Call centres, CRM and cows: why modern service marketing is not like cattle farming

This article discusses the paradox that while technology should in theory help marketers to communicate more effectively with customers and improve their service, customers feel more alienated.

Call centres, CRM and cows: why modern service marketing is not like cattle farming

Tim AmblerLondon Business School

Technology creates pressures on marketers as well as the tools to relieve them. Reports, communications, planning, analysis and market research are all both more effective and more efficient with IT. Yet while technology should be giving us more time we seem to have less. New digitised skills with segmentation and customer insights should bring us closer to customers and yet customers feel more alienated. This is particularly perverse for service businesses such as catering or travel, which must be close to...

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