How your employees and customers perceive your efforts to build a digital identity infrastructure depends in part on being cognizant of people's inherent dislike of what we can now classify as Tier 3 relationships and sensitive to their desire that you give them real value in any Tier 2 relationships. The identity problems and potential faced by organizations—the very subject of this book—happen in Tier 2.
For the most part, Tier 2 relationships are dictated on the terms of the business or organization and consented to by the individual. This one-way relationship is likely to change over time as service-oriented businesses become more sophisticated. This powershift is brought on by increased service standards and improved systems that make it easier for customers to switch their allegiances. Also, businesses are beginning to offer more customized services, making it more likely that customers will begin to dictate some of the terms in their relationships. It will no longer be a "take-it-or-leave-it" world, but a world based on what some have called "mass customization."
One of the fallouts from this powershift is identity aggregation . As we've noted, individuals mentally aggregate their Tier 2 relationships much more than is possible in the real world. I don't tend to think of myself as a Key Bank customer; I think of myself in holistic terms, with Key Bank being just one of many relationships that I am party to. Federation and other means of aggregating identity, which we'll discuss in Chapter 12, are one answer to the identity silos created by the multiple Tier 2 relationships. I have completely separate relationships with my airline and my rental car company, and that creates extra work for me each time I travel. Getting back to value, I'm willing to have those identities aggregated if it makes booking travel more convenient.
Another fallout from this powershift is the convergence of Tier 3 and Tier 2 identities. As sophisticated identity systems allow companies to better identify individual customers and businesses adapt by providing more fine-grained service customization, the need to market to broad demographic groups is lessened. I'm not about to predict the disappearance of spam anytime soon, but it and other mass-market approaches are becoming less and less effective. Good businesses will recognize this shift and move their operations away from broadcast and mass marketing and towards more individual-specific marketing efforts.