Customer relations professionals turn retention strategy into action and proactively foster value-driven relationships with one goal: loyalty. They recognize companies live or die based on the ability to manage long-term relationships with customers.
Are you considering what steps your business can take to improve its customer relationships for lasting impact? Read on to discover examples of customer relations frameworks and five best practices for sustaining long-term loyalty.
What Is Customer Relations?
Customer relations is the organization-wide practice of managing interactions across the entire engagement lifecycle. Its purpose is to build and sustain long-term loyalty with the people who use, purchase, and rely on your company’s offerings.
Businesses recognize that long-term customer nurturing and sustained marketplace competitiveness are directly intertwined, making customer relations an essential operational function.
Customer Service vs. Customer Relations: What’s the Difference?
Customer service is reactive. It focuses on asking, “How can we resolve customers’ existing pain points quickly and ensure a mutually beneficial transaction experience?”
Customer service falls under customer relations’ purview. Its service functions include:
Resolve inbound support inquiries through all channels.
Maintain self-service resources, like digital knowledge bases.
Escalate complex issues to specialists.
Customer relations is proactive and future-focused. Teams ask, “What strategies can we adopt to build and nurture a long-term customer relationship, beyond the initial transaction?”
Core customer relations functions include:
Strategically segment end users to inform targeted engagement strategies.
Design and execute customer retention programs, aligned with business objectives.
Collect, analyze, and act on voice-of-customer feedback across the full user journey.
Who Is Responsible for Nurturing Customer Relationships?
A customer relations team is responsible for cultivating lasting relationships across the post-sale journey. From executive leaders to frontline specialists, every role plays a distinct part in driving loyalty. Let’s look at each and their responsibilities.
Chief Customer Officer
A chief customer officer (CCO) is a C-suite executive who oversees all post-sale customer-facing operations and reports directly to the chief executive officer (CEO). The CCO’s primary responsibility is to act as the customer’s advocate at the executive level, working to unite senior leadership around long-term customer loyalty objectives.
A CCO’s day-to-day work may involve:
Developing customer retention initiatives.
Acting as the voice of the customer in leadership discussions.
Overseeing the entire customer lifecycle.
Monitoring satisfaction metrics to identify areas for improvement.
Vice President of Customer Relations or Customer Experience
The vice president (VP) of Customer Relations — or Customer Experience (CX) — is a senior leader who either reports to the CCO or directly to the CEO. Their primary responsibility is translating the company’s customer relations strategy into daily operations.
The VP’s day-to-day work may involve:
Managing the customer relations department’s daily operations.
Translating executive customer goals into department objectives, key results, and resource plans.
Developing and implementing customer relations strategies.
Collaborating cross-functionally to ensure a consistent customer experience.
Customer Relationship Managers
Customer relationship managers are mid-level specialists who typically report to the VP of Customer Relations or another senior customer relations leadership member. They’re the primary contact for customers, focused on nurturing and expanding accounts.
A customer relationship manager’s day-to-day work may involve:
Negotiating renewal terms.
Drafting and finalizing customer contracts.
Keeping tabs on billing and collections.
Identifying upselling or cross-selling opportunities.
Customer Success Managers
Customer success managers (CSMs) are also mid-level professionals who specialize in delivering value to end users. If an organization has a VP of customer success, CSMs report to that role. Otherwise, they report to another member of the senior leadership team.
CSMs and customer relationship managers serve different functions. CSMs own value delivery. Customers ask, “Is it worth paying for this again — or paying more?”
On the other hand, customer relationship managers own the commercial relationship. Here, customers ask, “Am I actually receiving the value I was promised?”
A CSM’s day-to-day work may involve:
Leading onboarding.
Monitoring adoption metrics.
Drafting and maintaining customer success plans.
Escalating at-risk accounts to customer relations leadership.
Insights Analysts
Insight analysts are junior or mid-level professionals. This role typically reports to a senior marketing leader or the VP of customer relations. Its primary responsibility is to analyze customer data to inform the company’s customer relations strategies.
An insight analyst’s day-to-day work may involve:
Collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data — with help from artificial intelligence (AI).
Identifying trends in customer data.
Collaborating cross-functionally to source data and inform departmental strategies.
Communicating data insights to senior leadership.
What Are the Benefits and Types of Customer Relations?
Effective customer relations starts with tailoring engagement accordingly. The customer-value segmentation model is among the best frameworks. This four-part model groups customers into:
Strangers: Customers who transact infrequently and lack strategic fit, resulting in minimal lifetime value.
