Lexus Drives Sales With New Focus On Call Center  Lexus credits
its 1998 record sales partly to the personalized call center
service that resulted when it implemented Clarify's FrontOffice
software.  Lexus will sell more than 140,000 new cars in 1998,
bringing the total number of units in operation to more than
700,000. Of the sales, 70 percent are from repeat buyers.  "What
differentiates us from the competition is service, the way we
handle our customer relationships. We want to be sure their
experience with Lexus as a company matches their experience with
the car they buy," said Carroll Gordon, customer satisfaction
operations manager for Lexus.  Unlike the mainframe-based system
Lexus was using, the integrated call center solution from San
Jose, CA-based Clarify allows Lexus to manage additional
workload without adding more agents, she said.  Currently, less
than 25 dedicated call center agents manage approximately
120,000 calls per year from customers requesting information on
a variety of topics -- from