Customer relationships are the interactions and strategies around those interactions to help the business Attract, develop, and retain customers.

Customer relationships are one of the blocks of the Business model canvas.

There are three goals of customer relationships: :–:

• Acquiring new customers
• Keeping customers happy
• Upselling customers to delight them and increase revenue

These relationship goals are similar to the People management goal to Attract, develop, and retain talent.

Forms of customer relationships may include:

• communities (customer P2P interaction, like discord communities or user forums)
• automation (recommendation systems)
• self-serve (online documentation)
• personal assistance (customer representative)
• Dedicated personal assistance (account managers)
• co-creation (discord, YouTube, Goodreads, etc.)

A Customer acquisition strategy is linked with the awareness stage of a distribution channel. Acquisition strategies are targeted based on the customer segment and distribution channel.

There are 2 broad categories of marketing strategy: :–:

• Inbound marketing

• Outbound marketing

• Outbound marketing: The traditional approach to marketing that involves reaching out to people through methods like cold calling, email blasts, and ads.

• Inbound marketing: A modern approach to marketing that involves establishing the brand as a thought leader in its field and reaches customers by providing valuable content to them using methods like blogging, email newsletters with actionable advice, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social media marketing, etc.