Many reasons for low employee engagement and high employee turnover are given by companies, from unhappiness about having to accept lower pay during the downturn, to high career expectations. These may play a part, but often the perception of employees by management as being less important in creating a competitive advantage than product or service innovation and marketing strategy, is bound to send the wrong signals.

When management and senior leaders recognise that in today’s tough business environment, it is their people who have the potential to create that critical competitive edge that will see companies through this crisis, only then will they change their practices.  Changing practices means honouring the untapped potential in all your people, maintaining training and development initiatives, and creatively coming up with ideas on how to place employees at the centre of your strategic plan.

Only then will businesses find that the tough times can be managed and overcome.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

The following is an article from the Singapore Business Times, January 13, 2010, written by the Managing Director and Head of Private Banking Southeast Asia and Australasia for Credit Suisse, Dr. Francois Monnett.

He gets it, but do they really “walk the talk?”

Retaining clients, rebuilding trust

The sustainability of the private banking business model comes under scrutiny in the wake of the massive industry shake-up. In the aftermath of the massive industry shake-up which has taken place over the last 18 months, we are confronted with a very different operating landscape in private banking. Together with a significant loss of trust and confidence in the markets and industry, clients are also expecting higher standards of service and advice, as well as greater transparency and disclosure over products and services. There is also a shift towards safer, simpler and more liquid investment solutions.

One major implication is the critical question of the sustainability of the private banking business model. During the boom period, many institutions built their private banking model primarily based on the assumption of continued growth and perhaps a certain belief in its immunity to economic cyclicality. The infrastructure that many private banks have put in place to deliver value to clients and the fact that much growth has been built through expensive acquisition of bankers have also resulted in a costly model.

Revenue generation in private banking, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, has been very much volume-driven with a heavy reliance on a sales culture. With slowing revenue generation and increasing cost-income ratios in the past 18 months, the sustainability of this business model has been seriously tested. Much of the pressure is also coming from outside, namely from regulators and clients, that will propel the industry towards more radical and dramatic changes to the business model.

In the rapidly changing regulatory environment, investment suitability is here to stay and investor protection will become an even more important dimension in this business. There is also a lot of discussion on offshore banking, capital requirement and bankers’ compensation.

But the most important driver for change is the disillusioned clients. There has been a significant loss of investors’ trust and confidence in the markets, in regulators, in the financial institutions as well as their advisers. We have also observed among clients a flight to safety and quality, a shift from risk aversion to loss aversion, and a back-to-basic type of appeal for more direct and liquid investment vehicles.

Very importantly, there is a much greater need for transparency and disclosure. This is not just about the products, but also the service levels that clients pay for, fee structures, performance of their investments, as well as transparency regarding business partners and counterparty risk.

Client segmentation

For private banks to reclaim and reaffirm their critical status as trusted advisers, we need to enhance our value proposition on a few levels. First and foremost, we need to focus on client segmentation and differentiation to significantly lift service levels.

To put the client at the centre of a segmentation strategy is the only way to avoid the ‘one size fits all’ approach, which doesn’t work to lift service levels. This requires a disciplined, systematic and structured approach to defining client segmentation that goes well beyond assets under management. It has to consider the source of the client’s wealth – is it inherited or built? It has to consider the investor’s behaviour – is he or she a delegator, a participator or self-directed?

We also need to understand better the investor’s knowledge, experience, sophistication as well as domicile. Once these dimensions are clearly mapped out, the resulting value proposition has to deliver a tiered service offering in a disciplined and consistent way that will define different access to product specialist or management as well as the depth and breadth of the service offering.

Eventually, we will be measured as well in terms of the level of transparency and interaction we achieve with our clients. Risk management has to be an integral part of the advisory process and an investment suitability framework is the ultimate transparent guide to portfolio construction.

This involves the profiling of clients – the detailed and structured assessment of their knowledge and experience vis-Ã -vis the complexity of the portfolio solution, and their risk and loss tolerance. This profile is used to build a portfolio which is simulated in terms of asset allocation and is fully disclosed to the client.

Consistent client experience

The private banking business is all about execution. We need to deliver on the promise of being a trusted adviser in a consistent way. A major pre-requisite for a consistent client experience lies in the bank’s IT-based processes. From the relationship manager (RM) accessing an open architecture platform with thousands of solutions for the client, implementing a common advisory process, to utilising portfolio construction tools that build asset allocation against the client’s profile and analyses of risk scenarios – this level of consistency can only be achieved through a control process.

The re-engineering of processes is critical not so much for productivity gains, but has enormous impact on how much time the RM is able to spend with clients and the quality of the client experience. A recent study shows that RMs spend as much of their time marketing services to new clients as solving and dealing with administrative matters. If we are not able to free RMs from the loss in valuable client-interacting time, we will not live up to the promise of being a trusted adviser.

