Why CRM needs VRM

My bank is Washington Mutual. Not that I chose it. My original choice was Great Western, which wasn't great but was a lot more personal than the bank that calls itself "WAMU" (which for me will always be better known as the landmark public radio station in Washington, D.C.). In any case, WAMU ate GW, so WAMU is now my bank. Wamu.com offers online banking, of course. But I rarely use it, because I need to remember a password, and because I know I'll get caught in automated customer disservice loops like the one I just gave up on. It began with a failure to log in. Rather than the customarily helpful failure message, I got this:

Error
We're sorry, your access is now locked. You must call customer service for password reset assistance.
Please call customer service at 1.800.788.7000 (available 24/7) Thank you.

So I called that number. After the insincere fake-cheerful automated call center voice didn't like the sound of the last four digits of my social security number, it promted me to enter the number again. As I paused to double-check something, the voice told me screw myself. Not exactly, of course. What it told me to do was visit the bank website, which amounts to the same thing -- and then hung up on me.

I called back. This time the dialog began with a new call center offer: I could asnwer five short survey questions at the completion of the session. The call center automaton said I would be called at the number I was about to enter, immediately after I was done being "served". So I entered my number and the session proceeded down a decision tree that ended with an inescapable loop in which the system kept asking me to repeat my account number, which it didn't accept. After the call ended, I got no call from the survey machine.

So here we are, with one more perfect example of a system in which

That's one question that comes to mind as markets move beyond transaction (looking for an ROI) and conversation (looking for a sale) to relationship (looking for a necessity beyond either of those two). I'm thinking right now about the Met's philosophy, as Dave has often described it. One sample:

Baseball is a fun exception, a relaxing way to revert to our genetics, a simulation of our past, but we all must know that the world will go on even if the team we love loses. That's the Mets philosophy, we're steeped in love that's not conditional on defeating the other guys. The Mets in the early 1960s were very futuristic in that way.

We're bumping into that future now, when we do business in markets that live on the Net and where employees and customers both have choices about doing business with a company. As Neo said to the Architect in The Matrix (part 2): This is about choice. Decades ago Peter Drucker (the late great prophet of business) said companies existed by the grace of their employees and their customers. It is to those people that companies

Customer service is an itch everyone wants to scratch. But only programmers can scratch it with code. I'm not a programmer, but I'm looking to work with programmers to fix the customer service mess — and to do it on customer terms, not on vendor terms.

There's a development project here. It's the reciprocal of Customer Relationship Management, and one of its main purposes is to relieve CRMs from the need to handle the Whole Thing, which is what they've been doing since the beginning.

What each of us needs is Vendor Relationship Management. We don't have it right now. All we have is what each vendor, in its own silo, provides through call centers related marketing machinery.

What can we build on the customer side of relationships, that will give us a better way to relate to vendors, and will give vendors a better way to relate to us?

I've written about this many times already. Some examples are Independent Identity (and a follow-up Progress Report), The Intention Economy and Turning the World I-Side Out. Now I want to get down to real work. I'm looking for programmers and other interested parties to step forward with some specific ideas.

Some have already. But I'm looking for more, and for more conversation among techies.

My bank is Washington Mutual. Not that I chose it. A few years back it ate the bank that ate my bank (Great Western: a really Okay bank, which today is saying a lot.)
<a href="http://wamu.com">Wamu.com</a> offers online banking, of course. I rarely use it, because I need to remember a password, and because I know I'll get caught in automated customer disservice loops like the one I just gave up on.
It began with a failure to log in. Rather than the customarily helpful failure message, I got this:
Error We're sorry, your access is now locked. You must call customer service for password reset assistance. Please call customer service at 1.800.788.7000 (available 24/7) Thank you. 
So I called that number. After the automated process (with that insincere fake-cheerful your-call-is-important-to-us voice) didn't like the sound of the last four digits of my social security number, it promted me to enter the number again. As I paused to double-check something, the recording told me screw myself (actually it told me to visit the website, which amounts to the same thing), then hung up on me.
I called back. This time it started with an offer to anwer five short survey questions at the completion of the session. The machine said I would be called at the number I was about to enter, immediately after I was done being "served". So I entered my phone number and the session proceeded down a decision tree that ended with an inescapable loop in which it didn't like my account number and kept asking me to repeat it.
After the call ended, I got no call from the survey machine.
So here we are, with one more perfect example of a system in which

That's one question that comes to mind as markets move beyond transaction (looking for an ROI) and conversation (looking for a sale) to relationship (looking for a necessity beyond either of those two).

I'm thinking right now about the Met's philosophy, as Dave has often described it. One <a href="http://davenet.scripting.com/2000/10/21/anOpenHolyLand">sample:

<blockquote>Baseball is a fun exception, a relaxing way to revert to our genetics, a simulation of our past, but we all must know that the world will go on even if the team we love loses. That's the Mets philosophy, we're steeped in love that's not conditional on defeating the other guys. The Mets in the early 1960s were very futuristic in that way.</blockquote>

We're bumping into that future now, when we do business in markets that live on the Net and where employees and customers both have choices about doing business with a company. As Neo said to the Architect in The Matrix (part 2): This is about choice.
Decades ago Peter Drucker (the late great prophet of business) said companies existed by the grace of their employees and their customers. It is to those people that companies