Client experience
A client decides what kind of relationship this will be in the first ninety days, and they decide it on operational evidence rather than advice.
A client decides what kind of relationship this is going to be in the first ninety days, and they decide it mostly on operational evidence rather than on advice. Did the paperwork work. Did somebody follow up when they said they would. Did the first statement match what was described.
Advisors tend to think the relationship is won in the meeting where the client says yes. It is confirmed or quietly undermined in the eight weeks afterwards, when nothing interesting is happening and the firm is either organised or it is not.
Paperwork that comes back twice. A missing signature, a wrong account number, a form the custodian rejects. Each round trip costs a week and a small amount of confidence, and the client draws a conclusion about how the rest will go.
Transfers nobody chased. An in-kind transfer stalls at the delivering firm and sits there, because nobody at your firm owns it. The client discovers it by looking, which is the worst way.
Cost basis that arrived incomplete. Common, largely outside your control, and entirely fixable if you know at week two rather than at tax time.
A first statement that surprises them. Cash sitting uninvested, a fee they were not expecting, a balance that differs from the proposal because markets moved. All defensible; all damaging if unannounced.
Tell them the sequence before it starts, with dates. Paperwork this week, transfers initiated next, assets typically arriving in seven to fourteen days, invested within two days of arrival, first statement at month end and here is what it will show.
A client who has been given the sequence experiences a delay as a step. A client who has not experiences the same delay as neglect.
When the assets land. Short, factual: everything arrived, here is what we did with it, here is what the first statement will show. This is the call that prevents the first statement from being a surprise.
At ninety days. Not a review. A question: is this what you expected? Clients will tell you at ninety days what they will never tell you at year three, because at ninety days they have not yet decided that raising it would be awkward.
Whether you know things about them without being reminded. Whether your team knows who they are when they call. Whether the numbers agree across the portal, the statement and what you said in the meeting.
That last one is the one firms fail without noticing, and it is not a client-service problem. It is an operational one wearing a client-service costume.
Why the numbers disagree in the first place →
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