They are unable to grasp the concept of ’social’ being a many-to-many model, an infinite multitude of one-to-one relationships, where each ‘one’ matters. ‘Mass’ is a thing of the past, this is the 21st century (Hello!?!). ‘Social’ today means that I need a million versions of my product personalised for a million individual cuatomers. I need a million-line pricelist, one for each customer, to charge him/her what I should. And (this is tough to swallow!) I need to allow (not just allow: invite and reward!) a million strangers to mess with the way I run my business. To empower them to design and even produce my products, market and sell them, and porvide customer care and support to one another.

When I first used ‘CRM 2.0′ some 3 years ago, behind the sarcastic referral to the Web 2.0 fad was a view of changing meanings of all 3 letters of the tired acronym. Customers are now more than that, converging with other stakeholder entities like Employees and Investors. The Relationship becomes an intricate mesh of one-to-one-s; and Customers are no longer Managed, they increasingly take the driving seat and Manage – relationships and a lot more…

Just my $ 0.02 on a complex, but worthy and IMHO historic subject.
Season’s greetings and best wishes for a (truly) social 2009!

John, if VRM isn’t good for sellers as well as buyers, it won’t work. That’s why it’s called relationship management.

CRM systems are all about “improving the customer experience” already. VRM is about the same thing, but from the buyer’s side. They meet in the middle and cooperate on terms that work for both.

Same is true if no CRM system is involved. You don’t need CRM to do VRM. I just brought it up to talk about reciprocity and positive-sum engagement.

Free customers are more valuable than captive ones because they are able to bring far more to the seller’s table. Better information is just one of many variables. Better demand is another. Most sellers who do captive customer maintanence (the ones trying to “acquire”, “own” and “lock in” customers) don’t see the money they leave on the table. They only see the forms of demand they allow themselves to see. This blindered approach becomes self-justifying, because all information outside of it is ignored.

As for making VRM attractive to business, that’s a challenge. I think that PayChoice is one avenue. There will be others as well. Personal RFPs are money waiting to be taken. Advertising and other forms of guesswork are expenses waiting to be reduced. VRM can do that.