Olivia: I read a wild statistic from Adobe the other day: 76 percent of marketing decision-makers said that marketing has changed more in the past two years than it has in the past fifty. Jackson: Fifty years? That’s not evolution; that’s a meteor strike. That’s the entire game getting wiped out and restarted from scratch. Olivia: Exactly. And the book we’re diving into today argues that in this new world, most companies are still fighting with bows and arrows. We're talking about Connected CRM: Implementing a Data-Driven, Customer-Centric Business Strategy by David S. Williams. Jackson: Connected CRM. Okay, that sounds like a title straight from the corporate business section. But what you’re saying about the author is what makes this interesting. Olivia: Right. This isn't just theory from an academic. Williams is the guy who, at 25 years old, bought a small data processing company called Merkle. Over the next two decades, he personally transformed it from a tiny firm into a $350 million global CRM agency working with iconic brands. He lived this transformation. Jackson: Ah, so this is a book from the trenches. That explains the reception it’s had—it’s been highly praised by industry executives as a practical blueprint, but some readers find it a bit dense. It’s because he’s not just talking philosophy; he’s giving you the messy, complicated schematics of how to actually do it. Olivia: Precisely. And it all starts with a quote he loves from the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker. Drucker said, "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer." Jackson: To create a customer. Not just to sell a product. That’s a subtle but massive difference. Olivia: It’s everything. And it’s the perfect entry point into our first big idea from the book: The 'Customer-as-Strategy' Revolution.

Jackson: Okay, "Customer-as-Strategy." I feel like I've heard a version of "customer-centric" in every marketing meeting for the last ten years. What makes Williams's take a "revolution"? Olivia: Because he argues most companies are just paying lip service to the idea. They run customer-focused campaigns, but they haven't built a customer-focused business. The entire enterprise framework is still built around products or sales channels. The revolution is when the customer becomes the actual organizing principle of the company. He uses the story of Capital One to illustrate this perfectly. Jackson: Capital One? The "What's in Your Wallet?" people? I just think of them as a credit card company. Olivia: Today, yes. But in the mid-1990s, they were a tiny spin-off from a regional bank, trying to compete with giants like Citibank and American Express. They had no brand recognition, no huge branch network. They looked like they were destined to fail. Jackson: So how did they break through? Olivia: They didn't try to out-bank the banks. They built what the book calls an "information-based strategy." While other banks were focused on pushing a single, one-size-fits-all credit card, Capital One was obsessed with data. They used direct mail not just to sell, but to test. They would send out thousands of variations of offers—different interest rates, different fees, different rewards—to tiny segments of the population. Jackson: So they were running thousands of tiny experiments at once. Olivia: Exactly. They were building a massive, proprietary database about what different kinds of people wanted and how they behaved financially. They weren't selling a product; they were building a detailed, nuanced understanding of the customer. Their business strategy was their customer strategy. The product—the credit card—was just the result of that strategy. And it worked. They went from a nobody to one of the most powerful players in the market. Jackson: That’s fascinating. They built the customer profile first, and the wallet followed. It’s the complete opposite of how most companies operate. They build a product and then try to find people to sell it to. Olivia: And that’s why so many of those companies get disrupted. The book presents these stark, cautionary tales of companies that failed to make this shift. Think about Borders Books. Jackson: Oh, I remember Borders. The comfy chairs, the smell of coffee and paper. I loved that place. Olivia: We all did. But in the early 2000s, when online shopping started to take off, what did Borders do? They decided e-commerce was too complicated, too much of a hassle. So they outsourced their entire online operation. And who did they outsource it to? Jackson: Don't tell me. Olivia: Amazon. Jackson: No. You're kidding. Olivia: For years, if you went to Borders.com, the checkout, the shipping, the customer service—it was all handled by Amazon. Borders literally paid its biggest competitor to learn from its most forward-thinking customers. They handed over the data, the relationship, the entire future of their business on a silver platter. Jackson: Whoa. That’s not just a bad business deal. That's corporate suicide. They were so focused on their physical stores—their product, their channel—that they completely missed that the real asset was the customer relationship itself. Olivia: And it’s the same story for Blockbuster. They saw Netflix as a quirky little DVD-by-mail service, a niche. They didn't see that Netflix was building a direct, data-driven relationship with movie lovers. Netflix knew what you watched, what you rated, what you put in your queue. They were building a taste profile for millions of individuals. Blockbuster, on the other hand, only knew that someone, anonymously, rented a movie and maybe got a late fee. Jackson: They had a transaction, not a relationship. And when the technology shifted to streaming, Netflix already knew what to recommend to you, while Blockbuster was just left with empty stores. Olivia: That's the revolution in a nutshell. You can be the disruptor, who builds their business around the customer, or you can be the disrupted, who builds their business around a product that can, and will, become obsolete.

