For our FOX Thought Leaders Council Report “Creating Memorable Client Experiences: Differentiation in the Ultra-Wealth Market,” we looked at 30 of the best client experience brands in the world, including Apple, Ritz-Carleton, Disney, and Tesla. We identified the following seven activation strategies to help organizations get on the road to improving their client experiences:

 

1) Construct a Client Experience Definition – Bring together your leadership team or family to contribute to and agree upon the desired client experience.

 

2) Appoint a Client Experience Leader – Inspiration for pursuing a great client experience may come directly from the family or senior leadership at an advisory firm. In addition, firms are appointing someone to directly lead the client experience effort on a full-time basis.

 

3) Perform an Experience Mapping Exercise – Identifying all client touch points and each step along the way will add up to what the client ultimately sees and uncover weak points in the delivery chain. Map the client experience as a team so that you may build consensus on what requires attention as you perform the exercise. This is a great way to find places where the experience is working well and not working as intended.

 

 

4) Perform a Service Assessment – Delivery of exceptional service is the foundation for creating a great client experience. Develop a baseline understanding of what clients like the most or dislike about your current service by asking them. Use a two-part research approach:

 

5) Conduct Peer and Non-Peer Comparisons –There is lots of rich and plentiful information out there on client experience. We encourage you to not limit your search to what we have found (although we believe our findings should prove to be a great starting point).

 

6) Engage Employees – Employees, especially those who work directly with clients, possess valuable insights about the experience and often are the lynchpin to improving the experience. There are many cases where firms first set out to improve the employee experience as a pathway to improve the client experience.

 

7) Develop Appropriate Measures – De-mystify the client experience by making it tangible for clients, colleagues, and leadership. Successful client experience firms have constructed measures that are client-driven and embedded into their practice. Start with baseline measures, such as client satisfaction, and develop additional measures that are specific to the client experience dimension you are seeking to improve. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that tie directly to client experience expectations can be extremely useful.

 

Amy Hart Clyne (Executive Director, FOX Knowledge Center) and I discussed more findings from FOX’s client experience research in our webinar, “Differentiation in the Ultra Wealth Market: How do you Construct Great Client Experiences?” The webinar is free for all FOX members and is available for purchase by non-FOX members.