Client experience is the new marketing

This article is based on content from the Fairbairn Consult 2024 annual conference that was themed around client experience (CX).

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Guy Holwill, Chief Executive of Fairbairn Consult.
Guy Holwill, Chief Executive of Fairbairn Consult.

In the article, I’ve drawn on my own ideas as well as those presented by Nathalie Schooling and Brendon Bairstow-Klopper from nlightencx, Rufaro Nyakatawa-Mucheka, Yolanda van Jaarsveld, Amanda John-Ncube, Sulaiman Adam, Jarryd Gillmer, Elmarie Samuel, Wanita Isaacs and Maryke Pretorius.

About 20 years ago, I bought a chef’s knife from Banks in Woodstock. I also wanted to buy a diamond sharpener, but the salesman talked me out of it because I’d damage the knife. Instead, he sold me a much cheaper sharpener that could be used by someone as amateurish as me. The point of this story is that, because of the fantastic CX, I’ve been back to Banks many times, I’ve told my friends and family to go there, I’ve told the story at three conferences and now I’m writing about it in a magazine. In other words, great CX made me a loyal customer and an advocate for Banks, without anyone asking me to do this.

There is something in our DNA that makes us tell others about our experiences. Think about going to a fantastic restaurant – if your experience is good, you tell your friends and family about it. It’s the same for how your clients experience you. And because clients trust word of mouth more than any marketing, if you get CX right, you will always retain clients and you will get referrals. As an added benefit, research shows that people are willing to pay a price premium for great experiences, which means that great CX makes your clients less price sensitive.

In the world of financial advice, CX is anchored in the advice that you give to your clients. And while some technical aspects will always remain, we can create a better experience if we focus on how we deliver the message. An example of this is that the UK’s Personal Finance Society now advocates power planning with the five Cs of client outcomes: clarity, connection, choice, control and confidence. Are you confident that your clients feel like that when they have spoken to you?

whether you like it or not, you are creating client experiences every day,, wth every client, that u do or don’t interact with.

CX goes beyond the important aspects and is also about peripheral matters. Continuing the example above, you’re unlikely to return to a restaurant that serves great food but has a poor atmosphere. Have you considered all the peripheral things in your practice that are either creating wow experiences or ruining them? But always remember that no amount of good coffee can compensate for poor advice or the wrong solutions.

The final element of CX is that it is also determined by what your clients expect – which you will only know if you ask them through simple surveys. If you are not doing this, then you may have unhappy clients, even though you are delivering a great service.

When it comes to implementing CX, there are no silver bullets and it’s important to understand that improving CX is a journey that involves implementing hundreds of small changes in the following areas of your business:

  1. Brand. Sets the foundation for how clients engage with you.
  2. Staff. Engaged in your business.
  3. Communication. Make people feel valued.
  4. Feedback: Get it and act on it.
  5. Enablers. Customer relationship management, social media, AI, etc: are not CX in themselves.
  6. Client journey mapping: Drives loyalty.

To make all this practical, here’s how you could re-think the six steps of financial planning from a CX perspective

  • At the first meeting, before getting into technical advice, listen, be authentic, have a non-judgemental attitude and focus on your body language. Remember that your clients expect you to be clued up, but they also expect you to understand what matters to them.
  • When doing the fact-find, CX can be improved by asking emotional rather than factual questions. So that clients open up about what it is that they really want. You must remain curious about their answers and ask appropriate follow-up questions.
  • When making recommendations, don’t create confusion by presenting too many similar options.
  • In terms of ongoing engagement, categorise your clients so that you give the right level of support to each client. Think about ways of keeping your clients engaged so that they want to talk to you. Whether you like it or not, you are creating client experiences every day, with every client, that you do or don’t interact with.
  • CX starts with the first seven seconds that you have, to make a first impression. Improving CX is sometimes about doing new things and other times it is about doing the same things differently. It is not only about what you do (both the important and peripheral matters), but also what you don’t do that your clients expect you to do.
  • CX requires a process, process produces consistency, clients like consistency and consistency develops trust. Unlike other aspects of running a professional advisory business, CX is not something that you can opt out of. 

Fairbairn Consult is a licensed Financial Services Provider (FSP no. 9328) and a member of the Old Mutual Group.