Right now contact importance is fixed, and during a smuggler run I thought it might be a fun idea if a contact you have a good relationship with occasionally may offer a mission which improves it. It wouldn't make much sense for a Military contact associated with a non-pirate faction, but for Underworld and Trade contacts I think it'd be a nice way to reward the effort and trade runs you do for them.
Again for a military contact it doesn't seem right for them to get a promotion just because they snagged a particularly good independent contractor, but assuming trade contacts make money and underworld contacts surely must be making money or connections with the missions they give you; it'd make sense that if you do enough missions to get a high relation with them they'd probably have enough money/network to improve their own station in life.
How it could work: "You go to your usual medium importance trade contract on Asher, who normally gives missions offering 40,000 credits to deliver 600 ore to somewhere. This time however she tells you that she has some good news and bad news, and looks relieved to see you: thanks in large part to your timely delivery and transports, she's been able to secure some lucrative shipping contracts to Baetis, but her supplier of transplutonic ore has had a whole warehouse destroyed by some Pathers. Could you somehow get together 3000 transplutonic ore to Baetis within 60 days? She'd be willing to pay 900,000 credits."
Or some sort of similar kind of mission. If you can do it, she moves up in the world to a High importance contact, but if you can't she remains a Medium importance until a similar opportunity arises later. An underworld contact could ask you to pull off a series of dead drops and spysat missions, or to spring someone from a very difficult location like Jangala. So it not only would be a way to add a bit of flavour to these two types of contact and whatever factions they're a part of, but it would also mean you'd have a reason to stick with or pick up a very low importance contact in somewhere useful (near a gate, for example).
