There is a lovely little post by Valeria Maltoni where she tracks a post in Tom Peters blog on " What is customer relationship? " She writes:
The working definition they’ve come up with is:
A relationship is an ongoing conversation with a customer, in which the customer never thinks of you without thinking of the two of you.
Customer relationships are conversation only and if there is an unwavering commitment on the part of the company to make it so. Let’s not forget that in exchange for providing a product or service, the company gets compensation.
So far, the best reasoning I read about the whole discussion comes from Paul H in the UK:
customer relationship should be what the customer wants it to be. We want that to be a human relationship.
While it matters how we think about customer relationships and approach the opportunities we have to begin or continue these conversations with a mindset and attitude of service...