CEM Is Alive and All Too Well

Isn't it comforting? The entire marketing superstructure — retailing, media advertising and online promotion — is shot through with customer elimination management.

In the pages of this publication, over a period of years, I've complained (well, make that ranted) about that strange and elusive goal, customer relationship management, which through its enforcement by overpaid enforcers invariably becomes just plain customer management. Relationship? That's up to us peons, if we can break through the “management” blockade.

So the wobbly superstructure totters on terminology rather than relationship. Result: “relationship” disappears under the bulky mass of “management.” Voilà! Springing up in the detritus of “relationship” is reality: “elimination.”

This was driven home to me when, responding as the yokel I am to the lure of television glamour, I ditched my trusty cell phone and replaced it with a sleek, expensive and not quite as efficient Razr V3, complete with that goofy-looking “Bluetooth” earpiece, whose name always reminds me of something that went wrong in the dentist's office.

The guy at the store suggested a new package which would combine my BlackBerry with the cell phone and save me a few dollars. Great. I left the store with only mild buyer's remorse.

Mildness turned to heaviness when I found the BlackBerry no longer worked at all. Oh, correction: It worked enough to deliver this message: “Data connection refused.” I called the store. The fellow I had dealt with, Dave (they all seem to be named Dave, don't they?), said, “Gee, I don't understand it. But of course I'm not a BlackBerry specialist.” I pointed out that he was enough of a specialist to eliminate access, using just that word “eliminate” as I sensed a case of CEM developing.

You undoubtedly have had the same experience asking for “expert” advice I have. In direct marketing the advice might be “Create a strong selling message” or “Market to your best prospects” or “Stay out of trees.” For anything computer-related, expert advice invariably is “Turn the thing off and then back on.”

That was Dave's sage advice before he gave up, suggesting I call an 877 number. In turn I suggested with some vigor that he make that call, since he was the prime mover in the destruction. Nope. Me or nobody. So on to the next CEM station, an unsurprising 20-minute wait.

Enough. I called Dave again. This time he wouldn't take my call. He was there but wouldn't pick up the phone. Note, please, this was midday, not lunchtime. Invisibility is a winning factor when driving hard to be the Lance Armstrong of CEM.

No point carrying this tale any greater distance, other than to report the conclusion: another 20-minute wait, an “Oh, you should talk to a BlackBerry specialist,” an eight-minute weight, and then a discussion with a pleasant and patient representative (who admitted he was based in Argentina), and BlackBerry restoration. But Dave has scored a permanent stain: excellent CEM.

A major bookseller joins the CEM brigade. Planning a trip to the frozen northland next year, I figured I'd include Iceland, a country I hadn't visited for some 25 years. So I need a Lonely Planet guide to Iceland, don't I?

Barnes & Noble, here I come. Barnes & Noble, here I go — to Amazon, because I can get an AK-47 assault rifle easier than getting a book from you. The book sits there on the screen, tantalizing me. It's $17.99. OK until I move to checkout, where CEM seems to be epidemic.

I'm a returning customer. At checkout, I'm asked for a password. Password? If I had one, I don't remember what it might be. I do wonder why the %$#@ I need a password to buy a book. Oh, well…uh…what's this? “Please enter the last five digits of any credit card currently associated with your Barnesandnoble.com account. A link will be sent shortly to help you create a new password.”

Do any of these CEM Masters (Grade III) give a rat's behind about the customer's time? At my current pay scale of $3 per hour, I had spent about a third — $1 — trying vainly to buy an $18 book, which already was a budget-buster because acquiring it would eat up six hours of my dishwashing labor at Denny's.

One more, and then I'll go off the Prozac until next month. Here's BellSouth, whose giant postcard offers me high-speed Internet access. I have wireless, but I'm always open to a deal. Hey, it's just $24.95 a month.

Or is it? Sigh: The usual mice-type. “Quoted price for residential FastAccess DSL Lite ($32.95 for FastAccess DSL Ultra, $42.95 FastAccess DSL Extreme…Taxes and additional charges apply. BellSouth imposes a Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee of $2.97/month.” Whee! Nice job, fellows. You've not so gently pushed the cost well above what I'm paying for faster-speed wireless, and what's this? “We'll rush our user-friendly start-up kit.” So I have to self-install, when the wireless company handled the hookup without a whimper? Welcome to professional-level CEM. In fact, that tasteful “Taxes and additional charges apply” adds a maestro patina.

All right. I know I'm fighting windmills, but maybe — just maybe — some marketer will read these words and say to himself, herself or itself, “Maybe — just maybe — if I made a straightforward offer, and what I'm offering is easy to buy, I wouldn't attract so many gripes from lost customers who wasted 20 minutes at checkout or while trying to connect with what we so cynically call a “customer care representative.”

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (www.herschellgordonlewis.com) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. His 29th book, “Open Me Now,” was published last year. Another recent title is his new personal favorite, the curmudgeonly titled “Asinine Advertising.” Among his other books are “On the Art of Writing Copy” (third edition), “Marketing Mayhem” and “Effective E-mail Marketing.”