Many years ago, a professor of mine stated that the difference between customer and client could be summed up in one word... relationship.

Customers, he explained, are those people or firms with whom we have a one-time or one-way relationship. Clients, on the other hand, are those customers with whom we develop an ongoing reciprocal relationship that is beneficial to both parties.

Recently I finished reading a book titled The One to One Future. The authors, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., go to great lengths to convince the reader that collaborative relationships are key to successful marketing endeavors and that new thinking and technologies will enable us to build more and stronger relationships in less time than in the past.

For many years we, as marketers, have been guiding customers to the products that we want them to buy. In the new marketing scheme, we will be taking products to market and asking for a response that will enable us to refine the product to meet the total needs of the customer. We will no longer look for a percentage of a niche market. We will begin to see the customer in terms of a total market with many needs to satisfy. We will try to capture 100% of the customer's market, thereby converting customer to client.

The adaption of new techniques and technology to the marketing function will enable us to get to know our clients as we have not known them in the past. These new technologies will allow the savvy marketer to learn more about the client and at the same time protect their privacy.

Consumers will be telling suppliers what they think of goods and services without ever talking directly to them. We will exchange information with computers, touch tone phones, interactive television screens and other systems yet to be developed.

This new form of dialogue with end users is a reverse form of direct-response marketing. The user directs and the seller responds. This process takes place one client at a time.

Imagine being able to tell your favorite cereal manufacturer that you would like to have bananas with your bran flakes instead of raisins. If enough users convey that message, we will probably have Banana Bran on our breakfast tables. In addition to the Banana Bran, you will be able to create a coupon for your next purchase by using your touch tone phone or generate a credit on your phone bill just for participating in the dialogue.

Think of a "smart card" that will allow you to order your groceries thru your ATM machine and have the cost be deducted from your checking account. This could be done from your home phone or your interactive television screen where you would preview the items available. You could then go to the supermarket where your purchases would be waiting for you at the curb... or maybe the market would deliver to you. The possibilities are endless.

Although this all sounds very new and exciting, the basic premise is not new. It is based on the old practice of getting to know people's needs and then being able to fulfill those needs better than your competitor. The corner General Store did this successfully for many years until the "new-fangled" systems like newspapers, mail, "wireless" and telephones came to be vehicles of mass marketing at the turn of the century.

The masses, the methods and the products may have changed but customers still have basic needs that must be satisfied. How well do you know your customers... or are they clients?