For decades many organizations and professionals have done business with nameless customers. I was just struck by this fact while working with a new client that “sells” to millions of customers a year – including me – and they have no database of these constituents. When two ideas collide in your brain, insights can happen. I have been doing a lot of work around the concept of social CRM, and the capability of an organization to harvest large amounts of information on customers by mining their social profiles. Mix that with the fact that today, restaurants, movie theatres, department stores, grocery stores, and gas stations do business with millions of customers who are completely anonymous for all practical purposes. They provide services – in many cases over and over – to customers yet know nothing about them. They do not even know if the customers have frequented them many times. I suppose that is why some of them will try to use loyalty cards, or punch cards in order to track visits at least.

Doctors, lawyers, CPA’s and other professionals know little more than the most basic information about their patients and clients. They get the names, billing addresses and maybe their insurance providers and that is it. So we trust our health, our wealth, and the fairness in our life to people who know our names, and maybe a few facts about our finances or physical status. For such important roles that they play in our lives, that is very little insight into who we are.
Half of you may be thinking that this is exactly how it should be – mostly because you are privacy bigots. The other half of you may be like me, and you are thinking that it is a shame that I spend lots of money with organizations that have no idea who I am, or what I am about. If you are a privacy nut, you might as well stop reading now because there will not be anything you will care about from here on out. If you think that the world would be a better place if organizations and professionals knew more about me, then read on. Or, if you are unconvinced either way, allow me to provide an example or two…

I get gas at a local convenience store most of the time. Every now and then I have to get it somewhere else, but if I pass the brand of convenience store I use at home I will pick that one on the road. Unless I am on vacation and on the highway where I will always go to a Loves Store. Both of these are large companies with lots of locations and neither one ever communicates with me, nor do they seem to know I exist. I spend literally thousands of dollars with companies like this each year by the way. I also spend thousands of dollars at a couple of grocery stores, and they do not seem to know me either. Nor do any of these seem to appreciate that I am a customer, because they have no ability to communicate with me. If I stopped using them today, none of them would get in touch and try to win me back. They simply open their doors every day and hope people show up, and by the way, they have no idea who the people are that show up, or how loyal they are.

By comparison, I spend much less money with Southwest Airlines and I got a birthday card from them the other day. Amazon reaches out to me regularly and I only spend a couple of hundred bucks a year with them. My doctor never gets in touch to check on me. I only interface with him when I am sick and go see him. Other than that, I don’t really exist to them. My dentist does actually check in online from time to time and I can only put that off to the fact that they know it will increase the amount of visits for cleanings.

With that background, I just wanted to point out that this concept of service providers who do not know their customers is crude, very crude from a marketing standpoint. It will also change. I look forward to the day when the places I get gas, and groceries connect to me online and thank me for filling up, and maybe give me a coupon that will be enabled if I check in on Facebook Places, or Foursquare the next time I am in. Or maybe they start sending notices of pricing changes so I know whether to fill up today, or wait a few days. Maybe even build a relationship with me by providing interesting content and information online.

I don’t care if they learn about me from my social profiles. I only care that they realize I am a good customer, thank me, and reward me for spending my money with them. I care that they communicate things that I might uniquely want to know about. They could learn these things from my social profiles. And if they did, restaurants would know that I don’t eat red meat, and they would only market fish and chicken dishes to me. Would that be so bad?

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com