Let's not forget that there's more than conversation going on. You notice what he's wearing and the body language he uses to communicate. You feel the strength of his handshake. You're using your other senses to provide context for the conversational data. These same concepts apply when we profile our customers.
Companies tend to put blinders on when they evaluate customers.
These blinders let them understand the customers only as they immediately relate to a product or service. If you're an online publisher, you know what your customers read, how frequently they return, which ads they click on, and whatever other data you've collected from their registration profiles or server logs. All of this is important for creating new products, making site improvements, and establishing customer satisfaction programs. But this can't be the only data you use to define a customer. Return to the imaginary party.