A successful client experience is in reality a chain with several links. Each element helps build a financial institution’s reputation. The values conveyed by a digital brand, the client onboarding journey, incredibly detailed communication: all these criteria will have a major influence on the quality of the client relationship. This relationship can only be established through listening and transparency - essential conditions for a prospective client to consider an investment.
Establishing a strong digital brand, to reassure and convince
“Their reputation precedes them”. This popular expression describes the full importance of a recognised digital brand in a few words.
What’s a brand in a nutshell? In two words: values and storytelling. These two aspects have the greatest impact on potential clients who want to be completely reassured before taking the leap and entrusting their money.
Certain values are crucial in the financial sector. Authenticity and trust are at the heart of clients’ expectations... and a first impression is made in a few seconds. In this perspective, an institution’s website can, for example, highlight the management fees. It’s a transparent approach that reassures visitors immediately.
In digital media, content marketing has become essential.
In the SEO world, a strong online presence can be summarised by the term ‘authority’. To aim towards this level of optimisation, you must show that your website and your offering are trustworthy. This is the key to gaining visibility with your clients and build authority, both on social networks and on search engines.
A successful client experience therefore involves high-quality information content. In a context of recovery from the economic crisis, the capacity to offer informative (and pedagogical) content is crucial. It has even become an absolute condition for the millennial generation. They are more inclined to consider online investment offers and swear by digital content. For them, engaging content is the reflection of a successful investment experience.
A successful client experience therefore involves high-quality information content. In a context of recovery from the economic crisis, the capacity to offer informative (and pedagogical) content is crucial. It has even become an absolute condition for the millennial generation. They are more inclined to consider online investment offers and swear by digital content. For them, engaging content is the reflection of a successful investment experience.
Once the prospective client has been converted, their expectation is higher than ever. It is therefore essential to give a good impression during the welcome and digital integration stages.
A digital solution offering simple, fluid and intuitive browsing is still the best way to impress your clients from the outset. The quality of interfaces, described by the acronym UX (User Experience), will be decisive.
For this, you can adapt the interfaces according to the age of the clients concerned. A Millennial will therefore have much more ease getting to grips with the PC or mobile version of a digital tool than their parents or grandparents.
💡Tip: To adapt the integration sequence, you can offer target groups who are less at ease with digital tools paper documents in addition. Brochures may for example reproduce a simplified and explanatory version of the interfaces that the client discovers during their onboarding process.
At the same time, the advisor can assist the client in a branch in getting to grips with the digital tool concerned.
As we saw in the first paragraph, to quote Bill Gates: “Content is king”.
The content that you provide to your clients will make the integration phase a success. To not leave anything to chance, share texts and videos that highlight the strengths of the onboarding process:
All this content will reassure your clients by showing them that you are establishing a trusting relationship. This is a transparent approach to guarantee a positive first impression.
Communication is the pillar or the client relationship. It gives peace of mind and deeply engages each party throughout the client journey.
Set up alerts to improve communication
Use alerts to communicate with your clients, by showing them when levels have been reached. They can thereby measure the progress of their investment, to get a better projection in terms of the long-term objectives.
In the client interface, provide news articles and teaching content in order to provide relevant and continuous information.
What are your personas’ favourite social networks?
In marketing, a ‘persona’ means a client profile (several criteria are taken into account, such as demographics or socio-professional categories).
To start with good foundations, your marketing department must define two or three main personas. You can see that ‘generation X’ (people born between 1965 and 1980) and ‘generation Z’ (the much-talked-about ‘Millennials’, 1981-1995) don’t use social networks in the same way. Facebook and Twitter for the former, Instagram and Tiktok for the latter. You’ll have everything to gain from choosing one social media platform (or two maximum) to start to interact with your audience.
Your communication will be refined just like the relationship with your clients. You brand will establish its credibility your audience's preferred communication channels.
Listen to communicate better
Listening to your clients is an essential practice, to feed back key information. It will contribute to the success of product development and the sales strategy. In terms of listening, certain essential principles must be taken into account. We’ll present them in the next paragraph.
Listening, the key to the client-centric approach
The Client-Centric approach has made the biggest brands successful over the past 20 years. You could even say that GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) built their economic model on this approach.
Prospective clients and clients of financial institutions care about being listened to, understood and supported impeccably. To convince them to invest in a portfolio, you must listen with true empathy. In this sense, ‘active listening’ follows basic principles:
Interrupting the client as little as possible, not hesitating to use silence or prompts to create an atmosphere of dialogue focused on the client (the most important information, because it is the most personal, is often given at the end of the conversation). In this way, you’ll establish communication based on an exchange that is seen as authentic and productive.
Offer personalised digital experiences
A high-end client relationship is based on personalised digital solutions, demonstrating your institution’s expertise.
The client journey must be organised according to this personalised approach. In this sense, depending on their age, clients expect different digital experiences. Taking the time to question each client’s preferences in detail is therefore decisive in the onboarding stage.
Understanding your clients’ priorities, to then propose investments that suit them
The aim of good quality listening and communication is to achieve a detailed understanding of your clients’ priorities. In this way, you’ll have an overview of their objectives and their investment capacity. There are many situations and several themes to explore: capital accumulation, risk management, tax, preparation for retirement or wealth preservation.
Once these guidelines have been discussed, you’ll have a better understanding of your clients’ obstacles and expectations. Whether this concerns their lifestyle, their retirement or their projects (for them or their friends and family).
You can then direct them towards solutions that match their vision of both the short term and the long term. In this perspective, technology is a real ally in investment offer proposal. Algorithms enable client data to be processed with increasing accuracy and efficiency. They help propose investments that respond to different priorities, with time frames that may evolve. Then, knowledge of client profiles, a capacity for adaptation and diverse proposals are the strengths of a high-end client service which stands out from the less attractive competition.
The quality of an ‘investment experience’ is verified throughout the client journey. It starts through the first content offered by an institution, whether it is on a fee-paying channel (online advertising) or on a free channel (blog or online documents). Communication with an advisor will then confirm or contradict the first impression. For a financial institution, the key to a successful client experience will be good alignment between the physical advice and clients’ digital integration.