The last decade of the last century changed the way business operated in India. Globalization and liberalization brought in the much-dreaded competition from all quarters. The Indian companies began to realize the importance of seamless flow of information in fast changing market conditions. No longer do they have the luxury of protectionism. As they become a part of the increasingly global economy, information/knowledge of their businesses becomes a key to survival. In this scenario of chaos, technological advances come to the aid of entrepreneurs. CRM is one such innovation that found many takers, and became the talk of the town though it was present in the business in one form or the other. But it is much broader than the age-old principle that the customer is right. Instead, CRM identifies how to profitably act on that premise, at all times, across all channels and functions. This paper attempts to redefine CRM. The authors feel that the present system of outsourcing CRM to specialist ITES companies like the call center is not always the right thing to do. While it does lead to better customer handling and customer management, it actually does not build up relationships strong enough to retain the customer. Call-center method of CRM is too mechanistic, and lacks a personal touch. It is reactive and not proactive in its approach.

In the marketing literature the terms Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and relationship marketing are used interchangeably. As Nevin (1995) points out, these terms have been used to reflect a variety of themes and perspectives. A narrow perspective of CRM is database marketing emphasizing the promotional aspects of marketing linked to database efforts (Bickert 1992). Another narrow, yet relevant, viewpoint is to consider CRM only as customer retention in which a variety of after marketing tactics are used for customer bonding or staying in touch after the sales is made (Vavra 1992).