Debate of the month

AdMedia, August 2000

Keen to spark some debate over data mining and customer relationship management, AdMedia asked one of the veteran campaigners in the one-to-one field, Rob Davis, to come up with a couple of questions.

Then we put them to  Andrew Segar, Datamines' Toby Green, Atlantis Marketing's Campbell Greer, and Saatchi strategic database planner Sally Carey.

Question Number One:

Despite widespread implementation of CRM, it would appear anecdotally that customer relationships are still as bad as they ever were - customer are ever more cynical of utilities, telcos still fail to mind your individual needs... Is CRM working ? Or is it now just allowing us to scientifically ignore our customers ?

Replied by Andrew Segar:

It's clear that while the CRM products are becoming more readily available, and cheaper - read there are now more of them - their use is still dependent upon people embracing the concept of relationship marketing. The same old issues still cause problems. Most organisations struggle with what is a customer, never mind who are your customers or who are your advocates ?

Organisations that are led by people that understand the power of relationship marketing will invariably implement great CRM. It's really simple. For CRM to work management must believe in it, embrace it and not simply play lip-service to it. Then this belief must be transferred to frontline staff who also must believe in it.

The trick here is to keep it simple, don't try to change the world overnight, and don't load extra work on people. Technology doesn't deliver CRM, people do. Software, like Brains is just the tool.

Question Number Two:

Data mining is not some new marketing methodology. It is something that as astute business people we should have always been doing - revisiting the requirements of our existing customers ("data") and developing new ways in which we can help them ("mining"). What are "miners" doing we haven't done before ?

Replied by Andrew Segar:

Data mining is a fancy name for someone applying brain cells to data to try and work out what they should already know. The software costs a fortune, is difficult to implement and only delivers as well as the person driving it. There is no holy grail here. In our experience with countless databases, detailed analysis, even with a basic tool like Microsoft Access, is straight forward enough. It's a matter of understanding the product/services and the customers.

Normally there are relatively few variables available anyway to "mine". Someone has to ask the basic questions. Once you know the answers to the first cut of questions, you need brains cells to ask other more revealing questions. Data mining software hasn't got any brain cells. Forget the data mining software and get a human being with brain cells.

To view the whole article, click on the picture above.