A new model of client engagement
It has long been known that there are different types of behavior. In Accomplish’s case, its Client Behavior Benchmark pinpoints asset managers’ performance at stimulating ‘gifts of time’ and ‘transfers of money’ from clients.
Gifts of time – either digital or in-person – are a category of behavior that, in business, we refer to as ‘engagement’. They are vital leading indicators of the transfers of money that may follow. As a result, in recent years, many marketing and sales departments have employed heads of engagement and tasked them with stimulating the client behaviors that are most important to their pre- and post-sale client experiences.
Simultaneously, the Benchmark’s unique dataset about asset management client behavior has inspired a new model of client engagement. It highlights the most valuable behaviors by viewing different types of engagement as responses to stimuli that take place within settings.
Let’s align on some definitions:
- Setting – this is the context or environment in which the behavior occurs. In practice, your pre- and post-sale client experiences are a series of different settings. Common pre-sale examples include social media apps, your website, their email inbox, a webinar, an in-person event, a 1:1 meeting, and a manager selection process.
- Stimulus – this is an external development that you can initiate. It takes place within a setting and uses a call to action (CTA) to prompt the client towards a target response. Example stimuli include posts, videos, emails, articles, podcasts, RFPs, and pitches.
- Target response – this is the active behavior you want your stimulus to prompt and it can be one-off, intermittent, or can even become a habit. Examples include clicking, reading, watching, listening, attending events, and short-listing an RFP. Crucially, some stimuli maintain engagement by creating responses within a setting (like reading an email), while others escalate engagement by moving a client from one setting to another (like clicking on a button in an email that takes you out of your inbox).
Worked example: spot the most important behavior
To illustrate, let’s explore the example of a social media post:
- In this scenario, you post content on LinkedIn (the setting) with a CTA to click through to learn more (the stimulus).
- Some people will like, comment on, and share (Responses A, B, and C) while others may unfollow you if their interests have diverged from yours (Response D).
- Whether or not they did A, B, or C, another group will respond to your stimulus by clicking on your link and visiting your website (Response E). In doing so, they will escalate their engagement with your brand from a social media app (Setting 1) that is crammed with a zillion other brands to your website (Setting 2) that is all about you.
Key point: the winners will stay laser-focused on escalation
You cannot focus on everything, so how do you prioritize what response to target and monitor?
The model teaches us that the most valuable behaviors on the pre- and post-sale client experience escalate engagement from one setting to another. In the example above, people can say what they like on LinkedIn but unless it stimulates action like Response E, it may have limited or no value. So, if you could only choose one response to target and track, choose E because it demonstrates actual follow-through – actions speak louder than words – and, therefore, gives the client a deeper and richer experience. In the absence of further engagement, Responses A, B, and C may simply be ‘learned reflexes’ that may mean little.
However, the real world is nuanced, so the most effective marketers will find a balance between prioritizing escalation (E), while also maintaining engagement (A, B, and C) and minimizing disengagement (D).
3 things you will need and why they are vital
To achieve this, you need to know three things: 1) the escalation behaviors across all settings in your client experience, 2) strategies for stimulating them, and 3) your performance relative to other firms.
They are vital because clients cannot be in two places at the same time. So, in the over-supplied market for investment products, if your CX underperforms at engaging clients, they will give their time to your competitors. And because engagement is a leading indicator, their money is likely to follow.
As a result, to take the pre-sale experience as an example, every time you outperform at engaging clients, you will keep your sales funnel wider for longer.
More use cases and the regulatory angle
To help asset managers become experts at maintaining and escalating engagement, Accomplish recently incorporated this model of client engagement into the Client Behavior Benchmark.
Each of its ~30 metrics across the end-to-end client journey has a use case – best practice advice on how to use the insights most effectively. They fall into three categories – be client-centric, deepen client engagement and stand out – and to help you stay laser-focused on the most important behaviors, they now also highlight the escalation behaviors.
These specific use cases also integrate with Accomplish’s general playbooks which give best practice tips on stimulating different forms of engagement and mistakes or manipulative practices you should avoid.
For example, the LinkedIn scenario could have prompted clients to listen to a podcast that stimulated them to turn up to one of your investment events and, in turn, request a follow-up meeting with one of your relationship managers. All these responses are ‘escalation behaviors’ in different settings along your pre-sale experience (aka sales funnel).
There is a regulatory angle too. While Accomplish’s benchmark is global, many firms will operate UK entities where the FCA’s recent Consumer Duty now obliges UK-regulated entities to monitor “good outcomes” for clients by “considering how they behave … at every stage of the journey.” Meanwhile, its detailed guidance advises firms to “take behavioral biases into account” while ensuring they “avoid inappropriately manipulating them.” Accomplish’s model will help you achieve exactly this.
Imagine increasing clients’ engagement with their account balances, fine-tuning your a/b testing to evaluate the performance of different campaigns, or identifying and serving your superfans who regularly display escalation behaviors.
Crucially, you will also be able to identify and respond to changes in behavior – either at an aggregate level (maybe your videos or events begin to lose popularity) or at the individual level: perhaps a superfan stops engaging, indicating a potential at-risk client, or starts engaging with a new product, indicating a cross-selling opportunity.
3 steps to CX excellence
To summarize the new model of client engagement, engagement is a category of behavioral responses to stimuli that you can initiate. These responses take place within and across the different settings that comprise your sales funnel and client journey.
To win, you will need to be expert in maintaining and escalating engagement.
We hope you found this article useful and if you would like to learn more, here are Accomplish’s 3 steps to CX excellence:
- Book a demo to see the Benchmark in action.
- Check the readiness of your CX data.
- Pinpoint, in time and money, where your CX out and underperforms at engaging clients.
