CLIENT RELATIONS
Identifying critical moments for client success
“Although client
success exists
alongside client
support, it is pro-active
rather than reactive.”
Jonathan Farrington
Director of Research
Sandler Research Center
As acquiring new clients becomes costlier — clients who can freely and easily take their
business elsewhere — our focus naturally shifts towards proactively retaining them by
ensuring their needs are met and their requirements are fulfilled. After all, satisfied clients
who can give trusted recommendations are the healthiest way for a business to combat client
turnover. This is why client experience management is increasingly important for growth.
Although client success exists alongside client support, it is different in several key ways: it is
pro-active rather than reactive; it aims to drive value from the product or service rather than
from the resolution of issues; and it is focused on the long term, rather than the short term.
Sandler Research Center recently performed the Client Journey* survey, identifying the
client’s journey and critical moments for maintaining healthy client relations.
Client Journey
A client journey, on the surface, can appear pretty
simple. Once you start delving into details, however,
it can be quite complex. Clients and potential clients
arrive in a multitude of ways and from many different
starting points; for example, referrals, search engines,
social media, marketing, email campaigns, etc. To
ensure that no interaction slips through the cracks,
insurance professionals were asked to rank the key
interactions for ensuring a successful client journey:
Critical Moments
Every touchpoint an existing, or potential client
has with your company can be described as a critical
moment. It could be defined by how quickly their
call was answered, how long it took your company
to send out the information they requested, or even
how accurate your invoice was. Recognizing all those
moments allows agencies to more easily address
areas of concern.
Insurance professionals were asked to identify and
rank the critical moments within their client’s journey.
If you were to significantly improve one element of your
typical client’s journey, what would it be?
Communications
Service
27.1 %
3.5 %
Onboarding 16.5 %
Qualification 3.5 %
Discovery 18.8 %
Marketing 3.5 %
Follow-Up 5.9 %
Execution 16.5 %
Post-Sale 2.4 %
Accountability
Analytics
0 %
2.4 %
Whether or not you have formally identified your
company’s critical moments, what do you believe are your
organization’s strengths in terms of critical moments?
Response Time 31.3 %
Service 13.1 %
Agility 25.3 %
Adaptability 0 %
Customer Service 0 %
Communication 3.0 %
Listening 3.0 %
Discovery 10.1 %
Knowledge 8.1 %
Teamwork 3.0 %
Execution 0 %
Leadership
Quality
3.0 %
0 %
Benchmarking for client satisfaction
Regularly reviewing your performance against client expectations is the greatest way to
learn what is working well and of course, to discover any underlying problems. A rigorous
commitment to collecting, organizing and sharing client feedback provides a clear view as to
how your company can improve its clients’ experiences. A regular formal review is not actually
a “selling event,” but it, quite likely, can uncover future opportunities.
*The survey results were based on 203 individual responses representing more than 130 distinct financial services industry organizations. Learn more about
the results of “The Client Experience” survey by visiting the Sandler Research Center at www.sandler.com/research.
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Perspectives
Q2 2020