CRM Fundamentals

I recently read a book on customer relationship management, which had very little to do with customer relationship management itself, and more to do with the planning, execution, and ongoing support of a CRM program within an organization. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though it wasn't quite what I was looking for at the time.

More interesting than the content of the book (which was fairly generic - swap in any acronym for "CRM" and it's likely 90% of the information would still apply) was the subtext: there was a constant implication, and many outright statements, that most firms that attempt to implement a CRM program fail miserably.

The primary reason for this, simply enough, is that firms aren't genuinely interested in changing their operations or culture to a customer-oriented approach to doing business. They install a system and do nothing else; or they install the system and adapt it to have the least possible impact on their existing business processes, which is entirely missing the point; or they have a general desire to make a change, but not the willpower and stamina to see it through.

If nothing else, it answers the question: why, if CRM is indeed such a major trend, the way in which companies they handle their customers has shown very little improvement?

Don't Doesn't Mean Can't

The shrinking attention span is often taken to mean that people are, by and large, getting dumber, as they are unable to focus their attention on things for very long. It's generally presented as a fact, though in my search for the source of this information, I haven't been able to find satisfactory substantiation - but more to the point, my sense is that this assumption is merely a dodge used by people who don't have anything worthwhile to say to blame others for not listening to them.

It's particularly true of marketing, as I was reminded when reading a blog in which someone was bemoaning the fact that advertisers are now having to cut commercials back to a mere fifteen seconds because people are incapable of paying attention to a thirty-second spot, which itself was reduced from a full minute not very long ago. Nowhere in this post was there any consideration of the content of the message or it's relevance to its audience - the writer presumed that whatever he had to say was worth listening to and, if people didn't give him their full attention, it's their fault rather than his.

Consider this: time is a far more precious commodity in the present day than in years past and people have learned to spend it wisely, not give it away to anyone who wants it. And now more than in the past, people are selective about what they will permit to take their time. To be clear: if your intended audience doesn't pay attention to your message, it doesn't mean they lack the ability pay attention - it means that you lack the ability to offer them anything that is worth their time.

Statistics presented by educational designers is that the average person can manage to pay close attention to a speaker for a span of 15 to 20 minutes if no audiovisual aids are used to break up the monotony, noting that this duration has not changed significantly since the phenomenon was studied in the 1960s. I'll have to concede that these claims are not well substantiated either, but they seem far more reasonable: a person will give their attention to a television program (in which they are interested) for long periods of time between commercial breaks (which are unwanted interruptions). If anything, the complaint is voiced that there are too many breaks in the content in which viewers are interested.

I'd suggest that the human attention span is much longer even than that, but it likely depends on the presentation method and the level of interest of the audience. The average person can easily become engrossed in a two- or three-hour film, video gamers will play a single session that can go on for six or eight hours, and an avid reader can stay engrossed in a good, thick book for even longer.

And so, the fact that people don't pay attention to advertisements cannot be reasonably mistaken as evidence that they lack the ability pay attention to something that is relevant and interesting - it's just that for most things, especially mass-broadcast commercial messaging, it is neither relevant no interesting. The fact that a person can now recognize that something is irrelevant more quickly likely means that people have gotten smarter rather than dumber in their ability to make a faster decision as to whether a message that's being inflicted on them is worth the time and attention.

To the marketer or designer, understand that if your message is relevant and meaningful, people will give you their attention for quite a long time; and more importantly, that if your message is neither relevant nor meaningful, people won't give you their attention, and they will make this decision very quickly - or said another way, the contemporary consumer can recognize an irrelevant message in less time than consumers of previous generations.

Ultimately, marketers must stop blaming the audience for the fact that they are not paying attention. Alleged lack of intelligence on the part of the listener is merely a convenient diversion for failure of the speaker. And further, so long as you scapegoat the audience, you will likely never seek, find, or accept that the real reason people aren't paying attention likely has more to do with your message, your channel, your timing, your target market, or something other than the human attention span.

Privacy vs. Service

I posted a text scrap from an article about Google's invasion of privacy, which at first seemed a bit disturbing - but as I thought about it, it makes perfect sense that, in order to provide good answers to a search query, it's necessary to know not merely the question, but the querent.

The specific example the author provided was searching for "restaurant between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe." The chief problem with search is that it very often gives you a long list of results that are entirely satisfactory. Considering this very example, a raw list of every restaurant between two points on a map is all you could get based on the question - and you would then need to filter through them yourself, guessing by the names which might be satisfactory, then clicking through to read more to discover whether they are acceptable. It takes a lot of work - which may be OK for some things, but using a mobile device to get a restaurant reservation shouldn't result in a list that gives you a 30-minute chore of sifting through "matches" that don't really match.

