In brief
No one disagrees with the importance of CX in asset management, but how can you galvanize people into action? Our answer is that the case is three-fold: excel to stay ahead of your competitors, make money, and comply with the UK’s Consumer Duty – a market that most asset managers serve.
Three unsafe assumptions about what defines CX
No one in asset management disagrees with the importance of client experience (CX), but while early-adopter firms are pulling ahead, from Accomplish’s vantage point, the main obstacle for late-adopter firms comes from a misdiagnosis of the definition of CX. It is based on three unsafe assumptions:
Unsafe assumption 1: CX is a qualitative ‘feel good’ concept.
Unsafe assumption 2: CX is just good Client Service.
Unsafe assumption 3: CX begins with onboarding.
In reality, CX is quantitative, cross-functional, and end-to-end
The reality of CX is very different:
Reality 1. CX is a quantitative discipline measured in time and money. These inputs and outputs will change as your competitors and you evolve, which means you need not a one-off project but an ongoing capability to monitor your performance at stimulating:
- Behavioral ‘gifts of time’ that indicate different levels of digital and in-person engagement from clients.
- Transfers of money across the three dollarizable client behaviors:
- Buying (sales conversion rates).
- Staying for another year (client tenure).
- Buying more (product-per-client ratio).
Reality 2. CX is a cross-functional coordination task – CX comprises the efforts of all the internal teams that support the client journey, and a successful experience will be a seamless client journey across all those team boundaries. CX, therefore, is a cross-functional coordination task.
Reality 3. CX is end-to-end: pre- and post-sale – the pre-sale experience keeps your sales funnel as wide as possible for as long as possible, and the post-sale experience lengthens your client tenure and deepens your product-per-client ratio. If you want to retain clients and cross-sell to them, you must continue promoting yourself by exposing existing clients to your pre-sale experience. CX, therefore, begins with the promotional activities on your pre-sale experience and ends with the relationship aspects of your post-sale experience.
The case for CX in asset management: excel, make money, and comply
How can you galvanize your colleagues into action? Our answer is to present the case along three core benefits: excel, make money, and comply.
Benefit 1. Excel: outperform and stay ahead of your competitors
Client behavior is the reliable indicator of CX, and [client] engagement is a category of behavior that you can stimulate. They are gifts of time like reading, watching, listening, attending, and returning to your website, like requesting a proposal, or like consuming your services.
The better you get at engaging clients, the more time they will give to your brand. By definition, you will be keeping your sales funnel wider for longer.
So, measure your effect on client behavior, use the Client Behavior Benchmark to understand where you out and underperform, and make your CX function responsible for managing a process of continual improvement. This is the reliable path to excellence that will keep you ahead of your competitors.
Benefit 2. Make money by focusing on staying and buying more, as well as just buying – the more time clients give to you, the more likely their money will follow. To establish the financial case, ask your Finance colleagues to compare the value of client retention (staying) against recent sales (buying). We bet you that retention will be your largest source of revenue and the one you will need for investments in the future. Therefore, it would be an unforced error to overlook a discipline that will help you monitor, compare, and set targets for your client retention. The same logic applies to ‘buying more’ and your product-per-client ratio.
Benefit 3. Comply with the UK’s Consumer Duty – a market most asset managers serve.
The UK FCA’s Consumer Duty obliges asset managers to “consider how [clients] behave … at every stage of the journey” and prove “good outcomes”. The wording of this regulation matches the definition of client experience so closely that a CX professional could have written it.
So, if you are an asset manager with a UK operation, you will need to prove that you are monitoring client behavior, understanding where good outcomes are being delivered, and acting to address any underperformance.
This is precisely what the Client Behavior Benchmark does.
Innovative uses strengthen the case further
In addition to this three-part case for CX in asset management, early adopter firms have also developed innovative uses for the Benchmark and are reaping the benefits.
They are ensuring marketing, sales, and service flow seamlessly into a coherent client journey, they are pinpointing abnormal client leakage on their sales funnels, and they are leveraging patterns of client behavior.
We see the winners capitalizing on CX already, so to avoid the risk that they will pull ahead, visit the Client Behavior Benchmark to research it in more detail.
3 steps to CX excellence
We hope you found this article useful. If you would like to act further, here are Accomplish’s 3 steps to CX excellence:
- Book a personal tour.
- Check the readiness of your CX data.
- Pinpoint, in time and money, where your pre-sale client experience out and underperforms at engaging clients – because every time you outperform, you keep your sales funnel wider for longer.
