David Barks, Associate Director, Wealth-X Custom Reaserch (dal profilo Linkedin)
Private Banks and Wealth Managers often ask us how they can retain their clients, deepen the relationship, extend share of wallet, widen the products and services clients use, and grow their business through recommendation. Firstly, we always seek to understand how loyal their clients are. Over the past 12 years, Wealth-X Custom Research has interviewed thousands of private banking and wealth management clients all around the world about their loyalty. From all of this work, we have developed an understanding what drives client loyalty, getting to the true health of their proposition and the improvements needed.
Consistently, we’ve uncovered three areas key to driving loyalty:
Primary personal relationship
Delivering results
Brand image and reputation
Primary personal relationship
This is often the area that attracts the most attention, and rightly so. We find that the relationship between the primary contact and the client can be a huge driver, or drag, on loyalty. In particular, three aspects of the relationships are important.
Client focus
Do they feel their contact knows and understands them, personally and financially?
And do they believe that the conversations speak to them as individuals?
Do they trust their contact to put them first?
Contact strategy
Are you contacting them on their terms?
Are you talking about the things that are important to them?
Do you understand, and meet, their expectations with the frequency and means of contact?
Do you know how expectations are changing with new technology?
Relationship changes
How well did this process go for clients?
Is their new contact informed and aware and able to understand them?
(This is a key test of the brand’s capacity to serve them. They want to know if the relationship can be replicated with another contact.)
Unfortunately, doing this particularly well can often create loyalty to the individual rather than the organisation. But the next two areas can help create more loyalty to the organisation.
Delivering results
Maybe surprisingly, and for investments especially, providers can sometimes be afraid to ask clients feedback on this area. However, client perceptions of how well you’re delivering against expectations is a key factor in measuring their loyalty. Four aspects of this are consistently found to influence loyalty:
Achieving results in agreed timeframes
Are you doing what you say you’ll do? (e.g. clearing checks, making payments, beating investment benchmarks)
Are the products and services meeting their aims (e.g. investment objectives)?
Expectations management
Do they understand what is happening, when and why?
Information clarity and accessibility
Are you communicating outcomes by the means they want (e.g. online, by posted report), when they want?
Do they have to ask questions to understand what is happening?
Is the information up to date and relevant?
Effort
How much effort was required from them to get things done?
How simple and easy are the processes they go through?
Is it more difficult working with you than expected?
Brand image and reputation
When serving the wealthy, brand image and reputation are often seen purely as tools for acquisition. But brands can create stickiness too. A brand can even overcome failures in the relationship or when delivering results, allowing forgiveness and time to put things right. Within the client’s perception of the brand, several aspects are worth highlighting:
Proposition uniqueness
Do clients feel they can access the same or similar products or services elsewhere? This can be seen as the ‘unique selling points’ of the offer. But they can sometimes only be developed through experience, for example Chief Investment Officer communications.
Brand consistency
Do clients expect, or experience, a consistent branding, way of working and communicating across channels, products and services?
Do clients see you as excellent in a narrow field and weak elsewhere?
Feeling valued
Are clients delighted in their experiences?
Do they feel rewarded? Are they rewarded?
Is there an ethos of flexibility; going above and beyond?
Across all our client loyalty work, we look to answer all of these questions and are able to uncover the weaknesses and necessary improvements. And whilst consistently influential, how the different factors impact the loyalty of different client types varies according to their profile. Understanding, managing and improving these aspects are vital to improving loyalty to the brand and influencing the key business outcomes.
