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September 27, 1999

CIO Forum
Keep Your Customers' Trust

There's a fine line between enough knowledge and too much. Do you know where to stop?

By Bill Seltzer

oday we are at the threshold of having more information about our customers than ever before dreamed possible. We have access to information on our customers' financial status, credit worthiness, buying habits, magazine choices, favorite charities, and almost anything else you can name. Furthermore, neural networks capable of predicting future buying patterns are being developed.

The data are there for the divining, and those of us in IT management recognize an oracle when we see it. We have an opportunity to know everything about our customers, and to serve them better with that knowledge. The question, then, is inevitable: Where precisely in the search for knowledge does one cease to be a Solomon and become instead a Faustus? The answer is more difficult.

I don't expect to answer the question in this article, but I do want to address it and, more specifically, to invite other IT practitioners to engage in this dialogue. Too often, such issues are left solely to consumer advocates, lobbyists, and politicians with little input from those who tend the temple of information processing.

When I consider myself in the role of customer, it's obvious that much information is already public. If I choose to have a listed phone number, my address is known. Public records reveal my marital status, my pet or property ownership, the taxes on my property, my vehicle preference, and whether I have ever filed for bankruptcy. To say something is public, however, is not to say it should ever be public, or aggregated and published beyond its original context.

On the other hand, if I tend to buy books of a particular kind, it saves time when I log on to a Web site and have those types of books presented to me. And if I put a book into a Web shopping cart, I appreciate it when other books are presented from the same aisle. When I purchase a printer online, I want to know what cable I need to attach it and what cartridge I need to use. And if I purchase paper, I appreciate being E-mailed when it's going on sale. Getting to know the customer better helps us serve that customer better, and understanding the person's purchasing history facilitates that.

The two previous paragraphs reflect an interesting juxtaposition. There are cases when I don't want public information made known outside of a particular context, and there are occasions when I don't mind if a private transaction is made public. I particularly don't mind it if the only catalogs mailed to me reflect my interests. It's when public or private information is accumulated, sold, and used without my permission that we corrupt knowledge, when we enter the borderland between Solomon and Faustus.

I believe we can serve our customers and maintain their trust by following a few simple rules. The first rule is to recognize that our customers own their data and we must never give or sell it without their permission. The second is never to procure data containing customer information unless the conveyor has followed the previous rule. If we enact this standard, we will create trust with customers.

There is a third action that requires legislation, and that is to prevent the accumulation of public information outside of the context for which it is registered-or, if it is accumulated, to prevent it from being sold.

In his brilliant book, Renaissance Poetics and the Problem of Power, Gordon Worth O'Brien notes that Faustus would press on, but the "vehicles of science, philosophy, and scripture will not take him there before the general Doom." He therefore "prevents his time" by using magic. There is no shortcut, or magic, for truly getting to know our customers. And though IT can assemble information, we don't want to build our oracles on ethical fault lines.

Bill Seltzer is executive VP and CIO at Office Depot Inc. He can be reached at bseltzer@officedepot.com.

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