In the past, mass marketers called you at home over dinner, and sent you countless pieces of junk mail, and didn't care how much they annoyed you, as long as some people responded. A CRM company thinks of the customer as the primary asset, so the interests of the company and the customer are more in line. A CRM-focused company does everything to NOT jeopardize their customer relationships. An observation I've made is that the more important you, as the customer, are to a company, the more thorough a privacy statement or the more heavy-duty the security. If customers trust your company, they are more likely to give you information.
Incentives work, too.
If a customer trusts you and you have X to offer, then that customer is likely to answer a few questions for you. When we entered the industrial age 100 years ago, it wasn't because someone thought up a cool new term. And until something major changes and replaces computers and interactivity, customers are going to be the focus. Martha Rogers, Ph.D., is an expert in the rapidly growing field of customer relationship management and electronic commerce. She is co-author of three international best selling business books.