!) meeting of people.
| save time. If you can then offer to me the product, service or
| information that I want in a way that I perceive delivers
| value, you are on the road to building a strong relationship
| with me.
Sound like right from the Peppers/Rogers et al. propaganda pages. 😉 Let’s summarize:
1) [Save time] Nobody really saves you time on the Net, because you are a) most likely using inferior technology and b) all is set for you to spend more time on the Net, rather than “get what is relevant and then log out”.
2) [offer what I want] You don’t know what you want if you surf the Net. Your mind is (or should be) open to new (possible) solutions to the problem or need that made you log on in the first place.
3) [delivers value] The ‘company’ is only interested in selling you more. Cross-selling abounds, but nobody tells you ‘not’ to buy this or generally to spend less than you did before. IOW, the current economic system is often in conflict with the interest and well-being of the individual, unless, of course, people are merely seen as mindless consumption machines.
4) [strong relationship] Now the best saved for last! Relationships also mean communication that falls outside the normal line of ‘talking shop’. Inasmuch as I talk to friends about business, not all communication with my ‘customer manager’, the one I have build that relationship with, will be business-related. As a result, that employee will at the surface be less productive, and soon be axed because the organisation doesn’t encourage making friends. It only encourages making money.
| relationships with its customers, I’d be worried.
So where does that leave a company that largely makes lousy products and that has weak if not non-existent relationships with its customers? Companies like Microsoft, Coca Cola, most pharmaceutical companies, to name but a few….
| its customer relationships, I’d be worried.
But isn’t that what everybody is telling them? “Hey, we are the experts in database management, customer management, this and that; we are the best to do the job for you!”
I have been trying to tell the marketing community for more than 5 years now (see http://www.argo-navis.com/competence/ ) that outsourcing customer management is like giving your wife away to live with someone else, while expecting the relationship to stay intact.
Anyone with an active brain knows that this ain’t going to work – unless, of course, the relationship isn’t one, and you need your wife only for “procreation” – the same way the customer is used only for the same purpose (“procreation of money”), while the word relationship is merely used in disguise.
We need a sustainable economy, because the one that told us to buy more and more (the essence of today’s CRM and ‘ownership’) has brought us to a near-collapse, mental disenfranchisement, social decay and environmental pollution.
A few benefitted to the detriment of many. And if you think that is far-fetched, show me 3 countries on this planet who are successfully building a debt-free, sustainable economy based on a healthy middle class. There ain’t any! Wherever you look, even in Germany, the middle class (and medium sized businesses too!) is slowly but surely disintegrating, and people are
indoctrinated to an extent that it is frightening.
When David Icke in his books mentions the mental prison we are living in, the micro-chipped population, world government, electronic money and all that goes with it, he is has his fingers on the pulse like no other.
CRM, customer ownership, customer loyalty and all that stuff is in its current incarnation nothing but a pawn that feeds the greed and malevolent power of the few who control the many.
It doesn’t have to be like that, because CRM et al. plays a vital role in the new economy; the one that is sustainable, less stressful, less destructive and far more harmonious. But under the present constellation, it will do more damage than good.
| as importantly, for our customers to know us better too. What
| we do with that knowledge – what they do with that knowledge –
| will be the measure of who profits and who doesn’t in the
| future that the Internet is creating.
There you said it without realizing it: it’s all about profiting. It’s not about helping out, doing good, no! It’s all about making money. Thank you very much!
I have been actively involved on the Net for the past 4 years, and I can tell you that although the Net has the power to liberate people, promote commerce, bridge differences and to make friends, I have come to believe that it will soon turn against us like you wouldn’t have dreamt in your wildest nightmares.
Under the guise of saving time, delivering value, offering what one wants and strong relationships, the individual will become a puppet about which EVERYTHING is known to the detail. And inasmuch as folks like Peppers/Rogers and other ‘gurus’ believe that it will benefit people and society, I have long shed this naivety, and now know that the potential good the idea behind ‘ownership’ and ‘loyalty’ could do, it will be used to enslave the individual like never before.
I am now doing all in my power to reverse this scary trend, while it may still take some time before others realize the “beast” and turn against it. What really frightens me is that so few allegedly educated and visionary people have realized that, and that although the writing is on the wall more clearly than ever.
I have seen the enemy, and it is us!