And so, to provide a specific answer to that question, Google needs to know what route you're driving, when you'll set out, what kinds of restaurants/cuisine you prefer, whether you have any religious or medical dietary restrictions, how much you prefer to spend on a meal, and the tastes/preferences of other people in your vehicle. This means snooping into your behavior, your medical records, your religious beliefs, your finances, and your associations to other people.

It's a bit disturbing ... at first. But pause to consider this: if someone were to ask you that same question, would you not need the same information to give them a good answer?

• What route are you driving and when will you set out? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that are not along the way, or that they would pass at an inconvenient time or a t a time a given place is closed.
• What cuisines do you prefer? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that the querent would not consider because he doesn't like the food they serve.
• Do you have any religious/medical dietary restrictions? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that don't serve anything the querent can eat for these very reasons.
• How much do you prefer to spend on a meal? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that the querent would not consider because he feels they are too expensive.
• What are the preferences of your fellow travellers? If you do not ask this, you might suggest a restaurant that the querent likes, but that would be objectionable

If you can think of a way to give an unknown person a good recommendation without all of this information, I'm sure Google (and many others) would love to hear from you - but I don't think it can be done. Leave out any of these details, and you're going to give a bad answer.

Arguably, it's because the querent asked you a vague question. An alternate solution would be for people to learn to ask more specific questions that provide the information that the system needs to give them a specific and appropriate answer. So rather than seeking a "restaurant between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe," the querent would have to ask for a "restaurant near Roseville CA that is open for lunch that serves anything except Mexican or Vietnamese cuisine and has Kosher, vegetarian, and gluten-free options and costs under $15 per person."

Search engines have tried, unsuccessfully, to get people to do that for years, using long queries and Boolean flags to ask a very specific question in order to get an appropriate answer - and the long list of results is the user's fault. But most people can't be bothered to do that, and even those that do tend to forget details that they do not realize were relevant until they get a bad answer and end up searching multiple times to get to a list of appropriate options - and because they didn't get a specific answer to a vague question, it's the search engine's fault.

A lot of work is being done, and will continue to be done, to find a solution. It is, as with many issues, a matter of balance between having enough information to give a good answer (how much does a given person spend on lunch art a restaurant) without being too intrusive (upload your tax returns for the past five years so I can figure out how much you're likely to be willing to spend).

The path to arriving at that happy place is not to stop everything immediately, but to continue the trial-and-error process until both sides get it right.

The Wet Blanket Test

I just read one of the strangest suggestions that has ever been offered on the topic of innovation. In a book that intended to suggest to companies how they can break out of business as usual and discover innovative solutions, the author suggested to build an innovation team by assembling a group of people from various disciplines and departments who ... and here comes the horrible bit ... have ten or more years of experience at a company.

On the surface, this might seem an entirely reasonable suggestion - seasoned people have a deep understanding of the firm's practices and culture and should be able to quickly focus on ideas that have the greatest potential. However, there's a reason that firms remain rutted in their present practices - and the reason is typically these very same people. Employees with ten-plus years experience are knowledgeable, but they are very often institutionalized - it's a stereotype, granted, and there are likely some who can keep a fresh perspective after being at the same job for such a long period of time, but it's likely such individuals are unusual, especially in established corporate cultures.

If you've observed or participated in focus groups, you're likely familiar with the mother-hen type who herds the rest of the group away from anything unfamiliar: they'll interrupt someone in mid-sentence with a phrase such as "that won't work here" or "that's not the way we do things at this company" to squelch anything that breaks from traditional practices, until the conversation collapses and other participants stop making suggestions, and the exercise is thoroughly undermined so that no truly new ideas are produced.

This seems to happen fairly often: get a ten-year veteran at a firm in a room with people with less time on the job - even if the others have more experience in their profession or industry - and they smother innovation rather than creating it. Whether it's the desire for others to kowtow to their years of service to the firm or the malicious joy of the barren spinster who shoves a pregnant young woman down a staircase to make her miscarry, the tendency to obstruct others is an ugly and despicable part of human nature, but it's a part of human nature nonetheless that expresses itself, almost without fail, in any group of people.

But to escape the dark quagmire of the psychology of the institutionalized employee as an individual and consider the problem they create for their firm ... being innovative necessitates defining a possible future, unencumbered by the limitations of the past. If you begin by considering what has been done over the past decade, rather than what might be done if you break from the current way of things, then you're looking in the opposite direction to where your future lies.

That's not to say that institutionalized persons do not have a contribution to make to a process of innovation - but absolutely not as part of a team that comes up with fresh ideas. Instead, their value is in following their nature: to smother and destroy any new ideas that don't fit what they perceive to be the corporate culture, and to which tenured employees will refuse to adapt. The tenured employees are the perfect group to assess what ideas will be difficult to implement, because they and their kin are the very ones who will create obstacles and sabotage plans in an attempt to avoid moving form the comfort and familiarity of tradition.

