How to improve customer relations? Methods, tools and indicators
In a world where customer satisfaction directly conditions economic performance, improving customer relations has become an absolute priority for companies. Consumers are no longer satisfied with a quality product or service: they expect a fluid, personalized and consistent experience across all communication channels. Between social networks, online chat, phone calls and e-mails, every interaction shapes their perception of a brand.
For contact centers and customer services, the challenges of customer relations are many: maintaining a constant quality of service, responding quickly, while creating a genuine relationship of trust. Customer relations teams must now combine
This article offers you an expert, structured approach to rethinking your customer relations strategy. You’ll discover the key methods, tools and indicators, as well as our customer service software, that enable you to transform every contact into a valuable opportunity, while placing people at the heart of a technology-enhanced approach.
Understanding the foundations of a solid customer relationship
Updated definition of customer relations
In 2025, customer relations are no longer limited to a simple exchange between a brand and a person. It is part of a continuous, living and evolving relationship, based on a detailed understanding of the concerns, emotions and context of each buyer throughout his or her purchasing journey. It’s no longer the brand that dictates the pace of communications, but rather the public, who become the protagonists of their own experience and loyalty.
In B2C, this connection is built around proximity and transparency, often supported by rapid exchanges via social media or digital channels. In B2B, it’s based more on mutual trust, consistency and the added value of long-term support. In all cases, consistency between promise, discourse and perceived experience remains a pillar of relationship marketing.
Contact centers play a key role here: as information hubs, they centralize, unify and disseminate customer data to ensure consistency across all points of interaction, whether it’s a voice exchange, an online message or a conversation via a website.
Key customer expectations today
Modern customers are looking for fluidity, responsiveness and a tailored experience. Accustomed to the instantaneous uses of the digital sphere, consumers expect quick answers and consistent follow-up at every
This quest for simplicity goes hand in hand with a need for individual attention and recognition. Even at a distance, advisors need to be able to perceive tone, decode emotions and personalize their exchanges. Listening to customers is becoming a key skill, supported by the use of customer relationship management software andfeedback analysis tools.
Finally, the rise of mobile-first and new post-Covid behaviors have heightened expectations in terms of flexibility and availability. Today, organizations must guarantee a continuous presence, offer quality customer service and prove that every interaction, even automated ones, remains imbued with a human and personalized dimension.
Concrete strategies to improve customer relations
Building a customer-centric strategy
Optimizing customer relations begins with a real change of perspective: moving from a product logic to a voice-of-the-customer approach. Too many organizations still focus their efforts on their offering, rather than understanding the concerns and behaviors of their members or buyers. A truly customer-centric strategy is based first and foremost on customer knowledge, analysis of frictional elements and an understanding of purchasing paths as a whole.
This vision must be shared throughout the entire organization. Customer culture doesn’t just concern support teams, but also sales, logistics and marketing. When a small company or a large corporation adopts the same relational promise – to build loyalty, to satisfy, to listen – every exchange becomes coherent and meaningful.
The most successful players also define concrete steering indicators:
Net Promoter Score (NPS): measures recommendation and perceived brand awareness
Customer Effort Score (CES): evaluates the ease of the customer journey
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): reflects overall perception of the service provided.
These satisfaction surveys guide our actions, enable us to adjust our processes and optimize our long-term customer relations.
Multiply relevant contact points
One of the most powerful levers for improving customer service is to diversify the means of exchange. Everyone has their own preferences: some prefer voice calls for clarity, others favor social media or instant messaging. The more autonomous prefer self-care areas, such as online knowledge bases.
However, multiplying the number of channels only makes sense if a coherent relationship is maintained. Customers should not have to repeat their story from one channel to another. This omnichannel continuity relies on the seamless integration of customer service software, telephony andconversational AI tools.
When well thought-out, automation saves time and improves service quality.
A successful omnichannel strategy thus balances technology and emotion: tools facilitate fluidity, while advisors embody empathy and the brand’s added value.
Training and developing customer relations teams
Even the best strategy is ineffective without motivated, competent teams.
To boost their efficiency, companies invest in continuing training around three pillars:
Active listening: understanding expectations, reformulating and showing attention
Managing emotions: dealing with frustration in a professional manner
Assertiveness: express yourself with clarity and benevolence to inspire confidence
Role-playing workshops, individual coaching and feedback analysis supported by intelligent voice tools help to anchor these skills in daily practice.
Finally, recognizing the contribution of advisors is an essential condition for success. Long considered a cost center, they are in fact a lever for development and a strategic asset for customer loyalty. Their experience in the field feeds data collection, improves processes and fuels sales decisions.
