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6
Building Customer Relationships
with Call Centers
Customer relationship management (CRM) has been defined as a corpo-
rate wide approach to understanding customer behavior, influencing it
through continuous relevant communication, and developing long-term
relationships to enhance customer loyalty, acquisition, retention, and prof-
itability. This chapter describes the importance of the interrelationships
between call/contact centers and the stages of developing and implement-
ing a CRM strategy. The center is the first point of customer contact and is
therefore the first entrée to establishing and maintaining long-term cus-
tomer relationships. ...