RELATIONSHIP TECH

Make customers as smart as you are.

For every effort a firm makes in educating itself about the customer, it should expend an equal effort in educating the customer. It’s a tough job being a consumer these days. Any help will be rewarded by loyalty. If you don’t educate your customer, someone else will–most likely someone not even a competitor. Almost any technology that is used to market to customers, such as data mining, or one-to-one techniques, can be flipped around to provide intelligence to the customer. No one is eager for a core dump, but if you can remember my trouser size, or suggest a movie that all my friends loved, or sort out my insurance needs, then you are making me smarter. The rule is simple: Whoever has the smartest customers wins.