Telecom technology has been changing in fundamental ways on a yearly, and sometimes even quarterly, basis Consumers have continued to surprise and baffle planners with their erratic and pronounced behavior changes as a re- sult of these factors. All of this has contributed to a very disorganized organizational response. The typical telecom or wireless company tends to operate with a consumer response model that appears to be nothing more than a random assortment of strategies, departmental initiatives, policies, and approaches. What's worse is that, when viewed as a whole, each of these disconnected and uncoordinated activities seems to have been devised with a primary objective of sabotaging the previous efforts. Key Organizational Themes Although this environment is confusing, it is possible for us to identify some underlying organizational themes that connect these apparently unrelated approaches. We have found that there is, in fact, a collection of underlying assumptions that have contributed to the creation of this irrational environmental situation. In fact, there are three different basic modes of operation that the telecom can choose from when making customer relationship management decisions. The three models most commonly practiced are: The Monopoly Consumer Response Model - This is the model that has prevailed for telecoms over many decades. It is how we defined "business as usual" before deregula- tion. The Retail Consumer Response Model - This is the mod- el that most competitive telcoms in the long-distance and wireless areas specifically have attempted to implement in Chapter 16 the past few years. This approach modifies the basic as- sumptions about how to manage customer relations to better reflect the new competitive marketplace. It tries to embrace many of the principles, approaches, and strategies common in the retail industry and superimposes them on the underlying telecom organization. 3. The Telecentric Consumer Response Model - A telecom- munications-specific, customer-centric model that 