A relationship manager’s job is to work to improve relationships between a company, its partners, and its customers on a continuous basis. Despite the fact that the value of business relationships cannot be easily quantified or measured, they are extremely valuable. The relationship manager is in charge of objectively and quantitatively analyzing business relationships and applying that knowledge to maintaining good relationships and repairing bad ones. Some relationship managers handle all aspects of a company’s relationships, while others specialize in either business or customer relationships. Both are critical, but relationship managers use different techniques for different types of relationships, so they are frequently held in separate positions.
A customer relationship manager examines and improves customer relationships and reputations using specific analytic and practical techniques. This type of relationship manager is responsible for keeping track of current customers and assessing the quality of the company’s relationships with them. Customer relationship managers may suggest and implement new strategies aimed at attracting new customers based on knowledge gained from examining relationships with current customers. To improve existing relationships and form new ones, this type of manager may need to collaborate closely with other departments, such as sales and advertising.
On the other hand, business relationship managers are responsible for nurturing and improving relationships with business partners. Most businesses rely on others for information or raw materials, so maintaining good relationships with those partners is crucial. For example, a business relationship manager might look for ways to incentivize the formation of new business relationships or to streamline the operations of existing ones. Like customer relationship management, business relationship management is often concerned with developing formal methods of tracking and classifying relationships. The business relationship manager must use the data gathered and quantified to identify relationships that are harmful and should be terminated, as well as relationships that could be improved and ways to improve a company’s overall business reputation.
When attempting to develop or improve business or customer relationships, it is often necessary for a relationship manager to take a cautious approach. On the one hand, the relationship manager is looking for a specific benefit from each business relationship. For example, he wants a customer to purchase more products or a business partner to offer a lower rate for a product or service. On the other hand, he must provide a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Proposing a lopsided business arrangement may sour a relationship and harm a company’s reputation.