The revenue-boosting impact of superior client experiences

Successful investment management organisations share a common attribute: they pay attention to what their clients are saying. It’s been shown that companies that offer a superior customer experience are 26 times more likely than ‘laggards’ to experience revenue growth of 20 percent or more. In the rapidly evolving investment management space – characterised by digital transformation, changing attitudes across Gen Z and Millennials, and the need for ever-more personalised and cutting-edge investment advice – the voice of the client has never been more important.

However, client feedback is a tricky business. If clients are unhappy with a service, in the best-case scenario, they will provide some feedback and you can improve that particular service to meet their needs. In the worst-case scenario, one bad experience is enough to drive them away.

In order to use the voice of the client to increase your organisation’s revenue, it is essential that you have an efficient programme in place to gather and analyse feedback along every step of the journey. Next, to act on the voice of the client, insights must be disseminated across the organisation, from senior management to customer support agents, and integrated into your company’s culture. One investment management firm that put in place such a client-led approach and saw a 50 percent increase in sales was Fidelity International.

Centralising insight across client journeys and geographies

Offering world-class investment solutions and retirement expertise, Fidelity International counts over 2 million clients in 28 countries. At one time, the company’s Voice of the Client activity encompassed 30 different programmes, which made it difficult for decision-makers to view client feedback in one place and compare insights in any meaningful way across channels or regions. To create a single source of truth in its customer feedback data, Fidelity International decided to implement a single, global Voice of the Client programme.

Within this programme, Medallia’s global survey and touchpoint monitoring system enabled Fidelity to identify areas where customer journeys broke down and operationalise insight, making it measurable and comparable across regions. Coupled with text analytics capabilities – which provided a deeper understanding of open comments left on survey feedback – Fidelity International gained access to deeper insights at scale. Finally, by overlaying behavioural metadata on Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback, the analytics team was able to determine whether or not particular issues had an impact on customer satisfaction – which then informed its future planning around customer experience improvements.

Democratising data for a customer-centric culture

A customer-obsessed culture requires a holistic approach to data, where real-time feedback is readily available for all relevant employees and stakeholders to act on. Here, education and access to insight – the democratisation of data – are indispensable criteria for success.

In the case of Fidelity International, over a thousand employees were provided training for the new programme so that everybody could access, understand and action client feedback – enabling them to make improvements where they mattered most. With the launch of the ‘Executive Level Close Loop’ initiative, the company further promoted culture change around customer obsession, reaching even the top levels. The company’s senior leaders were now able to make outbound calls to ‘close the loop’ with clients and address issues they had raised in surveys in areas including technology, digital, change, operations, propositions, marketing, product and distribution.

With customer experience insight reaching all corners of the organisation, Fidelity International was able to develop a more rounded understanding of the problems faced by clients, resulting in more targeted improvements and better predictability of their preferences. The revamped Voice of the Client programme delivered a 50 percent increase in combined net sales and a 45 percent increase in relationship NPS – an indicator of client retention success. Average net sales for closed-loop detractors also increased five-fold. Fidelity International is now able to quantify the financial impact of closing the loop with detractors whilst putting clients at the very centre of its operations.

Demystifying the client experience has never been easier

Listening to the Voice of the Client is vital to investment management companies’ continued growth. A comprehensive programme can provide a more holistic, yet granular view into client wishes and needs, which not only helps organisations forge long-lasting, value-driven relationships with them, but also drives tangible, positive commercial outcomes. With the right foundations in place, organisations can make client experience a measurable business metric and turn it into a real revenue-generating centre.

Carole Layzell, Vice President, Solution Principal at Medallia