If you really want customers to keep coming back, then toss out those glossy brochures from vendors looking to sell you the latest in CRM software. Customer loyalty does not stem from clever stratagems to collect every conceivable piece of data from customers and then cross-sell them something they don’t want, says Fred Reichheld, Boston-based Bain & Co. director emeritus and Bain fellow who has studied the topic.

In fact, the very concept of customer relationship management is misguided, Reichheld argues. Companies shouldn’t try to manage loyal customers, he says; long-standing relationships arise from trust gained over many transactions, and they are sustained by customers’ belief that the company wishes to keep them around rather than drive them away.

"CRM is manipulation in too many cases. Companies are acting on information of customers against their interests?calling them at home at night, charging them at the highest price point [that CRM software shows they will pay]," says Reichheld, author of two books on loyalty, including Loyalty Rules (Harvard Business School Press, 2001). "Loyalty means listening to your partner, creating mutual satisfaction."

Customer loyalty seems like a quaint notion in the Internet age, when customers can search out lower prices and defect to competitors with a mouse-click. Yet Reichheld’s research has found that in the faceless online market, customers yearn for trustworthiness more than ever. Give it to them and they’re yours forever, he says. That kind of loyalty is immensely valuable: Reichheld’s analysis shows that a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates results in a 25 percent to 95 percent increase in profits. Clearly, customer loyalty is too central to companies’ fortunes to be left to the marketing departments alone. And with technology so important in determining retention?or customer disaffection, if technology is improperly used?CIOs have a role to play. "If I were a CIO, I would really want to start to influence customer data," Reichheld says. This influence can take two forms, he says: a redeployment of CRM software and the creation of entirely new metrics for customer loyalty.

Shooing Away Butterflies

CRM is not altogether awful, in Reichheld’s view. It’s just that, too often, the standard CRM practices lead to vexation or worse from customers, not loyalty. Not many people enjoy being inundated with telephone calls and mailings from a vendor and its marketing affiliates. There is a good and virtuous use of CRM, however. "One of the best things you can do with CRM technology is find out who the valuable customers are?those who are staying, not just any customer willing to accept your offer to switch [from a competitor]," says Reichheld.