Getting inside clients' heads helps wealth managers build better brands

Clients are seeking increasingly personalised and unique experiences, across both human and digital touch-points, which wealth managers have lagged behind other industries in transforming.

iPhones, Fitbits, and a plethora of other wearables and digital tools have become second-skin for digital converts intent on tracking every aspect of daily life. We track sleep, exercise, calorie intake, almost anything we can – so why not the various components of client engagement?

To stand out from competition, it is imperative for firms to both truly understand clients’ needs and their evolving expectations and to create a strong brand that resonates with key clientele.

Compounding a journey of small steps

Scorpio Partnership’s latest research, delving into the hearts and minds of chief marketing officers (CMOs) globally, finds that although most marketers understand the importance of client experience (CX) and brand tracking – fewer than one in three (28 per cent) have a formalised programme in place.

Given the age-old adage that knowledge is power, it is unsurprising that those who have either (or both), are also more effective in translating research insights into actionable initiatives – and consequently report greater confidence about the industry’s future growth prospects.

The power of insight and client experience brings to mind Rory Sutherland’s Ted Talk, Lessons from an ad man, delivered back in 2009. In his speech, Ogilvy’s creative director highlights the importance of understanding what actually matters to customers when delivering results. Using one of Eurostar’s early challenges to illustrate his point, he explains how the firm once tasked a group of engineers to improve train journey times.

Their solution – spend £6bn ($7.75bn) to build new tracks for faster trains, reducing journey times by about 40 minutes off a three-and-a-half-hour journey. An admirable, yet expensive solution. A more creative alternative, and arguably more valuable to the client, would be to find a way to make people enjoy the slower ride. Mr Sutherland’s proposal –  offer intangible rewards, such as free Wi-Fi on trains.

A more direct example in the wealth management space involves better understanding what really drives the client experience. Simply telling advisers to spend more time with their clients is largely not attainable given limited resources and large books of client households.  But what if through client insight measurement you could discover the top two or three things that make even a five minutes conversation both valuable and memorable?

In other words, by taking the time to better understand what delights, as well as frustrates clients at various points in their journey, firms can amplify the effects of making small changes to more effectively address much larger challenges.

Listen, learn, lead

The concept of brand extends far beyond just the marketing of a brand name. It encompasses client perception and understanding of brand values, attracts prospective clients and converts existing ones into loyal customers, who are engaged beyond a purely transactional relationship.

According to this year’s CMO data, wealth managers who have a formalised programme in place use it for several reasons:

Client experience

• To better understand issues raised by clients, gauge the performance of a particular initiative and develop an improvement plan
• To incentivise advisers/relationship managers to deliver an even higher quality service
• To build and adviser assessment and development programme that reinforces the client-adviser relationship

Brand

• To assess the strength of a brand against a set of peer firms
• To understand the firm's brand profile to allow for targeted marketing activities
• To obtain competitor insight, as well as identify areas where, from a client's perspective, the business is making changes

The need to listen, create value and communicate it to a crowded market place has never been more important.

Listening and learning from various tracking exercises can therefore enhance wealth mangers’ capacity to organically reposition their brand and capitalise on shifting consumer trends or evolving preferences.

Ultimately, the client should be at the heart of any improvements in performance, and so a continual process of test and learn must be embraced if wealth managers are to truly harness future growth. Trends and technology may change how this manifests in the delivery, but the fundamental goal of keeping clients happy should not ever change.

Jenny Kvaskova and Basel Raslan are managers and David Lo an associate partner at wealth management think-tank Scorpio Partnership