Improving customer relations means above all giving teams the means and recognition they need to excel in every exchange. By combining strategic vision, appropriate technologies and human excellence, organizations can transform their customer service into an engine for sustainable growth.
The right tools to manage and personalize customer relations
CRM: the essential foundation
To improve and manage customer relations, a solid technological infrastructure is essential. At the heart of this architecture, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) remains the central tool. The backbone of customer service, it centralizes all customer data: purchase histories, past interactions, preferences, complaints, and feedback gathered through various channels.
This unified view is the foundation of a fluid, personalized relationship. Thanks to intelligent segmentation, CRM facilitates the creation of targeted campaigns, the prioritization of requests and a detailed understanding of behavior. It also enables you to automate certain repetitive tasks, such as follow-ups, lead qualification or updating contact information.
But modern CRM is much more than a simple management tool. It now integrates with the entire digital ecosystem: contact center platforms, marketing automation tools, instant messaging and analytics solutions. This connectivity ensures consistent exchanges and avoids information silos, one of the main obstacles to effective customer relations.
A well-managed CRM not only enables us to better understand our customers, but also to adapt our interactions to their context, preferred channel and history – three essential conditions for a personalized, lasting relationship.
AI, analytics and feedback management
While CRM structures data, artificial intelligence and analysis tools give it its full value. In 2025,conversational AI andsentiment analysis have become major levers for understanding customer perception in real time. These technologies decode the tone, emotions and intentions expressed in exchanges, whether vocal or textual.
Some solutions go even further, producing automatic summaries of conversations and generating suggestions for improvement for advisors. This type of assistance saves time, standardizes the quality of interactions and feeds into ongoing team training.
Feedback management is the other pillar of this data-driven approach. Successful companies continuously monitor key indicators such as :
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) to measure immediate post-contact satisfaction
NPS (Net Promoter Score) to assess the propensity to recommend a brand
CES (Customer Effort Score) to identify friction points in the customer journey
Combined withsemantic analysis or automatic natural language processing tools, these indicators provide a detailed understanding of how customers feel. They also make it possible to proactively detect weak signals: a drop in engagement, a rise in complaints, or a more negative emotional tone in conversations. By anticipating these signals, companies can adjust their processes before dissatisfaction sets in.
Towards an omnichannel relationship controlled in real time
The multiplication of channels (telephone, chat, e-mail, WhatsApp, social networks, dynamic FAQs) has profoundly transformed customer relationship management. The challenge is no longer simply to “answer everywhere”, but to connect all these channels to offer a seamless, fluid experience. This is where the notion of an omnichannel relationship piloted in real time comes in.
A 360° view of the customer, accessible from a single interface, enables advisors to instantly retrieve the complete history of interactions, whatever the channel used. This continuity improves
Supervisors have access toadvanced management tools to monitor live relational performance: response rate, average processing time, perceived quality, team commitment, etc. This data can be visualized in the form of customized dashboards, facilitating decision-making and operational responsiveness.
Finally, real-time connected systems enable resources to be adapted to demand. For example, during peak periods, a contact center can automatically redeploy its agents or trigger intelligent routing scenarios thanks to AI.
So the future of customer relations lies not in the multiplication of tools, but in their harmonious integration. The aim is to combine automation, analysis and humanization to create a truly controlled, measurable and scalable customer experience – a model where technology amplifies human proximity rather than replacing it.
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Measuring, adjusting, sustaining: the essential KPIs of customer relations
Choosing the right indicators
A high-performance customer relationship is managed like a real ecosystem: it requires precise, contextualized and actionable indicators. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should not be limited to volume or speed figures, but reflect the real quality of the customer experience.
Among the must-sees are :
Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures the customer’s propensity to recommend the brand
First contact resolution rate, a key indicator of simplicity and perceived competence
Repeat business rates reveal complex or poorly managed customer journeys
Average processing time, useful for assessing operational fluidity
And post-interaction satisfaction (CSAT), to take the immediate pulse of the service provided
The choice of indicators depends on the channel used (telephone, chat, social networks, e-mail) and the moment in the customer journey: a relevant KPI in the acquisition phase will not have the same meaning in the loyalty phase. The challenge is to build a multi-level measurement system capable of combining operational performance (speed, volume, resolution) and relational performance (satisfaction, commitment, loyalty).
Interpreting and acting on results
Measuring is not enough: you also need to interpret the data correctly and transform it into action levers. This is where dynamic dashboards come in. They enable real-time visualization of trends: NPS evolution by channel, average response time by type of request, or correlation between call duration and satisfaction.
A detailed analysis by type of contact (information request, complaint, technical assistance, order tracking, etc.) enables us to identify priority areas for improvement. If processing times are longer for certain segments, this may indicate a need for training or an overload on a specific channel.
