The idea of an open dialogue with customers remains more of a fanciful notion than a reality for most companies - yet it is the key to forming a trusting relationship.

Part of the folklore of CRM is the idea of a customer dialogue. The term is constantly referenced in trade articles, industry conferences and vendor pitches as if it actually stood for something - as though it was fact instead of hyperbole. "Our long-term goal is to create a dialogue with our customers", airily proclaims a senior marketing manager in a recent issue of Information Week. "E-mail is a great way to make that happen."

How exactly? By jamming customer in-boxes with personalized newsletters, most of which are the interactive equivalent of a household flyer? What kind of dialogue is that? For most companies, a customer dialogue ends the moment an order is taken. As one longtime direct marketer pointedly observed at a recent permission marketing event, "God forbid the customer should complain."

A dialogue is supposed to be an exchange of information - a conversation. That implies both listening and responding to what is being communicated. How many companies can be described as active listeners? How many companies even care to listen, except when they have a new product in mind? And even then their approach is merely to cobble together a loosely representative focus group to test pre-conceived ideas dreamed up in isolation from the lives of their customers. "Few companies have bothered to look carefully at the broad context in which customers select, buy, and use products and services," writes Patricia Seybold in the Harvard Business Review (May 2001). "As a result, companies have routinely missed chances to expand sales and deepen loyalty".

As fanciful as it may seem, the notion of engaging the customer in a trusting dialogue where they eagerly share information about themselves is an appealing one given the current noise level in the marketplace. Fatigued consumers learned long ago to dismiss overblown claims of brand might. Unless a brand can demonstrate superior value deserving of a price premium, consumers are interested only in securing the best deal for themselves. So what's the best way for companies to be heard above the general advertising din? By learning to listen. By making it easy for customers to voice their opinions and complaints (especially their complaints); above all, by making them a participant in the marketing process. But how to get past their natural skepticism? And how to assure them there's a payoff at the end?

One way is by harnessing the interactivity of the Internet. Web-based surveys, for example, have become a popular method of tapping into consumer opinion due to their instant reach and flexibility (not to mention their low cost). But online surveying is merely an extension of traditional research, an episodic, parochial activity usually funded out of a desire to cushion the landing of a new product launch; it is never part of an interactive customer communication plan where feedback is systematically encouraged (and acted upon!). Even when a survey is embedded in a marketing campaign, say as part of an on-line contest, the information often ends up an orphan dataset, unattached to the main body of the customer file or to previous surveys. The opportunity for a perpetual dialogue that builds on a memory of prior conversations is lost.