What relationship should technology and data have with the customer relationship?

You hear it all the time. People will start the discussion on customer experience based on what the existing technology can do. The will say "Our technology can do this or can't do this," or "There's a new technology that allows for this," or  "Our relationship with our customers is changing based on technology."  I think this is the exact wrong way to go about defining the customer relationship with your business. Think first about what the ideal relationship would be. Period. Do not even think about the role technology will play as part of the ideal relationship. Once you have figured out the ideal relationship with the customer then think about how technology can get you as close as possible to that relationship. How many businesses would have been saved if they thought about their relationship with their customer this way instead of thinking about technology infrastructure first? This also plays into the discussion around big data.
The starting point is the ideal customer relationship and data can help you recognize how far from the ideal you are or trends.  If big data is helping determine the ideal relationship with the customer that's terrific, but the starting point should never be the data.

Say you're running a bank and you looked at life from the customer experience first, what sort of decisions would you make? I think USAA did a great job thinking this way with remote check deposit. The first question wasn't  "What does technology enable?" The first thought was that people want to be able to make deposits from home and how could USAA develop the technology to  allow their members to do that? And they quickly realized its not even that people want to make deposits at home, really they wanted to be able to make deposits wherever they were and so they enabled mobile deposits. They did this at a time when everyone else was thinking the technology would not allow for it.

 Of course the technology does not allow for it if you don't even think of the idea.