Count the number of companies you pay regularly for anything. Add up what you pay for all of them. Then think about the time you spend trying and failing to “manage” any of it—especially when most or all of the management tools are separately held by every outfit’s subscription system, all for their convenience rather… Continue reading Solving Subscriptions
Category: customertech
We need a Theia
Some prophesies come true. For example, Shoshana Zuboff’s third law: In the absence of countervailing restrictions and sanctions, every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control, irrespective of its originating intention. She forecast that in 1989, with In the Age of the Smart Machine. Then… Continue reading We need a Theia
Putting the R back in CRM
Every customer is familiar with Customer Relationship Management (aka CRM). They meet it when they get personal offers, when they call customer service, or any time they deal with companies that seem to know who they are. Doing this is a huge business, passing $40 billion worldwide in 2018, and expected to be twice that… Continue reading Putting the R back in CRM
What only customers can do
Businesses love to say “the customer comes first,” “the customer is in charge” and that they need to “let the customer lead.” But the customer can’t come first, can’t be in charge, and can’t lead, without tools of her own: tools that give her ways to interact in common ways across all the companies she… Continue reading What only customers can do
The business problems only customers can solve
Customer Commons was created because there are many business and market problems that can only be solved from the customers’ side, under the customer’s control, and at scale, with #customertech. In the absence of solutions that customers control, both customers and businesses are forced to use business-side-only solutions that limit customer power to what can… Continue reading The business problems only customers can solve
Going #Faceless
Facial recognition by entities other than people and their pets has gotten out of control. Thanks to ubiquitous surveillance systems, including the ones in our own phones, we can no longer assume we are anonymous in public places or private in private ones. This became especially clear a few weeks ago when Kashmir Hill (@kashhill)… Continue reading Going #Faceless
Change of Address (√)
Way back in 2006 or so, in the first Project VRM meetings, our canonical use case was ‘change of address’; that is to say, we wanted individuals to have the ability to update their address in one place and have that flow to multiple suppliers. That seemed easy enough, so we thought at the time;… Continue reading Change of Address (√)
Let’s make May 25th Privmas Day
25 May is when the GDPR—the General Data Protection Regulation—went into effect. Finally, our need for privacy online has legal backing strong enough to shake the foundations of surveillance capitalism, and maybe even drop it to the ground—with our help. This calls for a celebration. In fact, many of them. Every year. So let’s call… Continue reading Let’s make May 25th Privmas Day
Privacy is personal. Let’s start there.
The GDPR won’t give us privacy. Nor will ePrivacy or any other regulation. We also won’t get it from the businesses those regulations are aimed at. Because privacy is personal. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have invented clothing and shelter, or social norms for signaling to each what’s okay and what’s not okay. On the Internet we… Continue reading Privacy is personal. Let’s start there.
How customers help companies comply with the GDPR
That’s what we’re starting this Thursday (26 April) at GDPR Hack Day at MIT. The GDPR‘s “sunrise day” — when the EU can start laying fines on companies for violations of it — is May 25th. We want to be ready for that: with a cookie of our own baking that will get us past the “gauntlet… Continue reading How customers help companies comply with the GDPR