Two types of client relationship: supportive or narcissistic

One client says it plainly: “I need a two-week extension on the invoice, and here is why.” He gets an answer, nods, carries on working. Another client, a month earlier, was calling the same company “the best in town”, and today he phones with a grievance: “How could you possibly do this to us.” One product, one team, and two completely different relationship stories.

The difference is not in the clients’ characters and not in the quality of the service. The difference is in the type of relationship. This is the earliest and the most stable axis along which any contact between a company and a client, or between two partners, can be described. For a foreign company selling in Russia it also explains most of the surprises in the first year: the sudden coldness after a warm start, the distributor who adored the brand and then stopped answering.

What a supportive relationship looks like, and what a narcissistic one does instead

Relationships come in two types: supportive and narcissistic.

A supportive relationship is a partnership, and it is transparent. Functions in it are not duplicated, they are divided. One side does one thing, the other does another, and both acknowledge this without any excess admiration for each other. There is no power in a supportive relationship. In place of manipulation there is a request. The person does not try to predetermine the other’s behaviour; he asks for it.

A narcissistic relationship is built differently. Here the person wants to be like the other but cannot, and so the other, as it were, does it for him. The client becomes, in his own eyes, the thing he admires, without actually being it. The relationship rests on merging with someone else’s image rather than on a division of functions.

The type forms early, at the very start of life, and of all the characteristics you can use to describe a person it is the one that changes most slowly. It sets the distance: how much closeness and how much responsibility a person is able to tolerate in contact with someone else.

For a business this means you will not change a client’s relationship type with a better onboarding sequence. What you can do is recognise it early.

How a client’s delight turns into devaluation

In a narcissistic relationship there is always room for manoeuvre. The person keeps the right to accuse, or to turn the situation around by a hundred and eighty degrees: “Did I ever ask you for that?” The two main instruments here are delight and devaluation, and they always come as a pair.

The typical sequence runs like this. At the start the client sincerely idealises the company: “I have finally found people who understand everything, I am in safe hands.” Idealisation is pleasant for both sides: the team gets a grateful client, the client feels protected. But idealisation is an advance, not a diagnosis. Sooner or later the reality of the product falls short of the image the client painted for himself. Then the second half of the mechanism switches on: devaluation. The same client who recently called the company the best suddenly sees nothing in it except faults and looks for a reason to accuse rather than a way to sort things out.

In a supportive relationship this swing does not exist. If something is wrong, the person says so directly, formulates a request, waits for an answer and stays in contact, because the contact is held together by honesty rather than by an image.

This takes a particular shape when a foreign brand enters the Russian market. The brand arrives carrying an image: “European quality”, “a serious international company”, “finally someone who does things properly”. Local clients and partners often attach to that image before they have seen a single delivery. That is idealisation in its purest form, and it has nothing to do with your product yet. When the first shipment is late at customs, or Russian-language support answers slower than the English one, the image cracks, and the devaluation that follows is proportional to the height of the initial admiration. A company that read the praise as a verdict on its quality is caught off guard.

Why early idealisation is a risk signal and how to read it

In practice a business is tempted to get a supportive relationship while keeping narcissistic power. It wants the client to state his request clearly, without acting out, and at the same time to bind the client to itself and dispose of his attention as it finds convenient. This dream is almost always unachievable, and knowing that is more useful than trying to pull it off.

In a product interaction the business and the client almost inevitably end up in an asymmetric, parent-and-child structure. Wherever there is forced trust in someone bigger, idealisation appears almost automatically.

The practical conclusion follows directly. Do not spend effort trying to build purely partner-like, symmetrical relationships with every client. For a mass product this is structurally impossible. Instead, learn to recognise early idealisation as a signal of future devaluation rather than a compliment you can relax on. If a client enthusiastically calls your company the best, ask yourself: what happens when reality turns out a little more modest than the image? Prepare the ground in advance. Mark out transparently what the product can and cannot do, and lower the amplitude of the disappointment to come.

Three things make this harder in Russia than in most Western markets, and each is a matter of practice rather than statistics.

First, relationships are personal and run through messengers. A large part of B2B contact here happens in Telegram and WhatsApp, often with one named person rather than a support address. Warmth builds fast in that channel, and so does the feeling of a personal bond. The downside is that nothing in it reads as a formal request. “You are brilliant, sort it out for us” is not a request; it is an image being handed to you. When the mood turns, the same chat is where the accusation lands, with no written record of what was agreed. Keep the chat. But move every real request into a form both sides can reread later: a short written summary of what was asked, what was promised and by when.

Second, the foreign brand is idealised in advance. The image of “a proper Western company” works for you at the start, and it is the first thing turned against you. “We expected more from a European firm” is the standard opening of a devaluation. The defence is the same as for any idealisation: name the limits early and in the client’s language. What ships from stock in Russia and what comes from abroad with a lead time. Which support hours are Moscow time. What the local partner handles and what only head office can decide. Each limit stated in advance is a swing that does not happen later.

Third, the swing goes public faster. Reviews on Yandex Maps, on marketplaces and in Telegram channels are where a devaluation is acted out when the client does not want a conversation. A client who simply stops answering is the quiet version. Neither is feedback about your product; both are the second act of a story whose first act you enjoyed.

Find the few who ask instead of admire

Separately, look for the few clients capable of supportive contact: the ones who formulate a request instead of admiration. With them build more honest, less emotionally loaded relationships. Delegate. Negotiate directly. Do not be afraid of disagreement.

Such relationships demand a maturity that is not universal, and recognising it is already half the work of anyone who communicates for a living.

For a company working the Russian market from abroad this sorting has practical value. Your local partner, distributor or key account is a relationship, and it has a type. A partner who sends a plain list of what did not arrive and what he needs by Friday is a supportive relationship. A partner who writes “you are the best, we will take the whole territory” and then goes silent after the first pricing disagreement is the other kind. He is not necessarily a bad partner. He is a partner whose praise you should treat as a forecast and whose contract should carry more written detail than usual.

The same sorting applies to your Russian customer base. The clients who can say what they want in plain words are the ones worth interviewing when you need to understand the market. Admiring clients give you flattering interviews and useless data. Structured customer research is, among other things, a way of finding the supportive ones and listening to them properly.

What a company selling into Russia should do with this

A short route that does not require changing anyone’s character:

1. Reclassify the praise. Go through your current Russian accounts and note which ones started with “you are the best”. Those are the ones to prepare for, not to relax about.
2. Write the limits before the first problem. A one-page document in Russian: what the product does and does not do, what is local and what is imported, when support responds. Send it while the client is still delighted. It will be read then and quoted later.
3. Turn chat into requests. Keep messenger contact, but close every substantive exchange with a written summary of what was asked and agreed. A supportive client will use it; a narcissistic one will try to escape it.
4. Watch for the first reversal. “Did I ever ask you for that?” is the moment the second act begins. Do not argue the image; state the unstated request yourself, in writing.
5. Protect the ones who ask. When a client formulates a request without drama, answer faster and more fully than you answer praise. Ongoing marketing support can carry this sorting through the year rather than leaving it to whoever answers the phone.

Delight and accusation: one story in two acts

Delight and accusation are not two different stories about a client. They are one story in two acts. The person who saw a parent in you yesterday will want to punish that parent tomorrow. And the person who simply asks is already an adult, and with him you can talk as equals.

For a foreign company in Russia this is not a matter of culture, though culture sets the volume. It is the same two types, with a brand image that arrives idealised, a channel that makes everything personal and a public space where the second act plays out faster. Read the first act correctly and the second one stops being a surprise.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Russian version of this article on belokrylovo.ru: Два типа отношений