Designing the Client Experience

Brand loyalty in the modern world is increasingly rare across all consumer sectors - retail, hospitality, and professional services alike. With an ever expanding range of choices, enhanced accessibility, comparison platforms and the power of AI driven search, consumers are constantly encouraged to believe that something better may be just one click away. The pursuit of the best - the best quality, the best service, the best style, or the best value - has become a defining feature of contemporary consumer behaviour.

There are, however, so many examples of exceptional client loyalty across advice businesses. Think of your own long-term clients and how connected and committed they are to you. The challenge can be building this loyalty at scale. Ensuring that all your clients feel that connection and care in the same way. Promoting that service and strength of experience consistently and delivering it across all of your advisers, your staff, your clients.

At its core, loyalty is shaped by experience. Your clients continually assess their interactions with you, often comparing them - consciously or not - to the last exceptional service experience they had, even if it was with a completely unrelated industry. For small businesses, this can feel like a tough benchmark when being compared with behemoth organisations with huge budgets to invest heavily in sophisticated technology and customer experience architecture.

If you have not recently reviewed your client experience (CX) from communication style to engagement rhythm, from digital touchpoints to your end to end advice process - now is the time. In such a competitive landscape, a well designed, consistently executed CX strategy is not a ‘nice to have’, It is essential. It drives loyalty, fuels advocacy, and underpins sustainable business growth.

To make it more complex, financial advice is a truly unique and specialised profession - requiring deep technical expertise, skill and numerical precision, combined with empathy, emotional intelligence, and the compassion to guide support clients through some of life’s most complex decisions. We need to really advocate and demonstrate both sides of this. Financial advice is the incredible combination of technical and personal.

To build a genuinely positive and memorable client experience, we can focus on a few key areas:

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Client Journey Mapping

Start by mapping each stage of the client journey to identify how it feels from your client’s perspective. Are there any friction points? What could be simplified or improved? A clear view of each step allows you to intentionally design a more human and seamless experience.

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Discovery and Introduction Phase

First impressions matter immeasurably. Prospective clients “meet” you online long before they first shake your hand. From the initial enquiry through to the first meeting, every touchpoint shapes your client’s perceptions of you and your business.

• What does your website say about who you are and how you work? What would happen if someone searched you on Google or through Claude or ChatGPT? (do this as a test!)

• Are your fact find tools and onboarding processes intuitive and technology enabled?

• How do you welcome clients into your office - does the experience feel thoughtful and personal?

Transparency at this stage is essential. Clients should clearly understand the process, expected timeframes, where their involvement is required - and importantly - how much it will cost them.

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Advice Delivery and Implementation

Clarity and communication remain crucial. While you and your team may complete these steps hundreds of times each year, for most clients, each step in the process is entirely new to them.

• Are you clear about the number of meetings, the time they need to invest, projected delivery timelines, and next steps?

• Do you provide progress updates at key milestones?

• Are you leveraging technology to enhance communication and reduce the need for clients to chase information?

Even a simple text message to touch base during that initial long implementation phase can significantly enhance confidence and trust.

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Ongoing Relationship Management

Ongoing engagement is at the heart of long term loyalty. You would never want a client to feel like they haven’t heard from you in ages – over-kill in comms however is just as dangerous.

Consider all your touchpoints:

• Market and portfolio updates

• Educational newsletters

• Short video updates

• Proactive check ins just to say hello

Do you acknowledge key milestones such as marriages, births, career changes or family transitions? These moments are not only relevant to advice; they strengthen rapport and often open doors to multi generational relationships. Even small gestures - such as a personalised birthday message can leave a lasting impression.

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Advocacy and Referrals

Your happiest clients are your strongest advocates and should be your best referral source. Mostly, we don’t speak to our friends and family about money (and therefore don’t even mention our wonderful experiences with an adviser). How can you support and encourage your clients to have this conversation?

Do you:

• Intentionally ask for referrals?

• Gather client feedback?

• Proactively encourage Google reviews or testimonials?

With more than 88% of global consumers relying on online reviews before purchasing a product or service, hearing from your clients and letting prospects see what they say is so powerful. Building a strong digital reputation is now a strategic necessity.

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Balancing Technology and Human Touch

Technology enhances efficiency, accuracy and consistency - but personalisation remains the true differentiator. The most successful client experiences blend both.

Using client segmentation and data driven insights to tailor your communication, ensures it resonates with different client groups. It is impactful to vary your methods: text messages, WhatsApp, video content, newsletters, client portals and phone calls all have their place. The strongest professional relationships often include a mix of these, delivered at the right time for the right purpose.

Creating a client experience that fosters trust, advocacy and long term relationships is a strategic imperative for Australian financial advice firms. Ensuring you have intentionally segmented your client base and designed a service standard and offering for each. By mapping the client journey, embedding structured feedback, leveraging technology, and elevating the human elements that sit at the heart of advice, we can build practices that are not only competitive in the market and continue to grow and prosper but provide an experience that is truly memorable.

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For a more detailed chat on any of the above, please get in touch with Genevieve Frost or your Drummond account manager.

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