Roles, Responsibilities and Organizational Structure
Roles
- Practice owner: accountable for the practice's development and maturity - strategy, methods, tooling, capability and resources. The owner does not personally own every relationship.
- Relationship manager: owns a defined set of relationships; acts as named point of contact; understands stakeholder needs and expectations; manages communication and escalation; monitors satisfaction; feeds insight back into design and improvement.
- Account or customer success manager: the same responsibilities in a commercial setting, often with revenue or renewal accountability.
- Service owner and product owner: supply the service knowledge, decisions and commitments the relationship manager cannot make alone.
- Service desk and technical teams: daily touchpoints whose behaviour shapes perception.
- Partner and supplier relationship managers: mirror roles on the other side of a relationship.
Structure
Relationship management can be centralized (one team, common methods, easier consistency) or federated (embedded in business units, closer to stakeholders). Either works if three rules hold: every key stakeholder has exactly one accountable relationship owner; a RACI makes decision rights and escalation explicit; the practice is visible where strategic decisions are made.
Worked example
Two teams independently contact a major customer and give conflicting dates for a change. The fix is structural: assign one accountable relationship owner through the RACI, consolidate the communication plan, and record all contact in a shared system of record so both teams see the same commitment.
Traps
Assuming the practice belongs to the service desk or to sales alone; appointing no practice owner; allowing two owners for one stakeholder; giving a relationship manager accountability without the authority to commit or escalate.