Jackson: Okay, so becoming Amazon or Capital One is the goal. I get the 'what' and the 'why'. But how? It sounds impossibly complex. Is it just about having the best technology and the biggest data servers? Olivia: That's the big misconception the book absolutely demolishes. The technology is just the table stakes. Anyone can buy software. The real, hard, secret-sauce part of what Williams calls "Connected CRM" is the operating model. It’s about changing the organization's DNA. Jackson: The people part. The part that’s always the messiest. Olivia: The messiest and the most important. Williams has this fantastic line: "Permission is not sponsorship." Just because a CEO nods along in a meeting and says, "Yes, let's be more customer-centric," that's just permission. It doesn't mean they are going to provide the air cover, the budget, and the political will to break down the institutional barriers that stand in the way. Jackson: Ah, the silos. The marketing team has their goals, the sales team has theirs, the service team has theirs, and they often contradict each other. I once had to restart a bank application from scratch in a branch because the online team and the branch team had different incentive systems. It was infuriating. Olivia: The book has that exact example! It’s a classic case of a broken customer experience caused by internal organizational structure. To fix this, you need more than just a shared database; you need a shared understanding of the customer. A shared currency. And this brings me to my favorite story in the entire book: DirecTV's "Heart Program." Jackson: The Heart Program? That sounds... surprisingly warm and fuzzy for a satellite TV company. Olivia: It's brilliant in its simplicity. DirecTV wanted to solve that exact problem of inconsistent customer treatment. So, their analytics team created a model that assessed the long-term value of every single customer. Based on that value, each customer was assigned a "Heart Score" from 1 to 5. Jackson: Like a video game health bar for customers. Olivia: A perfect analogy! And this score was visible to every single employee who interacted with a customer, especially the call center representatives. So, if you called in, the CSR would immediately see your Heart Score on their screen. Jackson: Okay, I'm starting to see where this is going. What did the hearts mean? Olivia: A 5-heart customer was a VIP. They subscribed to premium packages, paid their bills on time, had been loyal for years. If a 5-heart customer called with a problem, the CSR was empowered to do almost anything to make them happy—give them a bill credit, offer them a free movie package, spend an hour on the phone with them. Jackson: And a 1-heart customer? Olivia: A 1-heart customer was a value-destroyer. Someone with a history of bad credit, who constantly switched services to chase promotional deals, and called to complain all the time. If a 1-heart customer called threatening to cancel, the CSR’s script was basically, "Okay, thank you for your business. We're sorry to see you go." Jackson: Wow. That is ruthless and brilliant. It's a shared currency! It’s not some complex dashboard with a hundred metrics. It’s a simple, visual language that everyone from the call center to the executive suite can understand. It instantly tells you exactly how to treat the person on the other end of the line. Olivia: It completely aligns the organization. It breaks down the silos because everyone is working from the same definition of a "good customer." The marketing team knows who to target with retention offers. The service team knows who to invest extra time in. It’s a perfect example of an operating model that makes a customer-centric strategy real and actionable for every single employee. Jackson: It’s like giving your customer service reps a superpower. They have this x-ray vision into the customer relationship. It’s not about technology; it’s about giving people the right information and the right framework to make smart decisions. Olivia: That’s the core of Connected CRM. It’s building the infrastructure—the data, the processes, the organization—that allows you to have a single, coherent conversation with your customers, no matter where or how they interact with you.

Olivia: So when you put it all together, the book's message becomes incredibly clear. The revolution is realizing that your entire business is the customer relationship. It’s not a department; it’s the whole game. Jackson: But the actual transformation, the part that’s not just a slogan on a poster, happens when you create that shared language and a shared set of rules—like the Heart Score—that allows everyone in the company to act on that realization, together. Olivia: Exactly. It’s about creating an enterprise-wide currency for customer value. Without that, every department is just speaking a different language, and the customer is the one who gets lost in translation. Jackson: I think the big takeaway for me, and for anyone listening, is that this is about moving from a mindset of 'what we sell' to 'who we serve.' And the first step isn't going out and buying some fancy new CRM software. It's getting your leaders and your teams in a room to agree on what a 'valuable customer' even means to your business. That's a conversation, not a purchase order. Olivia: That’s so well put. And it makes you think about your own experiences as a customer. It makes you wonder, for any business you interact with—your bank, your airline, your favorite coffee shop—do you feel like a '5-heart' customer, or just an anonymous transaction? Jackson: That’s a great question. Most of the time, it’s the latter. But when a company gets it right, you feel it. It’s magic. We'd love to hear your stories. What's a time a company made you feel truly seen, like a 5-heart customer? Share it with us. It’s fascinating to see this in the wild. Olivia: It really is. It shows that behind every great customer experience, there’s a deep, connected strategy at work. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.