When a client services company is trying to position itself as relationship-based to clients or train employees to become relationship owners, it may encounter several issues. To clarify, being a relationship-based firm means that your employees, first and foremost, clearly understand and value the client’s needs, far beyond the value achieved by just doing the work. For example, a tax client is concerned about their tax return, but being relationship-based implies that the employees want to understand all issues the client organization may have in their firm and all questions a client may have before beginning on the actual work itself. This change from task-based to relationship-based is complex. It will require a shift in how your organization performs its business.
First, you may encounter issues with how your employees interact with each other. Client service teams should believe that everyone is in it for the client’s ultimate well-being, either directly related to the work or only perceived as related by the client. Any Team member should be prepared to serve a client’s needs at a moment’s notice, regardless of whether it correlates to the task they have been given. To achieve this, they should be trained cross-functionally on a competency level to know who and where to go when solving a specific problem. By competency level, each employee should know all of the services and functions the firm can perform and be adequately and appropriately able to direct the client’s concerns to the most appropriate party within the firm. Suppose concerns reach beyond the firm’s capabilities. In that case, it is also encouraged to have a network of other professionals they can reference when an external need arises. This will require constant, continuous training. This will also require that you empower employees to make decisions and encourage managers to be accepting of clients reaching out to their subordinates.
An even more challenging issue is how a client service firm communicates that any team member can solve a client’s problem to the client. To become a true relationship-based client services firm, your clients must honestly believe and trust that any team member can be responsible and will be held responsible for resolving any issue that may arise. The cross-trained team member must not only be internal but should be displayed and promoted externally. A compelling way to do this is to remove titles from the business cards altogether. Yes, this may hurt some egos. But it can be an effective way to communicate to your client that every touchpoint within the organization is a person who can solve their problems.
If I see a business card that says associate versus a business card that says partner, even if I’m more comfortable communicating with the associate, I would most likely go to the partner first. Likely, the partner will then hand off the request, not to the associate but to a manager. Then that manager will either solve the issue or hand it down further, increasing the time it takes to solve the client’s problem. If the client had confidence that every firm employee could address the problem, they would cut out those three steps in the chain and go directly to the associate with whom they are most comfortable. You want to encourage this interaction between your employees and clients.
To sum it up, the key to developing a genuine relationship-owner in a client services firm is not assigning that title arbitrarily to a single person. But encourage your employees to develop trust between themselves and the client, nurture those relationships over the client’s life, and finally, be there and proactively assist with any issue the client may have. There will always be an account lead that any employee can reference. Still, the key to genuinely developing a relationship-based client services firm is to let your employees develop trust within each client relationship and ultimately serve all the client’s needs more efficiently.
When genuine trust between your clients and your employees at all levels exists, and the firm empowers its employees with the knowledge, know-how, and freedom to serve client needs best, the clients will receive better service, which translates into longer relationships with loyal customers clients. If you have any questions or want to discuss any ideas related to the concepts discussed in the blog, please visit www.theragangroup.com or reach out to me directly at brian@theragangroup.com.