Marketers can't do relationship marketing on their own

Lately I've been getting excited again about relationship marketing - where there's a focus on getting customers AND keeping them for the long term through a blend of marketing, product quality and customer service. The more I read about it and the more I help customers to do it, the more sense it makes.

The most important practical issue is that organisations need to develop outstanding communication between functions and departments. Everyone needs to share the commitment of focusing on meeting customer needs. 

But I still find that in many companies the marketing department isn't always heavily involved in the customer service programme. Wouldn't it make more sense for marketers who carry out customer and competitor competitor research to have an input into a customer service programme? And shouldn't customer service staff who talk to customers all day have a significant input into new product development and other marketing activity?

Marketing training programmes sometimes mention customer service. Mentioning it isn't enough: there really does need to be managed integration between the two functions.