Members of the FOX Client Experience Council – a like-minded group of executives from single and multi-family offices around the country who gather in person twice each year to learn together, share resources and socialize – are in constant pursuit of creative ways to surprise and delight their clients.

At a recent Council meeting, their homework included reading the book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer and sharing their ideas for applying the lessons in the book to their family offices.

Following are some of the group’s key takeaways:

• Enlightened hospitality prioritizes clients and employees
• “Constant, gentle pressure” equates to the importance of holding people accountable for standards of excellence
• Know what matters most to your clients and stick to it
• The difference between service and hospitality is that service is a monologue, while hospitality is a dialogue.  Hospitality is something that happens for you; service happens to you
• Hiring the right people is 51% about hiring people with the right emotional skills, and 49% about the technical skills
• Create opportunities for the client to be heard, even when they may not be right
• Mistakes happen. Own them and turn them in to opportunities to impress
• Connect the dots: the more information you can gather, the more frequently you can make connections that make other people feel good and, ultimately, give you an edge

How do you surprise and delight your clients?