The One to One Future. Building relationships one customer at a time

A few weeks ago, I was perusing my archives and came upon the HBR article, Staple Yourself to an Order which I blogged about [ https://lnkd.in/dUmfeG5 ] because it was impactful to me in the early 90’s and still is today.

Well the archives produced another interesting item this week, the book, The One to One Future Building Relationships One Customer at a Time by Peppers and Rogers. I was in ‘direct marketing’ at the time this book was written and was keen on learning all I could about finding value in our customer relationships. Here are some key quotes from the book (remember it was written in the early 90’s)

• “This book is not about inventing a new way of doing business that will create a paradigm shift. It is about a technology-generated discontinuity that will compel businesses to compete in a totally new way.”

• “In the 1:1 future, you will find yourself competing for business one customer at a time.”

• “A customer should also be valued not on his or her past purchases but according to his most likely future purchase and other transactions – his lifetime value to your firm.” (More on LTV in an upcoming blog post)

• “Never forget that every customer and prospective customer of yours is a human being – an organic, intelligent individual with a constantly evolving set of attitudes and opinions”.

• “Imagine a complex organization of the future able to track individual customers and their transactions”

What thoughts come to your mind as you read just a few of the quotes I selected from the book? Granted this book was written with a marketing bent and some of the discussions are outdated. But fundamentally, isn’t customer experience about building customer relationships one customer at a time? Isn’t this the foundation of a CRM strategy? Don’t we feel more valued when we interact with an organization that knows who we are and values what we spend with them? Are there nuggets from this book we can use in our quest to improve our customer interactions? I think there are!