““Despite the “R” in CRM and the $11 billion spent on CRM software annually, many companies don’t understand customer relationships at all. They lack relational intelligence —that is, they aren’t aware of the variety of relationships customers can have with a firm and don’t know how to reinforce or change those connections. They may be very good at capturing simple demographic data—gender, age, income, and education—and matching them with purchasing information to segment customers into profitability tiers. But this is an industrial view of customer relationships, a sign that many firms still think of customers as resources to be harvested for the next up-sell or cross-sell opportunity rather than as individuals looking for certain kinds of interactions.””
