VUCA environmental conditions are becoming one of the most important drivers of customer value-centered management: known factors such as increased competition and the perceived interchangeability of products and services are combined with increased complexity and uncertainty in the planning of corporate activities. This raises legitimate questions about the extent to which decisive differentiation opportunities exist for the company in the medium to long term. This shifts the focus to customer relationships. If these can be optimally managed, there is potential value which, in the best case, leads to customers and companies winning. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider the customer relationship not only in terms of simplified constructs such as customer satisfaction or recommendation potential (NPS), but to understand it as a whole and in causal chains.