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26 Sep 2000
Dear Dr. Ecommerce:
I am working on a project concerning eCRM. Do you know any good sites
on this topic, and what do you think will be the future in eCRM.
Ypsilon
Dear Ypsilon:
I've just called up the Google search engine, typed in "CRM" and came up with the following useful seeming resources:
Internet.com's
library on CRM
ZDnet's
CRM Resource centre
My feelings about CRM are mixed. It is clearly a useful tool and having a greater knowledge of the customer in order to give the customer what she wants - provided her privacy is protected - is a seemingly good thing. Unfortunately, I do have a concern about privacy. We seem to be giving it up all to easily and I expect our children will not have the same notion of privacy that we have. For them it will be perfectly normal that business and government knows a great deal about what they do every day. Of course, government and business won't be aware of them as individuals. Our children will simply be reference points in gargantuan databases. But those databases will know our children intimately.
My other concern is that when you use a lot of tools to analyse customer habits, customer needs and customer wants in order to develop a product or a service, you leave creativity out of the picture. Look at some of the most interesting consumer products and services developed over the past century: television, ICQ, telephones, roller blades, hoola hoops, birth control pills, rubik cubes, CDs, and yo-yos (just to name a few products off the top of my head). These were not devised from substantial customer research and analysis. They did not involve focus groups or surveys. They resulted from the creative inspiration of a person or a small group. All were wildly successful - albeit some only for a short period of time.
Unfortunately, today we seem to rely more and more on analysing tools rather than creativity and inspiration. And too many great ideas are being diluted to become merely good ideas following excessive research and analysis.
This is not to say the CRM and other tools are wrong or inherently bad. They are very useful. But it is critical to also allow some room for the imagination.
All the best,
Dr. Ecommerce
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