However, their smothering instinct must be mitigated: when an institutionalized employee suggests that an idea won't work, ask the question "why?" and do not accept "it just won't" for an answer. Sometimes, it's just naysaying and cynicism, but other times there is a valid reason that a given idea will not work given the current resources and culture of the institution. Then, dismiss the given - would the idea work if we addressed the factors that prevent it from being viable? Is the organization able and willing to make those changes to gain the potential benefit?

Sifting through ideas and examining all the things that could prevent them from succeeding is a valuable task, but it needs to be a later step in the process of innovation - and to the original point, it's certainly not something to be done at the very beginning, or in a brainstorming session - including the institutionalized insiders will smother innovation before it can even begin.

Pandering to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

One criticism of technology is that it panders to dysfunctional behavior, exacerbating or even creating problems. In particular, it's been suggested that technology feeds obsessive-compulsive disorder and may go so far as to create it in otherwise mentally sound individuals, or at the very least leads them to mimic the symptoms and suffer the consequences.

Perhaps that seems an exaggeration - but consider the mentality of a person who carries a small notebook. Every time he goes anywhere, he makes a note of his route and places a tick-mark on the page with each step that he takes. Every meal he eats is recorded in detail, how much of what things, where he was at the time, what his opinion of the taste and texture of each element. Every conversation he ever has, he writes down the names of people present, the time and place, and everything that was said, verbatim. Every waking moment of his life is cataloged, recorded, and quantified. He goes home at the end of the day and transcribes everything into ledgers, makes charts and graphs, writes a list of prescriptions and admonitions he will follow the next day.

Such a person would be considered unusual, borderline insane, and the very act of recording and ruminating over the minute details of his daily life is behavior that should likely be discouraged. He's not really harming anyone but himself, though likely annoying quite a few, and causing everyone who observes his activities, or to whom he describes his mad plans, wonder if he might be dangerous.

And yet, there's a mobile application for each of the behaviors described above, and more. Granted, the act of recording the details in a notebook is a serious intrusion and impediment into real life, and he could seem outwardly more well-adjusted if the task were facilitated by an electronic device. But it's not the act of recording that is most questionable, but the compulsive need to keep track, and his obsession with the data he collects.

The clinical definition of OCD indicates that behavior is to be considered problematic when people devote an inordinate amount of attention to unnecessary details and, by doing so, cause themselves grief and distress. We tolerate and even admire to some degree a person who is able to accomplish things by being meticulous and attentive to detail - but when they don't seem to be accomplishing anything, yet persist, the behavior is questionable.

Take for example "diet" products and programs that require participants to record their food intake in detail. How many people do you know who are on this program, who have been on this program for a period of years, and who have not accomplished much by it, except to give themselves a task of recording details at every meal, suffer woe and regret over the things they do not allow themselves to eat, and turn any conversation that has anything to do with food into a lecture about calories and "points," so frequently that people avoid mentioning the topic in their presence? I don't think anyone can convince me that this is sane and healthy behavior.

It's worse that this is further encouraged by the healthcare profession, whose consideration of statistics leads them to ignore the patient before them, and instead prescribe medication to treat numeric data when a person is clearly suffering from neither disability or discomfort. And the medication isn't taken to cure a problem, but becomes something the "patient" has to purchase and consume constantly, for the rest of his life.

The alleged point to this obsession over numbers is a desire to understand and ultimately improve the human condition. The numbers impart an arcane knowledge of things that cannot be seen with the naked eye, or might be seen but would normally be dismissed as unimportant unless they could be recorded and quantified (as if the act of recording and quantification imbues some significance onto the insignificant) - but even advocates of this are hard pressed to demonstrate that this obsession with data ever makes possible any real improvement in the vast majority of individuals who are encouraged to obsess.

Aside of my ranting about bizarre and disturbing cultural trends that make people tedious and boring, there lies the question of ethics. I have the strong sense that the future will regard our present obsession with numbers as the equivalent of the dark ages obsession with spirits and demons. Wouldn't "triglyceride" makes fine demon-name?

And isn't this obsession with numbers accompanied by just as much quackery, superstition, and downright stupidity as belief in mystic forces? And is it at all ethical to sell a gullible public various powders, potions, talismans, and other devices that don't even cure the conditions they probably don't even have, but are convinced are important because they are represented by mystic sigils we call "numbers"?

I have the sense this has turned into a rant for the opposite extreme, which was refreshingly purgative, but perhaps muddles the point: to measure what matters and gather data to make an informed decision is a sound practice that leads to a more informed decision and a better outcome. So in some instances, arguably many, it's entirely worthwhile: but when it becomes a pointless exercise - the data doesn't inform any decision, and positive outcomes are not achieved, and when then act of measurement becomes intrusive, it's clearly dysfunctional.