The document discusses how captive customers are bad for business and advocates empowering customers through tools that allow them to manage their own data and relationships with vendors. It proposes giving customers tools to send personal requests for proposals to markets, set their own prices, and assert their own legal terms. This concept of "Vendor Relationship Management" or VRM would create "free customers" who are more valuable to business than captive ones. VRM tools could include personal data stores, personal RFP systems, and fourth parties to assist customers. The goal is for sellers to have to genuinely deal with empowered customers, as free markets work best with free customers.

1. 1
The Liberated Customer
is Good for Business
Doc Searls • @dsearls • 16 September, Emerce

2. The captive customer
is bad for business.
2

3. We still believe the best
customer is a captive one.
Our language gives it away.
3

4. This is the language of what?
4

5. 5

6. We’ve built business
to work like this:
Even on the Web.
In fact, especially on the Web.
6

7. The Web we know
is “client-server.”
7
It looks like this:
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more

8. Think of a Web server
as one of these:
8
Server

9. Think of a Web client
as one of these:
9
Client

10. Now think of client-server
as this kind of relationship:
10
Client
Server

11. In the Web marketplace,
it looks like this:
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more

12. Each company has its own set
of cow-calf relationships:
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more

13. Helping manage this is a $16b
business called CRM:
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more
Server
Client Client Client Client Client Client
Billions
more

14. 14
Client-server also causes weird
legal effects, such as this stuff:
You agree we aren't liable for annoying interruptions caused by you; or a
third party, buildings, hills, network congestion, rye whiskey falling
sickness or unexpected acts of God or man, and will save harmless rotary
lyrfmstrdl detections of bargas overload prevention, or in the event of
random siding management retrenchments, or Elvis leaving the building.
Unattended overseas submissions in saved mail hazard functions will be
subject to bad weather or sneeze funneling through contractor felch reform
blister pack truncation, or for the duration of the remaining unintended
contractual subsequent lost or expired obligations, except in the state of
Michigan at night. We also save ourselves and close relatives harmless
from anything we don't control; including clear weather and oddball acts of
random gods. You also agree we are not liable for missed garments, body
parts, or voice mails, even if you have saved them. Nothing we say or
mumble here is trustworthy or true, or meant for any purpose other than to
feed the fears of our legal department, which has no other reason to live.
Whether for reasons of drugs, hormones, gas or mood, we may terminate
this agreement with cheeful impunity, and there’s not a damn thing you
can do about it.
Accept.

15. Thesis: Free customers are
more valuable than captive ones.
15

16. So how to we
get cage-free customers?
By giving them tools.
Such as…
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17. 17
Give them tools for sending “personal
RFPs” to whole markets on the fly.
For example, send a message saying you need a 200w 220-
>110 converter
in Amsterdam on a Sunday afternoon…
— without giving any more than the required information.
Scott Adams calls this “broadcast shopping.”

18. 18
Give them tools for managing relations
with whole market categories.
This is loyalty on the customer’s terms.

19. Provide tools that let customers
set the prices they’re ready to pay.
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And to escrow those payments at banks
and other financial intermediaries.

20. 20
Provide tools for collecting and
managing data from many sources.
We call these Personal Data Stores
(or vaults, or lockers)

21. 21
Provide ways for customers
to assert their own legal terms
And to provide easy ways for both sides
to make agreement as equals.

22. Develop new forms of signaling,
such as r-buttons:
The red button on the site’s side is a signal that says,
“We’re open to dealing with you on your terms.”
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23. Develop 4th
parties,
to assist demand.
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24. 24
We call this VRM, for Vendor
Relationship Management
— Is how each of us manages relations with them…
at least as well as they think they’re relating to us.

25. 25
VRM is a counterpart of CRM.
VRM
CRM
It can work together with CRM.
Or without it.
Either way, sellers will have to deal for real with
empowered customers.

26. Personal Data Stores:
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27. Personal RFPs:
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28. VRM technology providers:
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29. Oher VRM businesses:
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30. Free markets work best
with free customers.
That’s why The Liberated Customer is good for business.
We’re going to get them anyway.
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31. Let’s talk.
http://projectvrm.org
doc@searls.com
@dsearls
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