Now here's the Customer Relationship Management angle. I won't dwell on the pecking-order criticism I heard as the Red Carpet Club desk attendant ragged about the concourse agent who didn't know how to book me onto the next flight out. That's apparently enough to insure that I won't take my business elsewhere. My half-million miles have locked me to United, or so they must think. Data mining, which can generate all kinds of marketing tactics, is also confirming customers' threshold of pain.
Service providers are ready to step across that threshold and push it further away.
The customer-complaint horror stories that triggered Federal Trade Commission examinations of Web sales at Christmas time are no worse than the airport experiences that we're being trained to tolerate and accept. My concern is that the declining Web customer care experience will inure us to such treatment. We'll be even more willing to be pushed around online and in the physical world. It makes you think that eCRM providers lurk around a hectic airport gate on a messy Friday night in order to get ideas about how to structure their own systems.