The Customer in Personal, Public and Business Realms

"Some corporations will attempt to maximize the business value of each
individual worker, stripping out all the extraneous human factors. Chinese walls will be erected to keep the outside from the inside, the personal from
the business, and the public from the private. But when you put
messaging and communications tools into the hands of people they will
find ways to talk to each other— about work, life, play, the project,
and the joke they just heard at the water cooler." – Cliff Gerrish

The line above is from a brilliant post by Cliff Gerrish, touching on CRM, VRM and the rise of tools like Google Buzz and Salesforce.com's Chatter. 

Read the whole thing here.