Today, with growing economic problems in various countries and more competition betweenrndomestic and foreign banks retention of customers more and more has become the key tornsurvival of banks. The concept of relationship marketing has attracted considerable attentionrnfrom marketing researcher recently. The main and fundamental advantage of this approach isrnclaimed to build stronger relationship with customer which its performance results includernincreased sales, profits, market share and customer retention. This research examines therneffect of the components of relationship marketing (trust, bonding, responsiveness, empathy,rnand reciprocity) on customer retention in order to first determine that if relationship marketingrnhas any effect on customer retention and second, if so, which aspect has greatest impact onrncustomer retention. The study is based on information collected from both primary andrnsecondary sources of data. The sample for this study is taken from customers of CommercialrnBank of Ethiopia and Dashen Bank located in Addis Ababa. The method used for sampling wasrnconvenience and non-probability sampling and questionnaires were used for collecting datarnwhich were distributed and collected randomly in various days, locations (different bankrnbranches) and hours for more generalizability of the resulted findings and the results of datarnanalysis obtained by using SPSS version 22 software show that the components of relationshiprnmarketing have positive effect on the level of customer retention. Data analyses were donernusing frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, cross-tabulations, and tablesrnfollowed by discussions. Moreover, inferential statistics of bivariate correlations and simple asrnwell as multiple regressions were used. Based on the overall study, customer relationshiprnmarketing is positively associated with customer retention in the context of both CBE andrnDashen Bank S.Co. And also, dimensions in the CRM as trust, bonding, empathy, reciprocity andrnresponsiveness have the significant relationship with customer retention. Therefore, banksrncompetitiveness and profitability will depend on their ability to build strong relationshiprnmarketing strategy with their customers continuously. Furthermore, future research directionsrnwere also suggested on this study