In wealth management, financial performance is important, but the client experience should not be overlooked. Building a positive relationship with an investor allows you to move from being a service provider to a much stronger and more sustainable partner.

“Regardless of the sector of activity, the customer must be at the center of all actions and concerns of a company, because they are the reason for being of any commercial activity. Moreover, 84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience have seen their revenue increase,” emphasises Daniel Lafrenière, author, speaker, columnist and customer experience expert.

Croesus met with him to discuss the practices that ensure a quality customer experience.

Croesus (C): What is customer experience?
Daniel Lafrenière (DL): We often try to analyse the customer experience in a Cartesian way, but it is above all a question of emotions. It does not matter whether it is B2C (individual customers) or B2B (commercial customers), it is a human interaction.

Customer experience is therefore the emotion a customer feels when interacting with a company, whether through the website, through customer service, receiving an invoice, etc. What matters is the emotional imprint left by this experience. This is what the customer will remember and how they will tell their friends about it.

C: Is customer experience important?
DL: It is estimated that we talk twice as much about a bad customer experience as a good one, and that 70% of dissatisfied people say so on social media. This permanent digital trace is not insignificant since according to Google, 78% of people first trust their friends to evaluate a product or service.

If you do not provide a good customer experience, you risk losing up to half of your customer base. In fact, 32% of customers will turn their backs on a brand they love after just one bad experience, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers . Since it is much more expensive to acquire a customer than it is to keep one, the math is easy to do.

C: What are the effects of a positive customer experience?
DL: Satisfaction is the result of meeting expectations. However, customer expectations are increasingly high, because they transpose the sum of their experiences, including digital ones, and expect to obtain an experience of the same quality. For them, there is therefore no distinction between the customer experience offered by their financial advisor, by Amazon or by a restaurateur.

In addition to remaining loyal, buying more, being more receptive to suggestions and forgiving more easily, a satisfied customer becomes an ambassador for his favorite company and defends it. Some brands like Apple and Harley-Davidson have converted their customers so well that some see them as a religion and even get their logo tattooed.

C: How to improve the customer experience?
DL: Customer experience is the sum of service quality, competence (know-how) and attitude (soft skills). The gaps are generally in soft skills.

Efficiency, convenience, and friendly, knowledgeable people are the four most popular customer experience characteristics, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study . So that is the foundation. If the product is great, but the foundation is weak, the customer experience is not going to be good.

To ensure customer satisfaction, it is important to respect the 10 commandments of customer experience:

1. You will reduce customer efforts
   Customers do not like to make unnecessary effort. Making their lives easier helps improve their experience. This can be done by directing them from the start to the person who can help them, to the right product for them, and helping them understand it.
    

2. You will know him
   It is important to take the time to understand the client's needs and expectations and then write them down so that they do not have to repeat them. In the financial sector, what most displeases clients is an irrelevant service or product offer, followed by an advisor who does not go beyond expectations. A generic service offer that does not take into account the client's history, a lack of understanding of needs and incompetent staff are other behaviors that displease.

3. You will be proactive in the relationship
   One of the keys to adapting well to your customer and their context is the ability to understand them well. You must therefore take an interest in the customer in a natural way by gradually gathering information over the course of conversations. This creates a relationship that allows you to personalise your service.

4. You will be polite and empathetic
   Obviously, you should use polite phrases when addressing customers. On the phone as well as in person, it is recommended to smile, as it gives the impression that you are more sincere, social and competent.

   On the other hand, you should never be abrupt, raise your voice, question the customer's word or make fun of him. You should also be careful about using scripts that risk making you look like a robot. Basically, the best way to behave well with a customer is to put yourself in their shoes.

5. You will reassure and inform him
   To effectively reassure a customer, you must first find out about their fears. Then, you must clearly inform them of all the processes by answering the questions: Who? What? When? How much (cost)? How? It is important to provide regular feedback by informing them of each step to avoid them becoming anxious. Finally, you must reduce the wait or at least keep the customer informed of the process when the wait is unavoidable.

6. You will anticipate his needs
   It is always best to approach the customer and offer assistance. You need to be transparent in order to prepare the customer for the problems that may be encountered during the process.

7. You will not abandon him
   When a customer has a problem, you should at least try to meet their need by offering alternative solutions or providing additional help. This attention can become an investment that will make this customer a loyal customer.

8. You will be transparent
   You need to be transparent about costs, limits and deadlines to avoid unpleasant surprises.

9. You will inspire confidence
   Aesthetics is the first factor on which a customer bases his trust on a service or a product. The physical location as well as the communications are therefore essential. It is estimated that an Internet user decides in just a few seconds whether or not to trust a site.

10. You will pleasantly surprise him
    Thanking the customer in a creative way by offering them something unexpected that pleases them makes all the difference. Your customer will feel important. Obviously, this rule only works when we have delivered what is expected of us.

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