Managing Business-to-Business Customer Relationships following Key Contact Employee Turnover in a Vendor Firm

Abstract

Customers form relationships with the employees who serve them as well as with the vendor firms these employees represent. In many cases, a customer's relationship with an employee who is closest to them, a key contact employee, may be stronger than the customer's relationship with the vendor firm. If the key contact employee is no longer available to serve that customer, the vendor firm's relationship with the customer may become vulnerable. In this article, the authors present the results of two studies that examine what business-to-business customers value in their relationships with key contact employees, what customers' concerns are when a favored key contact employee is no longer available to serve them, and what vendor firms can do to alleviate these concerns and to retain employee knowledge even if they cannot retain the employee in that position. The studies are based on a discovery-oriented approach and integrate input from business-to-business customers, key contact employees, and managers from a broad cross-section of companies to develop testable propositions. The authors discuss managerial and theoretical implications and directions for further research.