By Tori Taylor, product marketer
Improving the client experience is a priority for most trust companies. But actually executing that priority is much easier said than done. Here are five ways to jumpstart the process and build experiences that delight customers and keep your client base booming.
- Digitize the customer experience
- Personalize their trust and wealth journey
- Humanize the digital experience
- Maximize your communication channels
- Prioritize client involvement
1. Digitize the customer experience
A digital customer experience isn’t just about having an app or using a chatbot to answer questions. Your trust and wealth clients are becoming increasingly tech savvy. They live in an app-saturated culture where they can access what they want at any time. They can also find answers or connect with anyone at any time (okay, so some of it is about chatbots and AI).
Because they live in a digital-first world, your clients are going to have the same digital expectations from their trust institutions.
For trust officers and wealth mangers, digitizing the customer experience could look like creating online portals for clients to view their accounts, offering digital account opening processes that create a smooth customer journey from the start, or ensuring your trust software is modern, sophisticated, and powerful enough to create customized client experiences.
2. Personalize their trust and wealth journey
Recent data shows that clients increasingly want a more personalized trust and wealth experience. They want to know that their wealth institution sees them as an individual and more than just an account number. And according to an EY report, clients want their values and beliefs reflected in the way their wealth is managed, adding more of an individual touch on guiding a client through their wealth journey.
To do this, wealth managers need to have the right data. Using quantitative data to review their clients’ assets, see how the market is performing, and view investment or financial history is crucial.
But don’t discount the qualitative data – the personal information and preferences that can’t be seen in charts and accounts – that will make the biggest impact in personalizing your client experience. What do you know about your customer? Where is their client data stored? How much do they want to be involved in their wealth management? Are they about to transfer their wealth, and are they (and you) prepared for that transfer?
This qualitative data allows you to give personalized advice and guidance that could build a firm foundation for a solid client relationship. Once you have these details, infuse it into your client experience: build proposals showing that you acknowledge their preference for conservative investment models, schedule meetings with their family members so their children are prepared for the wealth transfer, or offer advice on the best way to set their children up for success after college.
3. Humanize the digital experience
Just because you start to think digitally doesn’t mean you’re out of the game completely. Many of your clients still want to hear from YOU. You are the trusted advisor, the one taking care of them. At the end of the day, their money is in your hands. They want to feel confident in their relationship with you.
Building relationships is the key to making your clients feel confident in who’s managing their account. When they feel uncertain about economic times, hear nerve-wracking rumblings about the market, or have an urgent question about their account, the best thing you can offer them is confidence in you – the one managing the wealth that’s so meaningful to them.
Trust officers and wealth managers can learn to foster those relationships by creating multiple touchpoints throughout their wealth journey. An EY study shows that investment clients prefer in-person or virtual collaboration most throughout the entire investment lifecycle. The same can be true for trust clients. As much as your clients want to rely on robots to get things done, they’d prefer their wealth to be managed in a collaborative way – a way that needs you, a human.
4. Maximize your communication channels
Creating multiple channels of communication is one of the best ways to develop client relationships. And with clients preferring hybrid approaches to communicating with their trust and wealth managers, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth in how and when you can communicate with your clients.
Clients are living in a digital-first, on-demand culture where we can connect with anyone at any time. They’re used to connecting via email, text, social channels, online chat, and the actual phone multiple times a day on issues that aren’t as important as their wealth.
So when it comes to improving your client experience, trust and wealth managers need to evaluate if they’re offering their clients the best means of access and communication, which positions you as an open, reliable, and trustworthy source for your clients.
Not to mention boasting about your availability via several means of communication could be a game-changing selling point to prospects.
5. Prioritize client involvement
As consumers, we love when our thoughts and feedback are heard and taken into consideration. Think about the excitement that generates after a customer shares their experience on Twitter and a company tweets directly back. This kind of exchange – and the sentiment that comes along with it – is priceless in the eyes of a consumer and builds loyalty between brand and customer.
Creating spaces for client involvement, like asking for feedback or better understanding their wealth goals, is one of the best ways to grow your business, evaluate your performance, and pivot any strategies that aren’t advancing your growth. It also helps create a personalized experience and develops the client relationship even further by prioritizing their wants and needs.
If you don’t include your customers in the process or give them outlets to share their thoughts, you’re communicating that their wants and values don’t matter when managing their wealth – and possibly putting a lid on potential ideas for growth and enhanced client connection. It could be the difference between meeting clients’ needs more effectively and staying stagnant and losing value in the eyes of your client.
Start leveling up your client experience
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how to upgrade your client experience so it aligns with the unique expectations of your specific client base. These fives steps are a starting point to help you determine the next best step to help you exceed client expectations.
As you think through how to implement these five steps, first evaluate your current client experience strategies by finding out what’s worked well, what hasn’t worked well, and if there needs to be a change. Whether it’s pivoting to more digital means of communication or getting to know your clients to create a personalized approach to managing their wealth, the investment you make in improving your client experience won’t return void.
