We humans and our progeny, modern corporations, are evolutionary laggards. As a species, we're still pretty similar to our hunter- gatherer forebears, and today's corporations are still recognizable to those who knew their predecessors in 1900.

By contrast, take the Galapagos Finch. Biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant documented that during prolonged drought, the finches' beaks become longer and sharper in a single breeding cycle in order to reach the tiniest seeds. The birds' DNA even changes because of the continuous feedback loops between the birds and their environment.

Now, CRM will allow companies to evolve as rapidly. Feedback is the reason.

When you think about it, companies were lucky, due to existing communications technology's inherent limitations, to even partially meet customers' needs prior to the Internet. It was almost all linear, originating within the company and flowing unidirectionally until it finally reached customers. Only those customers who were so pleased, or so disgruntled to write or call about a product, or happened to be interviewed in focus groups were ever really linked back to product or service designers.

Now, with CRM, corporations can and must replicate the kind of continual interplay between the company and customer that allows such rapid evolution in nature.

It's not enough to simply put the customer's entire history of interaction at the fingertips of the "staffer" speaking with a customer. To realize CRM's full potential, companies must map all of their processes and modify any that are linear, especially where data is collected and then flows to some point where it finally rests in splendid isolation. Instead, processes must become cyclical. Information collected through a CRM application must flow in a continual loop, and your personnel –- especially those responsible for new product and service design -- must continuously monitor this information and use it to modify goods and services.

If you don't grasp the need for designing in feedback loops, just ask any birdbrain.

[W. David Stephenson is a freelance Internet strategist and futurist who also teaches Internet strategy courses at Bentley College. He can be reached at DavidStephenson@mediaone.net.]