Forrester's George Colony: Customers are in control

Forrester CEO George Colony has some advice for CEOs about customer relationship management and the correct attitude to win friends and influence enemies in the corporate world.

It's now a two-way conversation. Listen, respond and talk intelligently. Stop dictating to customers. It's your customers, not you, who have the power.

In a guest editorial on news.com, Colony offers his perspective on the meaning of Web 2.0, channeling The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual, written in 2000 and noting that "markets are conversations."

Colony makes that point that even if companies become more proactive in engaging in conversation with customers, their Web sites suck.

After eight years of evaluating more than 1,000 large corporate Web sites, Forrester found only 3 percent with passing grades.

The vast majority are hard to use, confusing, poorly designed and cast an unfavorable shadow over the brand. So, Mr./Ms. CEO, don't get confident that your company is great at marketing or selling online: it's not.

His advice to C-level executives is to know customers better than the competition, earn their respect through listening and acting on their behalf and "remove artificial, archaic restrictions that are designed to protect somebody's 50-year-old business model." Sage advice.