Can CRM survive the hand-off?

I daily fantasize about how a new CRM package can make our sales team more effective. We would know about each other's contacts with the customer and be prompted to fulfill our promises via 'to-do' lists. The gurus like to call it a 360-degree view of the customer, I think.

I read a story yesterday about a airline traveller's broken bag. Was it a bad bag or bad handling? Who cares? He just paid $7,000 for a ticket. Would it hurt to accept fault and pay him, say $200. The CRM guru would say that if the luggage handler had CRM and knew he paid that much for a ticket, he might have gotten compensated.

But what pained him the most was the pass-the-buck mentality. He thought that it should have been the responsibility of the person first helping him to aid him thru the trouble as much as possible. Does CRM make that easier or harder?

When the client contacts one of your staff, looking for help, how easy is it for them to pass-the-buck? Or put the responsibility back on the customer? Or do they just not know how to help? I bet that part of the issue with the airline is that if the person said 'yes, looks like it got man-handled', he wouldn't know to arrange compensation for the customer.

Given a CRM package with multiple tools to see the 360-degree view, I'm afraid that it just makes it easier to hand-off the client to someone else, since the other team-member should know the situation by looking at the client's record. But can it really be a relationship if you don't offer to help yourself. And if you do make a hand-off, shouldn't you make sure that the client got what they were looking for?

(UPDATE: I stewed about this post after I wrote it. I felt I had to explain why I wrote this.: I was just writing to myself, after having to do a hand-off where I was concerned about the final result. I hope you find this a significant issue, too.)