Create customer relationships

The Customer Service Management application provides the ability to establish different types of relationships between partners, customers, and contacts.

These relationships make account and asset management easy and flexible. The following table describes the available customer relationships.

Table 1. Customer relationships

Relationship	Description	Benefit
Bi-directional account relationship	Create a relationship between: A partner account and a customer account. Two customer accounts. A bi-directional account relationship is created using a defined account relationship type.	An account relationship enables partner account contacts with the partner role or the partner administrator role to create and manage cases for their partner account.
Account hierarchy	Create a parent-child relationship between accounts.	An account hierarchy enables an account contact with the customer administrator role to manage the child accounts.
Contact relationship	Add a contact from a third account to either of the accounts in an account relationship.	A contact relationship enables a contact with the customer role or customer administrator role to manage the account for which the contact relationship has been established.