The Intention Economy

5

Asymmetrical Relations

CRM … moved from having been brought in as a platform for driving improvements in the customer experience, to being run as a platform for cost cutting and for risk management … in many cases all it did was move the waste/inefficiency on to the customer.

—Iain Henderson¹

THE ARGUMENT

Relationships are two-way. They require consenting parties, absence of coercion, respect, commitment, and other properties that have been largely absent from big business and CRM for the duration. We will not have real relationships between vendors and customers until customers come fully equipped to engage; that is, until there are VRM tools and systems to match the CRM ones.

CRM came into vogue as a label in the mid-1990s, after sales ...