The most advanced companies adopt a logic of continuous adjustment:
Revise scripts to improve the clarity and fluidity of exchanges
Optimize response times to meet customer expectations
Adapting your tone and posture to build closer relationships
It’s also crucial to promote quick wins among teams. Sharing a tangible improvement, such as a 10% increase in CSAT after a script revision, boosts collective motivation and creates a virtuous dynamic.
Spreading a culture of customer excellence
Relationship performance indicators must not remain confined to managers’ dashboards: they must become shared steering tools at all levels of the company. Customer excellence comes into being when management, managers and advisors move forward with a shared vision, based on concrete data and measurable objectives.
Alignment between management and the field is achieved through regular steering rituals: weekly reviews of key indicators, exchanges based on customer feedback, collective identification of irritants and prioritization of corrective actions. These feedback circles encourage a participative approach in which each employee becomes a player in continuous improvement.
Internal feedback circles are also used to bring up weak signals identified by advisors: a poorly perceived script, a tool that’s too slow, an unsuitable procedure. This information, cross-referenced with KPIs, enriches the strategic vision and guarantees improvements based on reality in the field.
By ritualizing this relationship management, the company anchors a lasting culture of customer excellence. Every piece of data becomes a benchmark, every interaction a learning opportunity. It is this iterative approach, combining measurement, listening and constant readjustment, that transforms customer relations into a lasting competitive advantage, both humanly rich and operationally measurable.
AI, personalization and the new frontiers of customer relations
AI for a new relationship experience
Artificial intelligence is profoundly redefining the way organizations interact with their customers. Far beyond simple chatbots or automated FAQs, it is becoming a lever for innovation at the heart of commercial relations. Generative AI, for example, makes it possible to design dynamic scripts, contextualized responses and formulations tailored to each person’s emotional situation.
Thanks to automatic intention detection, AI interprets a request from the very first words, whether it’s a voice message, an e-mail or a website query, to suggest the best course of action. This intelligent operation reduces perceived effort, streamlines interactions and improves the overall efficiency of quality customer service.
However, the aim is not to replace the advisor, but to support him or her. Theaugmented agent becomes a data-assisted professional, capable of developing smoother, more human and more relevant communication. This collaboration between human and technology transforms customer service into a strategic space, focused on value creation and customer loyalty.
Towards truly intelligent personalization
Personalization is now a major pillar of relationship marketing. Where exchanges were once standardized, AI enables dynamic contextualization of every interaction. Each customer thus benefits from a unique experience, consistent with their preferences, history and purchasing habits.
Predictive algorithms continuously adjust proposals, offers and sending times, according to observed profiles and behaviors. A business account active during the day will not receive the same communication as a private user connected in the evening. This fine-tuning contributes to creating a closer relationship.
AI also brings a proactive dimension: by spotting weak signals (latent disengagement, dissatisfied customer, unformulated need), it enables action to be taken before the situation deteriorates. We no longer limit ourselves to managing incidents: we create an ongoing, human relationship, where technology supports loyalty rather than replaces it.
From prediction to augmented relationships
The future of customer relations lies in the convergence of AI, analytics and social CRM. Thanks to this combination, companies can follow the entire life cycle of a consumer: post-purchase follow-up, support after an incident, or analysis of opinions gathered during satisfaction surveys.
This proactive approach is based on intelligent intelligence: identifying critical moments in the customer journey and intervening at the right time, with the right proposal. Predictive models detect both departure risks and opportunities for customer loyalty.
By combining AI and behavioral analysis, brands are developing an unprecedented capacity for anticipation. Customer service no longer simply responds: it anticipates, adapts and prevents dissatisfaction. The era of the augmented relationship is upon us: a model where every interaction becomes proof of trust, a lever for continuous improvement and a sustainable vector of added value.
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Conclusion
Improving customer relations is no longer simply a matter of satisfying customers, but a genuine strategic lever for performance and differentiation. The most advanced companies today rely on five essential pillars: a customer-centric strategy, trained and empowered teams, connected and analytical tools, rigorous management through KPIs, and intelligent exploitation of AI to personalize every interaction.
This transformation towards an augmented customer relationship is based on a subtle balance between technology and humanity. Data and automation optimize customer journeys, but it’s always the quality of listening, responsiveness and omnichannel consistency that shape loyalty.
Lex for organizations in 2025? Assess their relational maturity, identify areas for improvement, and commit to continuous improvement driven by their employees – because every exchange remains an opportunity to create sustainable value.
📌 Find out how to improve your performance with our customer service software on our dedicated page.
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