From a client perspective, there is also a constant request for better, more consolidated and comprehensive client reporting. They also want more direct access to almost real time data through client portals.

As private banking continues to grow in the Asia-Pacific, automation, IT systems and the re-engineering of processes will increasingly become the backbone of the business. How good a bank’s infrastructure is will be the cornerstone in delivering quality client experience. It will optimise relationship management time with clients and ensure a culture of consistency throughout the firm.

Re-skilling of RMs

If we want to differentiate ourselves in terms of providing an advice-centric operating model to clients, we will also have to consider the extent to which we need to re-skill our RMs. The permanent education of RMs is of paramount importance. Particularly in Asia-Pacific where the industry is still young and fast-growing, there is an immediate need to make sure that the culture of a firm is being consistently instilled into the new joiners that all bankers interact with their clients through a consistent and structured advisory process.

Eventually, as front organisations continue to expand, we also need to enable RMs to grow in their roles over time, from a junior level adviser, to an expert RM or a manager and leader. This requires a long-term, modular and state-of-the-art training curriculum and development model that captures the career cycle of each RM. It is also important to align reward systems with the clients’ satisfaction. When we measure performance, we need to focus not only on ‘What financial performance did you achieve?’ but also the ‘How did you achieve it?’ metric. This softer side of performance measurement has to be benchmarked against the values of the bank and how it wants its RMs to run the business, and against the client’s satisfaction. This will involve tracking the degree of adherence to the sales and advisory process, risk management tools and control standards, as well as client satisfaction surveys.

This greater alignment is a condition for regaining and earning more trust with our clients in the new landscape, acknowledging the new landscape, refining and sharpening the value position and eventually delivering on a bank’s brand promise.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Successful.

Uneducated.

Wealthy.

Four priority bank accounts.

Four banks.

Four different Relationship Managers.

There is a fifth bank that also wants his business.

The fifth bank will get his business- if they do it right.

Why and how?

This particular “prospect” is an acquainance of one of the bank executives. The prospect is open with the executive, shares his personal life, discusses business matters and financial matters, socializes regularly with him, talks sports and even shares aspects of  his social life. He respects the bank executive for his knowledge and there appears to be no threat. He is comfortable with the relationship. They are friends. 

Interestingly enough, the bank executive is not a relationship manager- he is not in sales.

How does the bank executive do what is best for the bank, and “convert” this into a sale? That is the dilemma.

Clearly the “prospect” is an unsettled man. He has new-found wealth and is somewhat leery of the people around him. This is probably why he spreads his wealth between four banks and four relationship managers.

How many times have you come across this or a similar situation to this?  A situation where there is a bond or relationship between a client or prospect and a non-sales related executive? From my experience in my days of technology sales, quite often the relationship was between the client and the sales engineer. Is that because there was no “threat” from the sales engineer? Was he providing more value? Was he not chasing the sales for the close?  Most probably.

So why is this happening and why does it happen? And how do we turn the banking scenario around and turn it into a “sale?” I will let you figure that out on your own.

For related articles (and for a clue to why this may happen) see:

Two Simple Keys to Success in Sales

Want to Add Value in Your Sales “Process?” Try Adding Trust

The Agile Mind of a Salesperson: Motivation

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

How do front-line sales professionals (Relationship Managers, face to face sales, client managers, Etc) effectively connect through high impact conversations?

Challenges to achieveing great sales conversations

There is no doubt that achieving sales targets, regardless of how they are achieved, has become the principle means of measuring success in many companies around the globe, regardless of what they all say they do for their customers.

That then becomes the root of the problem.

From that, we have observed that many conversations with customers are often driven by the sales person’s self interests on the basis of a product promotion, the profitability of a product, the amount of commission or incentive the sales person will receive or urgency to hit a specific target, a business need to increase market share etc. regardless of whether or not that is the right solution for the customer. 

Essentially there is rarely anybody taking a look at the overall picture for the customer, or even conversational guidelines to ensure that sales staff work together in the customer’s best interests.

So how do we  connect effectively and maxmise performance?

There are many well established approaches to selling; relationship selling, customer value selling, needs based selling etc. to suit different business needs and the current economic environment. Terms may change, tough times come and go, but the best practices of having a quality conversation that focuses on the clients best interests versus the sellers to maximize sales performance is still regarded as critical to success.

This would apply to anyone who manages a portfolio of customers on a relationship basis rather than a transactional one and seeks to enhance their ability, knowledge and behaviour to deliver a meaningful sales conversation that engages the client and deepens relationships with both new and existing prospects.

What will make this work?

