From what I can see, CRM can never deliver its hoped-for benefits because of a series of intrinsic, structural flaws in the ways it gathers and uses personal data. In the new digital environment, I suspect marketers are going to have to recalibrate and redirect their customer data strategies - progressively reducing their reliance on data collected about customers behind their backs, and increasing their reliance on information elicited from them ('Volunteered Personal Information' or VPI for short).
Of course, this begs the question: "why should I bother?" The equally obvious answer is: "because there's something in it for me". In other words, the data relationship with customers needs to be redesigned to deliver a) a win-win value exchange and b) trust.
I've written more about this for MyCustomer.Com here. For more about research which values the emerging market for VPI and its likely evolution go here.
Alan Mitchell www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
