So I’m writing this feature for RCI Ventures magazine – destination customer satisfaction.  how to measure it – then how to act on the results.

I’m a big, big evangelist for listening to the voice of the customer. I remember back in 2001 having a great conversation with Trey Orta, the then CIO of Cendant Corporation, about the mandatory inclusion of a future-focused CRM strategy in any medium sized organisation.

Customer Relationship Management has been in the ascendancy ever since. Everyone does it. Simply, it’s about taking your customer database to the gym. Working out customer lifecycles and segments; building personas, working on lifestyle demographics to eke out every last drop of intelligence you can find about what makes your buyer folks tick.

Today we’ve got strains on a common theme, including customer experience management, that goes a little further into the R&A side of mining the data.

But essentially what it’s all about is knowing your most beloved asset – the guys and gals who pay your wages, who buy your buns and squeeze your melons.

The only reason it’s so complicated these days is scale. Everything’s so big. Everything is sated only by big profits, organisations have big staffs to orchestrate the big machinery that makes the even bigger cars.

So thank the lord we have people like Sallie Burnett (@sallieburnett), president of Customer Insight Group and Jeffrey Henning (@jeffreyhenning), CSO and co-founder of Vovici, to help us figure it all out. Sallie’s mandate is to understand the minutiae of customer behaviour to rationalise your profit base. Jeffrey’s gunning for the data by working on enterprise level feedback and community solutions. Together they are two of the most influential people in the success of your business. Only chances are you haven’t met them yet.

I suggest you do.