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Client centricity remains an elusive targetNicola Kleyn
Although the management of service quality is nothing new (it hit the academic headlines in the 1980s), getting it right continues to elude many a South African service provider. Every year, I work with companies and individuals who grapple with the task of becoming client centric.
In order to exhort my clients to ‘think customer’, I ask them to ponder the last time they experienced great service.
It is rare for anyone to mention a service provider who consistently has given them what they are looking for and more.
Getting service right does not occur overnight, but there are steps you can take to differentiate yourself from your competitors and build a loyal client base.
Step One: Understand the underpinnings of service
If you log onto Google and search for ”service”, you will find a bewilderingly large (and sometimes quite funny!) list of the various ways in which service may be defined.
Just like Google, customers do not all define service in the same way. It is a multidimensional construct with a number of underpinnings.
Long-standing academic research has defined the dimensions of service in various ways.
Some of the most common ones include courtesy, reliability, competence and empathy.
Step Two: Build a picture of how your clients assess you on these
One of the most fundamental errors that service providers make, is to guess how their clients assess the service they are receiving. Don’t!
One of the first conversations that you should be having with prospective clients is to probe their expectations along the dimensions you have identified in step one.
You will be able to gain a sense of these if they have switched from another provider when you explore why they have switched and what would make a good experience for them.
Do not feel that by asking them, you will be raising expectations. It is far better to surface these and manage them when you know you cannot deliver, than not determining them in the first place. Your queries should not stop with new clients.
Schedule an interaction with a client at least once a year to ask how you are doing and get specific feedback on exactly where you are shaping up and where you are not.
Step Three: Enable your employees and partners to deliver
Anyone who communicates with your clients and is associated with your brand needs to know what matters to clients.
Spend time sharing client insights and engaging with your partners in service delivery around how to communicate and deliver what clients are seeking.
One reason why employees fail to deliver service is that they do not know what really matters to their clients.
The other reasons may be that they cannot give the service, or that they choose not to. It may be that the job fit is incorrect, that they require training, or that the processes and systems you have designed do not enable them to deliver good service.
But more often, it is because employers have not viewed employees as their internal clients.
Research indicates a high correlation between employee and customer satisfaction. If internal relationships are not strong, start your client service initiative by fixing these and making your office a place where your employees want to come to work.
Step Four: Manage the tangibles
Human beings rely on their senses to evaluate their world. And because financial advice is intangible, clients will use these as a proxy to assess you.
You can argue that the quality of the paper you use to document a financial plan has nothing to do with the quality of your thinking, but your clients do not see it that way.
So make that any tangibles – including the coffee you serve, documentation, e-mails, voice mails, business cards and your personal image – reinforce the message you want to send to your clients.
Over time, they will become less reliant on these to evaluate your performance, but in the early days, it is imperative to manage these.
Step Five: Act (fast) when things go wrong
Delivering consistent service in an unpredictable world is just about impossible. So make a plan for when things go wrong.
The most important thing is to encourage an unhappy client to speak to you rather than friends, family or Facebook. Set the scene by making regular contact with them to give them the opportunity to communicate with you. When things do go pear-shaped, contact the client before he/she calls you.
Research shows that clients are more likely to forgive us when we give the bad news in one go. So do not spread a problem over numerous messages. Explain what has happened, show empathy and make restitution where you can.
Additional research shows that where service recovery incidents are well handled, client loyalty increases after the incident.
Step Six: Put aside time for a service audit
In a busy world, it is difficult to make time to plan for how to deliver and enhance service.
But you need to dedicate time to building the client picture and taking an honest look at how well you are meeting it.
You may want to use a tool such as that found at www.surveymonkey.com to send out a short survey to your clients.
If you are unsure of what questions to ask and how to analyse the data, it is probably worth asking for some help (consider contacting a member of the Marketing faculty at your local university and asking them to assist).
Schedule at least 15 minutes with a range of clients, explain the purpose of the interaction, and simply listen to what they say. Try not to become defensive if you receive negative feedback – it will hurt you less in the long run!
Prompt them when they make vague statements to give you specific examples to build your understanding of how they assess service and measure you.
Step Seven: Know when to fire a client
Sometimes we cannot give a client the service they are seeking. And rather than risk negative word-of-mouth, it may be prudent to refer them to someone else.
Explain why you are not the provider for them, and let them go! There are some clients whose costs to serve (time and emotional) may be simply too large to warrant keeping them on the books.
The reasons why clients join a financial adviser are usually different to reasons why they stay – and it is service that keeps them.
Devoting time to your service strategy is critical in an environment where although clients typically receive 3 000 to 6 000 commercial messages a day, great service encounters are few and far between.
Start now!
