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Relationship Management: Everything You Need to Know

businesswoman smiling working with relationship management

As you build your brand, your contacts, your customer base, and your career, it’s important to remember several key facts about customer relationships. You are responsible not only for managing relationships with other businesses you work with and for. You’re also for the relationships you build with your customer base.

Of course, these are not one-sided relationships. If you manage these relationships correctly, you won’t only provide great service and increase your chance of having repeat customers. You’ll also be able to analyze information and strategize what’s working, what isn’t, and what could be improved.

What is Customer Relationship Management?

Customer relationship management is using information gathered during customer interactions to analyze and strategize data gathered throughout the customer lifecycle. The goal is improving the customer relationship, assisting customer retention, and driving sales growth. 

In short, customer relationship management is analyzing the information you get every time a customer buys from you and interacts with your business. 

There are two types of relationships you need to be aware of: business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). B2B refers to the business transactions that occur between one organization and another. B2C refers to those interactions between the business and the direct consumer.

CRM systems and softwares collect and organize information for you to analyze. It tracks information about  the customer, what they’re buying, and what they’re not. It also looks at how often they buy from you, who is most likely to buy from you based on geography, socioeconomic status, race, gender, lifestyle, and more!

What Else Can You Get From Your Customers?

Businesses get so much information from customer relations so they can cater everything to improving the experience for their patrons. 

If a company has a rewards program, you might get a customer’s name, a phone number, email address, or physical address to send coupons to, etc. You can also keep track of things like past purchases and customer interactions, what sort of customer service was provided recently, identity trends, and more!

Having this information can help provide easier, better, and faster customer service. Additionally, it provides insight on what should be stocked most at certain locations and what people in that area aren’t buying at all. It can also tell you what sort of products people might be interested in buying next, how to improve the current customer experience, and more. 

A Customer Relationship Manager

You could be interacting with direct consumers or another business. Either way, using a CRM to keep track of this information is helpful. It can not only identify current customers, but also show who is likely to become a customer in the future. It tells what will increase the chances of visitors making a lead the next time they shop with you. You can see how you might be able to incentivize them to buy more, sign up for a credit card, etc. 

For instance, if a customer buys something, some CRMs can send out an automated email to that customer offering a discount for the next time they buy that product. Maybe you’ve experienced this. If you fill a shopping cart on a website but let it stand idle for too long, you might get an email. They’ll send a coupon code to incentivize you to go through with making that purchase. Strategies like that not only produce conversions but also show the customer you’re paying attention. They show that you’re thankful for their loyalty and are willing to give them a benefit for that loyalty. 

Even paying attention to inventory numbers is enough to give you a lot of information. You can learn about your customers, your location, and a lot more. When you keep the information organized in a customer relationship management system, you see objective facts. Using these facts, you can strategize effectively. 

Learn more about Customer Relationships and discover strategies today. Make long-lasting, productive, lucrative relationships with customers, clients, contacts, and more with StayTouch! The StayTouch app provides an instantaneous exchange of information. Get up-to-date with your digital business cards, scheduling and time management functions, and more!