Customer relationship managing. "(...)it's no real surprise that C. S. Lewis received thousands of letters from youngsters during his career. What's admirable is that he attempted to reply to each and every one of those pieces of fan mail, and not just with a generic, impersonal line or two."
That was what CRM usually means to me and I still didn't make the connection, that's a really cool thought!
I really like it when we can tie modern techy/businessy practices back to how someone would do things before the jargon those practices are often built on came into usage. I think it strengthens both the long term viability of the practice and our understanding of people who lived in the past.
I think your idea shows how CRM can be down-home and warm, which is a real drawback to the way it's generally approached. If relationships can be approached within a framework that makes it easier to manage them more productively without the "systemitization" swelling into the foreground, that's a win for everybody. I'm sure that's a big concern for SalesForce researchers.
