Customer relationship management and customer recovery and retention: the case of the 407 express toll route

Highway 407, henceforth 407ETR, is North America's first solely fully electronic toll road, and runs east/west, north of the greater Toronto area, in southern Ontario, Canada (http://www.407etr.com). To date, although the highway itself has proved to be very successful, in terms of increased usage, and traffic flow, the processes around the administration, complaint handling, and billing of customers have experienced considerable difficulties. This seems to be in spite of the publicly stated communications on the development and implementation of new information systems, and ISO standards. As background to this research, the focus of this study is to review and compare the case of 407ETR within the context of recent knowledge management literature and how information systems, specifically customer relationship management, impact upon two of the key metrics in the area of customer service and customer loyalty; customer recovery and retention.