Fast Talk: The State of the Customer Economy

Paul Cole: The technology is part of the problem. The notion that we could automate the whole customer relationship has been oversold by the software industry. The whole CRM thing is a convenient acronym that was created by the software industry to sell applications -- which, for the most part, had no C in them. It wasn't about customers. It was about automating and improving the efficiency of internal employees.

Patricia Seybold: It's not perfect, but technology isn't the problem. All of us around this table have been in the technology game for 20 years or so. We've seen this coming. It's not really revolutionary -- it's evolutionary. In fact, we're getting to the point where a customer can actually design something, have it built to order, and then have it turn up. And a company can actually be fairly seamless across its touch points. If you look at best practice today, it's possible to do business online, in stores, and through kiosks.

Steve Elterich: I think that we became enamored with the technology, and we did a lot of stuff that didn't provide value to people. The idea was, Streaming video is cool! But there really isn't much value in sitting in front of your PC, watching a three-inch-wide screen send you stale data. The assumption was that if we built the technology, the customers would come. But why did we make that assumption? The only reason was that the discussion was dominated by technologists.

Kathy Biro: I think that this is completely the wrong point. Technology defines the art of the possible, but that's all that it does. Look, we just went through this regrettable era. It's like a really bad love affair, and there were drugs involved, and you don't want to talk about it. I used to have to read the Wall Street Journal first thing in the morning, because I knew that there would be a story -- or 3 stories or 10 stories -- about two boys and a dog who had just started another company that does some winking, blinking, Java-based thing, and by 9 AM, some Fortune 500 CEO would be on the phone screaming at me, "Get me one of those!" But the fact is, you can't be held hostage by two boys and a dog!

Jeet Singh: As a technology vendor, I need to make two points. First, technology has serendipitous benefits that people don't recognize until later. You think the technology is going to enable one thing, and so you employ it. In fact, once you start to use it, the benefits show up in a completely different place. So the law of unintended consequences is at work. Second, for the first time in my career, my industry is in a position where our customers are begging us -- and, in some cases, hammering us -- to come up with more technological features. In the past, we would come up with a neat piece of technology, and then we'd have to try to figure out if there was a customer who wanted to buy it. Now the pressure is coming from the outside. We're being told by our customers, "Just give it to us, because we already know what we want to do with it!"

Kelly Mahoney: At Staples, we're involving our customers before we purchase enabling technology. For example, before we develop tools on the Web site, we talk with our customers through a variety of channels. We send the sales force out on the street to get a sense of our customers' needs. We talk to 2,500 customers a month, just to find out which tools they want. In fact, our customers are the codevelopers of our Web site.

Steve Elterich: We've been in the electronic-information business for years, and our customers are well prepared for that. We have a lot of capability; our problem is figuring out how to make sense of that capability. We offer 4,100 mutual funds from us and from all of our competitors. How do you take all of that information and make it sensible for an individual so that he can make important decisions about his house, his kids' education, his retirement?

Angel Martinez: The problem that I see is that we're so enamored with providing what we need to fulfill the transaction, we forget to provide what we need to have in order to build a relationship. Ultimately, customers want a relationship with a brand that reflects their attitudes -- whether that brand is Fidelity, because it gives them peace of mind, or it's Reebok, because it makes them feel cool. Consumers want to invest in that relationship.

Kathy Biro: The Web is still like a bubble-gum machine. You go up to it. It doesn't know if you've been there 50 times before or if this is the first time. If nothing comes out of the machine, you send a note to an address. It's one transaction at a time. Usually, there isn't even a data-driven understanding of the customer. And there's no relationship.