Relationship management in customer service begins with the realization that you need the customer more than he needs you —especially at the very moment it feels like you have the upper hand. I am not blind to the fact no-one wants to talk much about that there are toxic customers, which is our topic next week.
And this is not about believing the customer is always right (which, by the way) loses you sales. This is about how you relate to customers. Relationship management can be as simple—or as layered—as your role demands. Here are three examples.
The dormant account
“You need to transact your GBP account to reactivate it,” the bank sales rep calls to say. There’s a tinge of superiority and irritation in her voice. ‘Argh! Now this struggling customer. Why did she open an account and use it only once?’ he silently wonders. ‘We should just close it’ she thinks but cannot act on this because the instructions were to encourage activation.
Meanwhile, the customer wonders why she should deposit anything in the account as there’s no reason for her to -and now she resents the rep’s attitude.
Now, if only the rep, realising that without a customer there is no business and with no business no jobs, including his, he could have taken an approach driven by empathy and curiosity. Humanness.
“Hello, Madam Asha. I am calling you from This Bank about your GBP account which is going dormant. Is this a good time to talk?”
“Yes”.
“We notice you transacted only once with it and haven’t done so again almost six months later. What could be the matter? “
Feeling the warmth she responds, “I needed to send my daughter, in the UK some funds and haven’t needed to again.”
“I see. What did you like about us that you choose us?” Now you are no longer chasing a transaction.
From there, the conversation becomes an invitation, not an instruction. Maybe she activates it again. Maybe she doesn’t. But she remembers how she was treated—and that memory is often more valuable than the immediate deposit, even if it is just one pound.
This single interaction demonstrates that relationship management in customer service hinges on curiosity, not condescension.
Relationship management in customer service: Not all customers are equal
“Yes, there is a shortage of fuel because of the US-Iran war and the choked Strait of Hormuz,” the interviewer on a TV breakfast I recently posed to the Oil and Mining Consultant. “But could the actual shortage be caused by hoarding by Oil Marketing Companies in anticipation of fuel prices going up?”
The Consultant responded: “There’s a difference between holding and hoarding and its important to distinguish the two. When I worked at (name of OMC) whenever there was a shortage, we held fuel for particular customers because of the nature of our relationship with them. That is not hoarding. It’s holding and it happens in any business out to retaining specific customer relationships.” It’s prioritizing relationships.
I agree. Not all customers are the same and, yes some are more equal than others. That’s not politically correct to state but it does not negate its truth. Neither does it negate the importance of relationship management in customer service. You cannot commit identical resources to every customer. It is neither practical nor profitable. Some customers have earned proximity through volume, loyalty, or strategic alignment. Others are still on the journey.
There are those you will keep in your orbit with a quarterly newsletter and others regular monthly meetings. Irrespective, the customer feels seen. Relationship management does not mean equal treatment. It means appropriate treatment.
The butcher who understood
“There was no pork. The packaging said pork, but what was inside was beef.”
So I called my new butcher to complain three days later. I braced for war, my guns at the ready. It was only my third time buying from him—my usual monthly purchase being a kilo of each type of meat.
I had abandoned my previous butcher after more than a year. He had deliberately sold me scraps, refused to acknowledge it, and worse, treated me with an attitude in every subsequent engagement. But I digress.
This new one simply said, “Pole. When can you come by for it?”
No defensiveness. No interrogation about why I waited three days. And no “goods once sold…” policy.
The following day, I left the butchery with my kilo of pork in hand. No argument. No resentment. Just a problem solved and a relationship preserved.
That is relationship management. Not perfection, but ownership. Not grovelling, but grace. And in that single—pole—he said everything about who he was as a butcher and who he wanted me to remain as a customer.
Relationship management in customer service.
In the end, relationship management in customer service is not about superiority or submission. It is about service. The moment you treat a customer as an interruption rather than a reason, you have already begun to lose them. The most dangerous loss is the one you never see coming until it has already left.
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