David Armano, author of Logic+Emotion, gives some highlights of a Bain & Co. study.

Executive anxieties about losing touch with their customers is driving higher and higher usage of customer tools such as CRM and segmentation. These tools have moved from below average use to second and third place, respectively, in the 10 years since Bain has included them in the survey:

• 84% of executives are now using CRM
• 82% are using segmentation to tailor their marketing programs and offerings to groups of customers who exhibit common patterns of behavior
• New tools are emerging. Use of loyalty management is at 51%, and the use of ethnographic methods to observe customers in the real world is becoming more mainstream, at 35%. But in 2006, each of those tools rank below average in terms of executive satisfaction.

There’s more on his post.

Don’t mis-read my commentary: I’m not discounting or dismissing the value of CRM or loyalty programs. In fact, I use those and simliar tools to get to know my customers better also. They are valuable, and they are also very consistent with the approach that businesses have long taken to marketing.

But the concern that these executives expressed is that their companies – meaning the people in their companies – are out of touch with their customers.

Which made me think: Are they talking to their customers? or, more importantly, are they listening? and are they listening where their customers are talking? (you can listen to your market research, but does the blog-commentary of your customers tell a different story?)

People who’ve worked with me will know that I am the first to jump into the data. Mine the CRM system. Find new segments and new demographics. Make the data tell stories it never has before.

But there’s a very large element of this data focus that makes me feel like I’m staring at my own navel and drawing conclusions about the world around me. Data can say alot. But data can’t speak for a person. Or a market. Or a community.

I’ve had the privelege to work with some companies where everyone in marketing talks to customers regularly. And so do all of the executives. We still mined the data, but every conclusion we drew, we validated. We asked actual people. We read what actual customers and prospective customers were saying about us in unsolicited ways. We had that very elusive sense of the market.

I’ve also worked with companies where talking to customers is, at best, discouraged and generally never happened. The inevitable result was that there was a lot of talk about how out-of-touch we were, and a lot of hand-wringing about how to get closer to the customer. System were put in place. Data analyzed. But still no one talked to an actual person. In one recent case, the conversation in the blogosphere was discounted as irrelevant.

You can guess which companies were more successful.

Being in touch with your audience matters. Data matters. Research matters. But unless you have something interesting to say, and can engage your market community in conversation, all the data in the world will just leave you staring at your collective navel.

From the Business Week article It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid

Marketers are finding themselves in an increasingly frantic race to get people talking about their brands. The desire to produce something “viral” is nearly ubiquitous in the marketing world. But it’s unclear who exactly “consumers” are these days. We don’t even know what that word means any more. Can consumers be producers? Yes. Can they be users? Yes. Can they be active participants, members of niche communities, or even critics capable of effectively mobilizing others? Yes, yes, and yes.

The article goes on to talk about the “2.0″ technologies that are changing the nature of the conversation (and yes, includes Twitter – their marketing folks must be proud!).

Really? I thought the “2.0″ tools are making the conversation possible. Looking at this from the perspective of a marketer, the “2.0″ tools are making it possible for consumers to become producers (of content at the least) and participants. They allow us to “hear” from our market not only in new ways, but to hear things that just 10 years ago we could not hear at all. Reading blogs about your product (and hoping it’s not on the yourproductsucks.com blog) gives you a perspective you could not have had just 10 years ago.

Yes, markets are conversations. It’s the buzz phrase of the week, but it’s been true before this week, and will be true after next week.

The fact remains, when I meet a new friend, I hope the conversation is engaging. As when I meet a new member of my market community, I hope that what I have to say is interesting enough to be engaging.

The point being that the conversation is important, but the conversation has to be engaging. You still must engage your community, your market, your potential customer.

The difference is that now we have to do it by actually being interesting. Being bright and shiny just isn’t enough. Are you saying something interesting?

Here’s the assumption: Leaders, generically, are the people who are out in front, who are in some way taking charge, and setting tone, trend and direction. In terms of following trends, they are the people most of us tend to follow. We listen to what they think is cool and interesting, and then go look for ourselves (or even take their word for it).

Followers are the rest of us. Generally, everyone who listens to what the high-profile leader says and gives it some credibility.

I’m starting to question that assumption. Does the advent of a community-based (aka more collaborative, contributory) world around us change how we lead and follow? And does it change how perceptions are set?

Let me go back to the Scoble talk last week. He said that he gets bombarded with lots and lots of new and allegedly cool ideas every day. Not surprising. But he pays no attention to any of them…here’s the key…unless his friends (those people whose opinions he trusts) tell him it’s worth a look.

My first thought was that’s completely the opposite of me. Taking the difference in fame out of the equation (can I do that?), even when people look to me to opine on the new, cool thing, I still prefer to do the work to discover that cool thing and form my own opinion (which you can listen to or not…) than to rely on others to come to the collective opinion that it’s worth my time.

Both approaches are perfectly good, and both work for different kinds of people.

But doesn’t the first one (Scoble’s approach) sound like a follower? Someone who is listening to those who are more famous, higher profile, or to whom we attribute some “inside” knowledge? But isn’t Scoble just such a high-profile insider?

So this raises the question: Who is the thought-leader? is it the person with the new idea? or is it the person who relies on the wisdom of the crowd to raise the good idea? Is it the inventor or the reporter?

I can’t offer a more definitive answer right now other than the oft-quoted “I know it when I see it,” but when you are looking for the trend-setters in your market, don’t count out the followers.