In order to make programme that changes the focus from “us” to “them” successful, frontline sales professionals people need to be able to:

Assess their own communication strengths and weaknesses and the impact they have on others

Adapt and respond to the communication style, drivers of emotional needs and life stage of their clients

Develop compelling value positioning statements for opening conversations with prospects and existing clients over the telephone and in person

Ask for and gather information using bridging statements and reflective listening techniques to identify opportunities to create value for clients

Summarise and align solutions to the customers’ true needs to establish greater rapport with the client

Keep the client engaged in the conversation when handling client uncertainty or resistance to opportunity

Demonstrate conversational closing statements to confidently ask for the business

For related materials please see:

Maximising sales performance and skills.

Building and rebuilding trust.

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

Dealing with Damage Control

Salespeople often feel at a loss when faced with disappointed, upset or angry clients. As an example, a relationship manager in banking dealing with a client whose investments have “soured” in the current economic climate.

What happens?

As a result of these situations, salespeople in general tend to stiffen and panic either on the phone or face to face. This state effectively shuts down the thinking processes and they find themselves lost for words. Just when the client is looking for calm understanding and reassurance, salespeople send signals of discomfort.

Suggestions

You want to enable your salespeople to feel confident about dealing with disappointed clients so that their demeanour is appropriate for the situation.

You want to equip your salespeople with the skills to respond to challenging situations so that clients feel confident about continuing to do business with your company.

Both of these aims work together: by knowing how to respond appropriately to clients, your salespeople will feel more confident and present a calmer, more professional demeanour; and by feeling more confident, they will automatically send the right signals to clients thus reassuring them about your company.

How to Implement the Suggestions

In order to build the confidence, the salespeople need to:

Build confidence in themselves by managing beliefs about:

Themselves (the salespeople) – how they see themselves is critical in achieving confidence.

Their clients – how the RM’s perceive their clients, especially during a downturn when clients are feeling negative towards their suppliers or advisors, also affects their level of confidence.

How salspeople’s clients perceive them – the salespeople’s beliefs about how their clients perceive themselves determines how confident the salespeople feel.

Deal effectively with disappointed clients by:

Responding to negative emotions in a client through pacing and leading. Pacing is done by showing your client that you accept and validate their emotion by mirroring them. Leading is the practice of gradually changing one’s energy level and behaviour such as slowing speech, speaking more softly and changing posture and body language.

Listening for understanding followed by listening to decide if you want to do anything about what you’ve heard. If action is required, a series of questions will be necessary.

Taking responsibility and moving ahead to solve the client’s problem(s). This includes the necessary empowerment and confidence to make the client feel comfortable.

Overall Results

The results below will occur if you take the above actions.

Clients will experience being handled professionally and appropriately during challenging times

Clients will feel sincerely listened to, understood and their emotions and disappointments acknowledged and taken seriously by your company and the salespeople

Salespeople will have a greater sense of empowerment and will therefore gain satisfaction from increasing their capabilities in challenging situations

Your company or financial institution will retain more clients and will receive positive word-of-mouth

Your company or financial institution will stand out in the marketplace for having salespeople who are highly professional

For more information see building and fostering client relationships.

For more blogs on a similar subject matter see relationship management.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

“It’s all about long-term professional relation building. Leverage & greed were the cause of the financial crisis.” JP Cuoni, CEO EFG Bank

Jean Pierre Cuoni, Co-Founder & Chairman of Swiss based EFG bank, saw the light early on in the private banking industry.

Mr. Cuoni retired in 1994 from Coutts as the CEO, and held numerous senior positions at Handelsbank NatWest and Citibank.

In 1995 he and Mr. Lonnie Howell set up EFG bank.

Mr. Cuoni, in the business since 1960, realised that little had changed in private banking. He said (and still says) that banking is personal and all about relationships, relationships that lead to trust and confidence in the bank relationship manager and the bank itself.

However, in the 1990’s, he started to see things fall apart in the banks’ operations. The banks were changing the way they operated. “Hedge funds, structured products, funds of funds, alternative investments… All these are new products that only started in the 1990s.”

The business was becoming less personalized and was lacking the proper client focus.

So, in response to the shock of this, EFG was born.

EFG is very unique in the way it operates. EFG woos older, experienced bankers who are looking to be on their own, however, would like an infrastructure to support them. They use their skills to become “private bank entrepreneurs”- running their own business off of EFG’s physical platforms.

This, combined with a caring philosophy and approach to clients and relationships, has lead to a huge success. Although business is down, as we all expect, EFG continues to flourish ahead of many of the “fallen” banks who focused purely on the bank’s motives (vs the client’s motives).

On a local level, I have met Mr. Kees Stoute, Managing Director of EFG Singapore. Mr. Stoute worked his way up in the  banking business from roles in IT and as the COO and MD in other banks before joining EFG. Why did he make the change to EFG? He saw EFG was following  the core beliefs and principles that make a bank successful.