Barnacles: Long-tenure accounts that generate steady but modest revenue but offer limited expansion potential.
Butterflies: Customers who generate substantial revenue in a short engagement cycle but show little propensity for renewal.
True friends: Strategically aligned accounts that renew consistently, expand usage over time, and deliver high lifetime value.
The idea behind this model is to segment customers according to their strategic value. It enables businesses to prioritize resources and tailor engagement strategies accordingly.
Strategic value segmentation isn’t the only framework B2B organizations use. RFM segmentation is another common model. This groups customers by the recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) value of purchases. The customer-lifecycle model is another common model, categorizing customers by their stage in the buying journey.
Regardless of the model, the benefits of customer relations strategies remain the same. Here’s a look at each advantage.
Reduced Churn
Churn is when customers end their relationship with a company. Strong long-term commercial relationships revolve around building and sustaining mutual value exchanges. Failing to do so accounts for over 15% of churn, on average.
Strong customer relationships can reduce churn. When end users perceive value, feel supported, and experience personalized engagement, they’re more likely to become repeat customers or renew their contracts.
Strengthened Revenue Forecasting
Stable customer relationships — or the customer-value segmentation model’s “true friends” — help businesses accurately predict recurring revenue. Yet smart organizations recognize that not all loyal customers are profitable, and not all profitable customers are loyal. That’s why effective customer relations strategies and revenue forecasts factor in both retention potential and strategic fit.
Increased Operational Resilience
Strengthened revenue forecasting translates into increased operational resilience — the ability to adapt to change and disruptions while maintaining core functions. Clear revenue projections enable businesses to allocate resources efficiently and mitigate foreseen and unforeseen risks. For many businesses, approximately 80% of reliable revenue forecasts stem from a small number — often around 20% — of strategically aligned, high-value customers.
Reduced Acquisition Costs
Strategically aligned, high-value customers commonly become vocal advocates. Businesses recognize word-of-mouth marketing as a cost-effective form of social proof and as the driving force behind half of purchasing decisions.
Richer Customer Insights
Long-term accounts provide businesses with first-hand market intelligence. Companies commonly work with strategically-aligned customers to better understand the market’s evolving needs and buying behaviors. Analysts then translate these insights into targeted recommendations.
Best Practices for Managing Customer Relationships
Customer relations strategies contain tactics for fostering retention across an end user’s lifecycle. The most effective approaches build on strategies that reduce friction and build trust. Here’s a look at the best practices that drive lasting engagement.
1. Make Every Interaction Effortless
If a user journey demands undue effort, customers are likely to disengage. Nearly all customers (96%) who describe their experience as high effort report increased disloyalty, compared to just 9% who report low effort. Similarly, when user journeys are seamless, 94% of customers indicate repurchase intent. Ask your team:
When in the customer lifecycle do our end users experience the greatest friction?
How are we measuring customer effort at each touchpoint?
2. Adopt Proactive, Predictive Support
AI is reshaping customer support systems, equipping teams with the intelligence they need to provide predictive support. With Rox’s AI swarms, for example, sales reps can instantly gather real-time account intelligence, diagnose risk profiles accurately, and consider the system’s account-specific recommendations. Ask your team:
To what extent are we leveraging AI to anticipate account risks and opportunities?
How do we incorporate AI-generated workflows into routine sales motions?
3. Deliver a Consistent Experience Across Platforms
Inconsistent user experiences — whether during the buyer journey or as existing customers — erode credibility and increase the likelihood of churn. From the first outbound touchpoint and all the way through the user’s lifecycle, organizations must ensure consistent standards across all customer interactions. Ask your team:
How are we ensuring that messaging and service standards are consistent across all sales and support channels?
What processes do we use to monitor and align customer experiences across online and in-person touchpoints?
See How Rox Helps You Build Stronger Customer Relationships
Building lasting relationships takes time. It demands ongoing dialogue and a clear view of your customers’ evolving needs. But when your teams execute effectively, you’ll see higher retention and sustainable growth. Rox makes that possible.
Rox’s AI unifies, processes, and monitors customer data. It addresses the pain of losing business while flying blind with legacy customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It also delivers the essential software that enterprises can rely on to unify customer information, all in one place. Rox’s AI lets sales teams seamlessly monitor segment changes in real time and assist with the entire engagement process.
See for yourself. Watch a demo of Rox today.
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