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Whenever and wherever a customer interacts with an organization, Me2B Leaders understand and apply the history of the relationship to each interaction. They know which products and services the customer has today and has purchased in the past. They know the history of touch points with that customer across all channels – retail stores, online, customer care centers, social media, in-person meetings, and any other point of communication.

Tracking customer-initiated interactions is important, but the company equally needs to track its own outreach. Wherever possible, it's also useful to know not just when something happened but the details of the interaction. For example, it's somewhat helpful to know that a customer called yesterday. It's very helpful to know that they called to complain and then declined the agent's proposed solution. It's also important to know if they left a comment online or in a forum or at the hotel concierge desk, and then sent e-mail message about the same unresolved issue.

All of these dots, to use the industry term, should reside in a central information database, but most important is that they are current, relevant, and available during all other touch points along the way. For example, someone who has just spent twenty minutes brooding over an online purchase and then calls the sales center loves it when the sales agent greets them by name and says, “Looks like you've been exploring our new product; how can I help you?” For once, it isn't necessary to start from scratch.

Bad Stories: Fractured Communication

The age of CRM software in the cloud makes it readily accomplishable to “know me everywhere and all the time,” yet many companies aren't set up for it. For example, a leading travel retailer in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia has grown dramatically in recent years through great service and competitive pricing. Despite that success, it has a giant hole in its ability to know the customer: Each store still runs an independent booking and customer database. Change stores and the relationship starts from scratch. This can get awkward since customers can't check on bookings at other stores and each store only knows about its own transactions with this customer. As a result, this model runs the risk of delivering less-than-perfect customer experiences. The disconnected system may be working for the company now, but leaves it vulnerable to a competitor that provides great travel service and knows its customers wherever they choose to connect.

We could list many organizations where the branch, contact center, and Internet channels have limited or even no visibility to each other. For example, when David went into a retail store with the intention of purchasing a phone, he was told that no special offers were available for him. Within twenty-four hours, the same company called him offering special deals on new phones if he renewed his contract. David explored this with company management, who admitted that the offers were not shared across the channels and that the call center had no way to see branch conversations and vice versa. In this company, the channels were so separate that products and discounts weren't available consistently. We have seen examples in utilities, banks, insurers, and health insurers where the offers were different by channel and no one could tell what offers were available elsewhere.

Good Stories: The 360-Degree View

Banks such as JP Morgan Chase and USAA, a financial services institution supporting current and former military, have been leaders in implementing the technology needed to know customers everywhere, all the time. They were among the first companies to invest in 360-degree view software to bridge their multitude of channels and products, so they can see their customers in every channel and every interaction. Thanks in large part to this capability, they are both ranked at the top of their industry by a number of measures. USAA has a Net Promoter Score (NPS) in several of its product areas approaching 80 (meaning that in response to “would you recommend us to a friend?” 80 percent of its customers would provide a 10 or 9 score versus those giving a score from 6 through zero, which in the insurance sector is market-leading), and it has won the JD Power Chairman's Award, which is given only once every three to four years “to individuals who have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievement, or to organizations that demonstrate exemplary performance and innovation in quality, customer satisfaction or employee relations.”11 Chase posted the biggest NPS gains in 2013 of any national bank, moving from the third quartile to the second quartile and opening a lead over other national banks.12

In a well-organized bank, contact center agents and retail branch bankers can see every interaction that a customer has completed, identifying the products and services used as well as the comments the customer has made and the channels involved. They can see that a customer withdrew from an ATM or logged onto Internet banking to make a transfer or reset a warning limit to get notified when a key balance breached a threshold.

The Internet banking revolution has also meant that banks can now provide this complete view to their customers via Internet and mobile phone banking, a huge boon. In the early days of Internet banking, customers had to opt in to make each of their accounts visible over the web. Now customers expect any new product to be visible.

Bill recently checked in at a hotel and he heard the clerk ask another guest beside him, “Is this the first time you are staying with us?” If this were a Me2B-focused hotel, the clerk would have instead said either, “Enjoy your first stay with us!” or “Welcome back, Ms. X!” The hotel should have known whether this was the first, third, or tenth time the guest had stayed with the chain. Being recognized while on a visit, particularly to a new city, makes guests feel happy and at home, and perhaps rubs off on others checking in next to them – “Gee, I'd like to be treated that way, too.”

Compare that experience to Bill's situation when he stays with his wife at the hotel chain Joie de Vivre. Regardless of location, they are always delighted to find a half-bottle of California Chardonnay in a bucket of ice when they check into the room. He requested this as an in-room amenity the first time he stayed with the chain, and the system remembers that preference. Joie de Vivre is an example of an entrepreneur-led company that set out to provide a differentiated experience. Other opportunities to bring Me2B needs into the customer experience for a hotel visit include confirming prior-stated preferences that the guest wants to see the New York Times in the morning, and to have a king-size bed facing away from the street in a nonsmoking room.