Article: It's a matter of regaining trust in technology

Australia's The Age publication has a very interesting article on trust and customer relationships. Many businesses have sadly let their customers down and have destroyed the trust that is essential to taking advantage of advanced customer relationship management.

It's a matter of regaining trust in technology - Next - theage.com.au:
"It is not only a problem for the paranoid, because according to Longstaff, 'There has been a precipitous decline in trust in everything because of the public perception of the gap between what someone says and what they do. In terms of technology the gap between what technology promises and what is delivered has been apparent. And the gap between a promise and delivery always gives rise to a decline in trust.'

CRM technology has battled one of the biggest such gaps - because the slick marketing promises of vendors were not easily or cheaply delivered, and only now, several years after the first expensive systems went in, are CRM systems delivering on those promises. Julian Beavis, a vice-president of Teradata, which sells data warehousing and CRM tools, acknowledges that, 'The industry is renowned for grossly simplifying what it takes to do this'.

'It has gone some way to regaining its credibility, and people like the National (Australia Bank, which won an award for its database system in 2003) are making it work.

'The fundamental thing to make CRM work is trust, and that has been squandered, and now we have to get it back,' Beavis says. Getting it back, he believes, will require consumers to experience an alluring level of service underpinned by CRM, which will entice them and eventually rebuild their trust."