What is Relationship Management?
Relationship Management as the name suggests is the strategy an organization follows to maintain good relationships with its partners and customers.
Relationship Management is essential for any business to increase sales,improve retention,to gain new customers,to maintain the company’s online reputation and to increase revenue.
A satisfied customer is always an asset to the company.He can give the company more business by increasing his customer lifetime value and he can get the company new customers with word of mouth advertising.
This blog helps you understand what are the different types of relationship management and how it can help you in business and personal life.
Types of Relationship Management
Personal Relationship:
Relationship Management in a personal relationship helps to maintain a peaceful environment.A peaceful environment leads to growth and success in professional life.
Most conflicts arise due to the lack of emotional intelligence.
It is important to have control over one’s emotions to be free from stress,to overcome challenges and to avoid conflicts.Relationship Management can pave the way to meaningful relationships.
Professional Relationship
Maintaining a good rapport with the clients,business partners and customers can be beneficial in terms of sales,revenue and long term success of the business.
Uncomfortable relationships will lead to losing clients,revenue and have the risk of losses.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
The process by which businesses maintain a record of all the interaction and engagement that their customers have with their company.CRM softwares can help the business to view engagement on all the digital channels in one place.
This helps to nurture leads,convert them and address customer queries and dissatisfactions in an effective way.
Vendor and Partner Relationships
It is important to maintain positive relationships with the vendor and the partners.
Vendors provide the raw material for your business.They are like the heart of a business.Good relationship can be beneficial to both business and the vendor and help to maintain loyalty and trust in the company.
The partners are like the brain of the company.They help in the growth and success of the company.So maintaining a good relationship with them only leads to the upliftment of the company.
How to improve the Relationship Management skills?
Key aspects of Relationship management
The key aspects of relationship management are
- Communication
- Trust building
- Emotional Intelligence
- Consistency
Communication: Every relationship requires effective communication.There are many conflicts due to communication gaps or misunderstood communication.So it is necessary to learn how to effectively communicate our thoughts in a simple yet strong manner.
Trust Building:
Communication can build trust.Being respectful ,being transparent,Maintaining proper body language,showing empathy,being a good listener can build trust among the relationship.
Emotional Intelligence:
Knowing how to manage and control one’s emotions such as anger,fear,hatred,jealousy can be of great advantage.Understanding others emotions and feelings can also be an important part of relationship management.
Consistency
Alway being consistent and keeping up the promises can be a great aspect of maintaining long term relationships.
Relationship Management in Business
Client Centric Approach:
As a business owner,the most important thing to do is Customer satisfaction.A satisfied customer will always be a repeat and loyal customer.We don’t want to lose such customers.
Maintaining a customer centric relationship where you prioritize over the needs of the customer can enhance the reputation of your business.
Personalization
Having a personalized Communication with B2B and B2C clients is essential in relationship Management.The clients should always feel important and privileged.
Feedback Mechanism:
Including a Feedback system such as a feedback sessions with Vendors or A feedback form submission with clients and customers can help the business to understand where they lack and to improve in those areas and bring a better relationship with the clients and vendors.
Negotiation and conflict Resolution
This is a very important skill every business owner and corporate heads should possess.How we react during a challenging situation determines our actual character.Most business or corporate companies handle pressure and work in a challenging environment almost everyday.
Negotiation and conflict resolution skills should be developed by them to avoid stress and to increase productivity.This can also give better health benefits.
Tools and techniques in Relationship Management
We are in the digital era where everything from payments to shopping has become digital.
Businesses have the advantage of engaging and interacting directly with the customers through online tools.
CRM Software
CRM softwares connects all possible digital channels in one place so it is easy for a business to monitor how people are interacting with their business through organic posts and paid advertisements and on their websites.
Social Media Platforms
Social Media platforms have decreased the gap between companies and their customers.You can directly chat with the company’s employee regarding queries related to the products or your feedback related to the product.
Social media platforms like instagram,facebook and linkedin have given businesses immense opportunities to interact with the customers and promote their products and offers.They have always helped to maintain a good online relationship with the customers and cater to their needs.
Challenges in Relationship Management
There are some challenges every person faces in their day to day life
Miscommunication: However careful we are with our words there is always a miscommunication in professional as well as in personal life.
Trust Issues:Every business tries to deliver quality services and products to the clients but people are of varied interests.Something that is excellent for one person is just average for the other.There will be dissatisfaction among customers and clients.
Managing expectation:It is always challenging to manage expectations and live up to it.Clients have different expectations at different times.Sometimes they might compare our services with the competitors and expect more from us. At that time how we manage the situation and try to maintain a consistent relationship with them is the essential part of relationship management.
Work Life balance
Many people get confused as to which to give more priority – the work or the personal relationship.This is one of the toughest challenges to handle.
One can effectively overcome these challenges if he knows the importance of Relationship Managements and gets trained professionally.
There are many corporate training centers and companies that provide corporate training exclusively for Relationship Management and Negotiation and Conflict Management.
These training programs are designed in a way to help an individual develop professional skills to perform better in career as well as in their personal life.
Eclatmax is a Training and consulting company whose diverse training solutions aim at increasing the productivity of an organization’s employees and providing them practical training on skill sets,knowledge sets and tool sets that are required for the growth and success of the company.
Future Trends in Relationship Management
Ai and Automation:
Businesses have already started using Ai and Automation to make their work simpler so that they can solely concentrate on strategies to develop their business.Replying to customer query even in the absence of an executive has been taken care of by Ai chatbots so the customers don’t have a feeling of disrespect or being unattended round the clock.
These tools help to strengthen the relationship bonds between customers and companies.
Data Driven Insights
Using Analytics and customer data it is easy to track and monitor customer activities across business pages and websites.It is easy to remarket to interested people who have already visited our website or shown interest in a product.
These insights help in all ways to make marketing more meaningful and to develop various sales and marketing funnels and target audience according to their interests and interaction with the business.
Empathy and emotional intelligence
Earlier not much attention was given to empathy and emotional intelligence but now as there are a lot of competitors in each business it is important to take care of the feelings of the customers to retain them,nurture them and convert them into paying customers.
Many organizations are making efforts to train their employees with Relationship management programs.
Conclusion
The importance of Relationship Management is growing day by day and it has become a mandatory skill for corporate employees and business owners and executive directors to maintain better relationships with their colleagues,clients,partners and customers.Effective Relationship management can mitigate financial risks and help to increase sales and revenue.