By Chris Bucholtz

15 years ago, when I was young journalist with the somewhat oxymoronic title of “Software and Intelligence Editor” for a big telecommunications magazine, the term “voice-data convergence” was impossible to escape. Every person in the telco industry seemed obliged to work the term into every sentence, like a NASCAR driver dropping non-sequitor mentions of his sponsors into post-race interviews. People got all sweaty and excited when they thought about what voice-data convergence would mean (especially execs from big carriers who thought it would mean “giant profits”).

Today, we still await the arrival of true widespread voice-data convergence. The crazy voice-data fantasy land that some envisioned in 1995 (which I believe was also supposed to require everyone to wear a unisex silver body suit and a space helmet and drive a flying car) has never come to pass.

What we do have, however, is a world where the tools fit the task. For example, IVR systems are now de riguer in call centers. But the impetus was never the creation of awesome new features for the customer – it was to drive down costs in the call center. The telcos never really went hog-wild for voice-data convergence (even in their customer service centers, until recent years) because it failed to make financial sense. In short, voice-data convergence is only going to become truly pervasive when it’s no longer viewed as a cost and becomes a profit-making technology.

I wonder at times whether CRM vendors have created their own fantasy lands, where customers’ CRM systems spit out leads and marketing people sit around pushing one big button that does everything for them. When you set expectations like that, there’s no way vendors can deliver – unless they want to invest flying car-amounts of money in development and services. But what about defining the tasks and fitting the tools to them? With today’s customizable solutions, that seems like a easy win – and an avenue to further success as new features are added.

What do you think? In an industry where all too often success is determined by initial expectations and not actual results, are vendors painting too rosy a picture of what their solutions can accomplish?