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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Customer Relations Manager

💰 $60,000 - $95,000

Customer ServiceManagementOperations

🎯 Role Definition

The Customer Relations Manager is responsible for developing and executing customer-centric strategies to maximize satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value. This role leads day-to-day relationship management with high-value clients, manages escalation resolution, defines and tracks customer success KPIs (CSAT, NPS, churn), and partners with operations, product, sales and marketing to close feedback loops and improve the customer experience. The ideal candidate combines strong people management, analytical reporting, and deep CRM/tool expertise (Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot or equivalent) to deliver measurable improvements in client outcomes and operational efficiency.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Customer Service Representative
  • Customer Success Specialist / Account Coordinator
  • Account Manager (mid-market)

Advancement To:

  • Senior Manager / Head of Customer Relations
  • Director of Customer Experience or Customer Success
  • VP of Customer Success / Chief Customer Officer

Lateral Moves:

  • Strategic Account Management
  • Sales Operations / Revenue Operations
  • Product Management (Customer Insights / Product Feedback)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Own end-to-end client relationships for an assigned portfolio of accounts, serving as the single point of contact for escalations, strategic advisement, renewal negotiations, and growth opportunities to maximize retention and net revenue retention (NRR).
  • Develop, monitor and report on customer success metrics (CSAT, NPS, churn, health scores, renewal rates) and present actionable insights to senior leadership on a monthly and quarterly cadence.
  • Lead a team of customer service and relationship specialists: recruit, coach, set performance objectives, run one-on-ones, and implement training programs to improve FCR (first contact resolution) and team CSAT.
  • Design and enforce SLAs and escalation workflows ensuring timely resolution of high-priority customer issues while balancing operational capacity and cost-to-serve.
  • Create and execute account plans for strategic customers that include onboarding milestones, adoption metrics, risk mitigation, and expansion targets tied to revenue goals.
  • Manage complex escalations by diagnosing root causes, coordinating cross-functional remediation (product engineering, billing, legal), communicating status to stakeholders, and documenting outcomes to prevent recurrence.
  • Drive customer onboarding and implementation programs to accelerate time-to-value, reduce time-to-first-success, and increase early adoption of core product features.
  • Partner closely with Sales and Account Executives to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, align on renewal strategy, and coordinate contract negotiations to increase ARR.
  • Act as the voice of the customer in product roadmap and release planning by synthesizing customer feedback, usage data, and industry trends into prioritized product requests.
  • Create and maintain a comprehensive knowledge base, FAQs, playbooks and templates to standardize responses and reduce handle time across the support organization.
  • Implement customer health scoring models that combine quantitative usage data and qualitative signals; use these models to prioritize outreach and preventive interventions.
  • Lead root-cause analysis for recurring service issues and collaborate with operations and engineering to document fixes, process changes, and preventive controls.
  • Drive continuous improvement initiatives to streamline processes, reduce operational friction, and improve NPS and customer lifetime value through project-based delivery.
  • Own renewal and churn prevention processes: proactively identify at-risk customers, design retention interventions, and collaborate with finance and legal to structure win-back offers.
  • Build and maintain executive-level relationships with customer stakeholders, delivering quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and executive briefings that demonstrate value and align on strategic initiatives.
  • Coordinate cross-functional playbooks for major releases, outages and communications, ensuring customers receive timely, accurate and empathetic updates during incidents.
  • Manage customer segmentation and prioritization to optimize resource allocation, ensuring high-touch service for strategic accounts and scalable programs for lower-touch segments.
  • Oversee customer analytics and reporting; build dashboards for leadership to visualize adoption, churn risk, pipeline influence and long-term revenue impacts.
  • Create and manage customer advocacy programs (case studies, reference calls, advisory boards) to amplify satisfied customers and support go-to-market efforts.
  • Ensure compliance with contractual obligations, data privacy and security requirements tied to client relationships and escalate legal or compliance issues when needed.
  • Establish and monitor training and certification programs for customers and internal teams to ensure consistent product usage and reduce support volume.
  • Facilitate structured feedback loops with product, marketing and operations to convert customer insights into measurable product improvements and marketing messages.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc customer analytics and exploratory data requests to inform executive decision-making and tactical interventions.
  • Contribute to the organization’s customer strategy and roadmap by documenting recurring trends, competitor insights and industry best practices.
  • Collaborate with sales enablement to develop collateral, playbooks and training materials that improve cross-functional alignment and customer outcomes.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to communicate customer priorities and validate product fixes or enhancements from a client-impact perspective.
  • Coordinate pilot programs for new product features and services, measure adoption, and recommend scale or rollback based on defined success criteria.
  • Represent the company at customer events, webinars and industry conferences to drive thought leadership and strengthen client relationships.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • CRM platforms: demonstrated hands-on experience with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, or Freshdesk for case management, opportunity tracking and reporting.
  • Customer success tooling: Proficiency with Gainsight, Totango, ChurnZero, or equivalent for health scoring, churn analytics and playbook automation.
  • Data & reporting: Strong skills in Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), Google Sheets, and the ability to build dashboards in Looker, Tableau, Power BI or native CRM reporting.
  • SLA and escalation management: Proven track record designing and enforcing SLAs, escalation matrices, and incident response processes.
  • Metrics-driven performance management: Experience tracking CSAT, NPS, churn, ARR/NRR, and creating executive-level scorecards.
  • Basic SQL or ability to work with analytics/BI teams to extract user adoption and behavioral data for insights.
  • Account planning and renewal management: Skilled at creating account plans, forecasting renewals and managing contract lifecycle with legal/finance.
  • Knowledge base and documentation tools: Experience with Confluence, Zendesk Guide, Intercom Articles or similar platforms.
  • Process improvement & project management: Familiarity with Lean, Six Sigma, or agile methodologies to deliver operational improvements.
  • Integration & onboarding technologies: Understanding of technical onboarding tools and APIs relevant to B2B SaaS implementations.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional verbal and written communication tailored to executive and operational audiences.
  • Strong leadership and coaching ability to develop high-performing teams and scale best practices.
  • Empathy and active listening to understand customer needs and de-escalate tense situations.
  • Strategic thinking with a focus on customer lifetime value and revenue impact.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking to identify root causes and design durable solutions.
  • Influencing and stakeholder management across product, sales, operations and finance.
  • Time management and prioritization to balance reactive support and proactive growth activities.
  • Resilience and adaptability in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.
  • Negotiation skills for renewals, upsells and complex dispute resolution.
  • Customer-centric mindset and passion for continuous improvement.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business, Communications, Marketing, Management, or related field preferred; equivalent experience accepted.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree or higher plus certifications in Customer Success Management, Project Management (PMP), or CRM-specific certifications (Salesforce Administrator, Gainsight, Zendesk).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Marketing / Communications
  • Information Systems / Data Analytics
  • Customer Experience / Service Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years in customer service, customer success, account management or related client-facing roles, with at least 2 years in a supervisory or managerial capacity.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years managing customer relationships in B2B SaaS, subscription services or high-touch enterprise environments; demonstrated success improving CSAT/NPS, reducing churn and increasing renewal/expansion revenue.
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