BEYOND TABLE STAKES FOR CLIENT EXPERIENCE

Do you suffer from survey fatigue? Tired of being asked to rate this or score that? I work in a creative industry, I like asking questions and exploring the answers, and I love a survey. The good ones can stop you in your tracks and make you think.

A few weeks ago an online survey popped up asking what ‘experience’ meant to me. It was a simple question and it intrigued me. Just how do I define a good experience? Or a bad one?

I recalled an evening in a London restaurant where, on the face of it, everything went wrong. A booking mix up, a long wait at the bar and a fire at one of the restaurant’s suppliers meant most of the menu was unavailable. But the Maitre d’ handled it with charm, humour and sincerity. He made us laugh with incredulity that so much could go wrong in one evening. With drinks and dessert on the house, we left with fond memories. We’ve been back again and recommended it to friends. A good customer or client experience is neither about perfection, nor the functional elements of service. A good experience is about how it makes you feel.

Good experiences – both professional and personal - come from positive relationships. By sharing thoughts and feelings with others who believe in and are passionate about the same things. Good service is rational. Good experiences are emotional and become memorable for it.

Reviewing and improving customer experience scores highly on many firms’ agendas right now. Speakers at PM Forum’s Annual Conference this year confirmed that defining a consistent and valued client experience is the greatest opportunity to differentiate.

Clients are overloaded with information and choices. They have a wide range of influences and are becoming more discerning with higher expectations. They are looking for more transparency, more authenticity, and a more human (less corporate) exchange.

Delivering a positive experience at every client touchpoint is paramount to continued business success. How? It starts at home and the responsibility is democratised. Every employee must play their part in conducting business in new and more relevant ways, supported by a unique culture to enable and guide them.

For smaller businesses, this tends to happen organically, and founding partners define a culture and experience based on their own character, ambitions, personal principles and values. But what happens when a business grows? How scalable is culture?

A framework becomes vital for growing businesses to crystallise beliefs and values; this is a shared narrative to align culture and experience.

This is not about rules, cultural autocracy or conformity - it is about shared ideals and empowerment. Employees must feel informed, equipped and motivated to adapt to changing marketplace trends and client needs.

How can you build and grow a culture where employees can think innovatively, embrace new technologies, adapt business models and transform service delivery?

Ask yourself: Does my business culture have strong foundations? Are they understood, shared and invested in by leadership, partners/managers and employees? Are they driving a consistent and positive client experience? Will our cultural foundations hold firm as our competitive environment changes?

Below, we’ve shared some useful principles to help develop and strengthen the cultural foundations of your business.

Be self-aware to stay relevant. Corporate self-knowledge is the Holy Grail for effective people, brand experience or service strategies and management. Seek out, listen to and learn from internal and external feedback to stay relevant.

Share your ambition. Shared purpose and ambition is key to effective teamwork and loyal, long-standing client relationships. If you are striving together and moving in the same direction, you’ll make progress.

Adopt values that add value. Values in the professional services sector tend to default to the elementary components of any professional relationship: integrity, professionalism, quality. Even innovation, openness, and passion can feel nebulous if they aren’t personalised or qualified.

Consider: In what ways do we innovate? How open are we? How do we manifest our professional passions? To create and sustain a differentiating culture, values should be expressive, inspiring and unique to the experience you deliver.

See it, hear it, feel it. Make your culture visible and you make it valuable. Publish, celebrate and share your best cultural qualities through personal profiles, insight and opinion, education and events. Adding this human layer brings personal reference points and emotional quality to your firm’s identity and profile.

Go beyond ‘table-stakes’. How do you want your client to feel? When you understand your clients’ expectations and you are confident that your baseline service is covering their needs, then venture beyond the basics. How can you make their lives easier, make it easier to deal with you? How can you better understand their choices and to arrive at the best decisions together?

Achieving differentiation in professional services is tough. But if you can unite and inspire your people through a shared sense of purpose, aligning values and behaviours to build a culture that adapts and achieves, you will go a long way to succeeding.