Cathy Sierra has a great post about how companies treat customers before and after they buy their products or services. She compares that to a relationship.
…too many companies are all candle-lit dinners, fine wine, and "let’s talk about you"
until the deal is sealed. Once they have you (i.e. you became a paying
customer), you realize you got a bait-and-switch relationship.This is such a big bowl of wrong. I don’t understand this in personal relationships, and I don’t understand it in business-to-customer relationships. Shouldn’t you treat the people you’re in a relationship with better than you treat anyone else? Shouldn’t you treat your existing customers better than the ones who’ve given you nothing?
The contrast between the pictures of glossy brochures and boring B&W manuals speaks volumes about the priorities in companies ‘customer relationships’. My understanding of why sales and support are so different is that companies are under constant pressure to maintain the rate of revenue increase, quarter by quarter. It’s the equivalent of scoring one extra date each week… 
So sales are about growth and support is about cost. Neither of them focuses on the customer. That is why CRM is a joke and Project VRM is where I am looking for an alternative.
