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VRM meets CRM

CRM Magazine has devoted much of its May 2010 issue, including its cover and lead stories, to VRM and the growing power of individual customers, within which VRM is one vector.

Naturally, is also covered, since it pointed in this same direction, long ago.

This is an impressive move on the part of the CRM Magazine folks, and I hope the industry it covers follows its lead.

I put up a longer post about this over at the ProjectVRM blog. Read the rest there. And if any of ya’ll have a hard copy of the magazine, please save it, since I haven’t seen one yet and would like to collect a few in any case.

Meanwhile, a high five to Tara Hunt, who introduced the CRM Magazine folks to VRM, and got the ball rolling with then.

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Doc Searls

4 responses to “VRM meets CRM”

  1. chip Avatar
    chip

    Good stuff and I’m starting to circulate to staff
    Even though we aren’t consumer facing, our role as middleman make many of these ideas important

    Keep up the good work(s)

    Ciao
    Chip

    Reply
  2. Seth Finkelstein Avatar
    Seth Finkelstein

    This actually ought to tell you something about who will benefit. Hint: These sorts of magazines are serving a certain constituency.

    Ooh, look at this:

    “Vendors could request to “follow” the customer’s data; the customer then “approves” a vendor to follow her and get updates when she, say, updates her mailing address, gets a new credit card, or even gets married. “The individual gets better backing and control of [her] data,” he says, starting with nonsensitive data and gradually expanding to personal Requests for Proposals. “This takes CRM—and the Internet—one step further,” he says.”

    Customers will be *empowered* to UPDATE VENDOR DATABASES! Yay – that’s giving back “control” to the customer (sarcasm).

    Reply
  3. Crosbie Fitch Avatar
    Crosbie Fitch

    Seth, I do try to point out from time to time that the idea of giving people control over their personal data is like giving people control over the reproduction and use of their published works. It’s an appealing prospect, but destined to replace the quest for the philosopher’s stone as a lesson in folly for future generations.

    The individual is in control of their body, their private domain and their voice, their will as to what they authorise to publish, their choice as to what of it they endorse, and their word as to their current knowledge, thoughts and beliefs.

    That is naturally sufficient and ample.

    To pursue the supernatural control of information or intellectual works in others’ possession is to chase after 18th century privileges we should now recognise as obsolete anachronisms at best, and instruments of injustice at worst.

    Corporations may have been allowed to become monsters, but you do not reign them in by seeking or pretending to possess supernatural powers to control the information they hold. And finding some of them to meekly acquiesce to such pretence is to find accomplices in a charade.

    Unfortunately, as you know, some quests have a holy guarantee of success, and those embarked upon them do not take too kindly to detractors.

    You’re familiar with censorship of evil being divine and consequently guaranteed to succeed.

    The belief that people must be able to control their personal data enjoys the same divine beneficence.

    Reply
  4. MaureenHaigh Avatar
    MaureenHaigh

    Great to hear about the onset of vendor relationship management. There’s a great deal of dialogue between the CRMs and VRMs lately. Who should be more in control? Will this change everything? Its a new tug-of-war altogether. Who’s renting? and who’s keeping tabs on who? I like to see how this all plays out.

    Reply

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