4 ms·
Maybe this was meant to be a private note? I.e., a customer service rep at some company found out about their daughter, and they wanted to make sure other custo
by eurleif 13y ago
Maybe this was meant to be a private note? I.e., a customer service rep at some company found out about their daughter, and they wanted to make sure other customer service reps would know about it and show appropriate sensitivity, so they added it to the CRM database. But somehow it ended up in the address instead of a private note field, and it was passed on to other companies.
People are making it sound like the company was intentionally trying to use their dead daughter for marketing purposes. I doubt that is the case.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- magicalist 13y agoI don't think it's either. If we believe that it was a third party's mailing list, it's likely a data broker has attributes like that stored for each person in their database, and in shuffling data around, somehow that entry got appended or put in a field that was then used to address the business or person by name.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- drak0n1c 13y agoMost likely the automated system that determines who to send college/back-to-school oriented mailings to failed in a bad way.
- brazzy 13y agoYes, that's almost certainly what happened - but that doesn't make it better. It's none of their fucking business!! This is not something that belongs in a CRM database!
- eurleif 13y agoIf you went to a small store regularly, would it be creepy for the employees to know that about you? Why is it creepy for a big business to know the same thing? It's normal for businesses to get to know their customers.
- brazzy 13y agoBusinesses are not persons, and it's creepy for them to try and fake personal relationships via CRM databases.
- eurleif 13y agoWhy is the personal relationship "fake" just because it's made with a database instead of human memory? Because the company doesn't really care about the daughter? Would it be creepy if employees at a smaller store remembered a customer's daughter dying, and were sensitive to that fact, but didn't actually personally care about it?
- pdpi 13y agoThe only relationship I can establish with a company is a contract. By definition, it takes other people to have an actual interpersonal relationship. The information that the employees at a small store know about me comes from establishing a relationship with those employees, from natural, organic chatter with them. I share it with them, and they share stuff with me, to establish a rapport. If those people were to share those details with their colleagues specifically to try and target me for marketing action, I'd feel that our personal relationship was being taken advantage of for the sake of the commercial relationship, which would make me withdraw from the personal relationship. In particular, when it comes to this sort of personal information ("my daughter died in a car crash"), this is the stuff you share with people you specifically trust, because you have an actual, preexisting relationship. It's something deeply personal, that you expect you can trust the other person to keep private. Not something you expect, or want, to be added to your client file.
- vacri 13y agoSure it belongs in a CRM: "Show some sensitivity when calling this customer, he lost his daughter in a car crash". Now when dealing with the customer, you know to steer general conversation away from children or vehicles, so as not to trigger bad memories. CRMs hold all sorts of notes like this, tucked away where the customer can't see them. It's the 'R' in CRM, after all.
- brazzy 13y agoYep, none of their fucking business. Keep my personal life out of your DB and your sales pitch. But OK, I understand how some people could see this as legitimate. However, are we in agreement that it is absolute not acceptable to sell this information to other companies?