I had a conversation with Mr. Stoute on trust, an integral part of both his and EFG’s business philosophy. The following is an excerpt from that conversation:

“Trust is not a soft skill. It makes the difference in the business. Trust is the core of business,” said Mr. Stoute.

EFG is and should be the model bank of the future.

For more information on EFG Bank, click here. You will be greeted with the following important message:

“What is the essence of private banking?

Relationships, and the conditions for them to flourish. A nurturing environment, that enables our people to excel at crafting solutions for you.

To us, the fundamental building blocks are people.

Professionals of the highest calibre, free to act in their clients’ best interests. Who strive to eradicate life’s inconveniences; who simplify complexity.

Welcome to EFG Bank, truly a private bank unlike any other.”

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

How important is trust, trustworthiness and being a trusted advisor to your clients? Important enough to hold off the wedding for one late, but important, guest.

The following true story came directly from the mouth of a very senior private bank executive at a UK based (with large operations in Singapore) bank.

He was accentuating the importance of his relationship with a dedicated client.

“The wedding was to be a large Indian wedding- large as most Indian wedding are. This wedding happened to be on the mystical island of Bali.”

” So we packed up our bags and boarded the plane, ready for a relatively short trip to Bali.”

“Low and behold, the plane was late taking off. We would inevitably be late. What to do? This was my best private wealth client. This could embarrassing and more importantly, could seriously hurt my relationship.”

“We arrived about 30 minutes late, sped to the hotel to change. Of course, in Bali, the traffic can be horrific, and it was. After speeding to the hotel, bouncing off the traffic, we arrived one hour late. What was I to say?”

“When we got there, hundreds of people were waiting  for the wedding to start. Why hadn’t it started?”

“Well, my friend,” said the father of the bride, “we have delayed the wedding for you. You are an important guest.”

Wow. Trust can go far. 

This is a classic case of what happens when one is the trusted advisor.

It goes beyond the business relationship.

(for more on how to achieve the Trusted Advisor status based on the four levels of client relationships, see the following)

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

There is a lot of talk on trust today.

But let me ask one simple question. Where is the action?

The following are quotes from financial websites and financial leaders. Can you see the common theme?

“Trusted relationships. Advanced thinking. Our private bankers offer clients a genuinely different service. Our proposition is led by solutions rather than by selling clients our latest product. We will do nothing to jeopardise the integrity of the long-term relationships that we enjoy with our clients.“ Schroders Private Banking Website.

“Company leaders must foster a culture that focuses on integrity, strong execution, quality products, long-term value creation and doing the right thing.” Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase, reportedly saying that financial institutions need to clean up their act and earn back public trust.

“No matter how sophisticated, no matter how complex, ours is an industry that is underpinned by the fundamental building blocks of confidence, integrity and trust. These are basic principles in running a bank – principles which may have been forgotten along the way.”  United Overseas Bank Ltd. Chief Executive Wee Ee Cheong. 

“There is a certain level of disappointment and a need to re-build trust.” Francois Monnet, Credit Suisse MD and Head Private Banking, Southeast Asia/Australasia.

“The client is the driving force behind what we do: Develop and maintain long-term relationships by actively listening to client feedback in order to build trust and loyalty.” from The Merrill Lynch Principles: Defining Our Shared Values.

“If you look at the financial crisis the world is experiencing, it is a crisis of trust. The main currency we need to restore is trust between businesses and customers, as well as employers and employees.” Alain Rohaut, EVP HR, AXA Insurance.

Can you see anything different about the following?

“Those banks that caused our problems need to step aside. It’s time to go beyond a return to old-fashioned banking. It’s time to restore trust between banks and the customers we serve.” Gerard P. Cuddy, President and Chief Executive, Beneficial Bank, July 16, 2009.

Gerard Cuddy gets it. What about the others? All talk? All marketing? No action?

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Let’s simplify an overused, sometimes “overcomplicated” term: customer experience.

There are three important drivers of customer experience:

Technology: Technology is the IT systems in place to track and gather the data that is necessary to understand who the client is, the client satisfaction points, their history, Etc. This would be CRM systems, call centre operations and unified communications as examples. Often companies rely too much on this driver- it cannot stand alone.

Design: Design gives us the “look, smell & feel” of customer experience. We leave this to the web designers, interior and industrial designers who enhance the “click,” the bank lobbies and the Apple iPhones.

Connect: This is the interface to the customer and the most difficult of all three, as it involves direct contact with “fickle” humans and requires a behavioural change in the company delivering the experience, to be effective.

Both Technology and Design play an important role in Connect and without Connect, you lose  the overall customer experience.

Customer service, ease of use on the company’s website and face to face interactions are the heart and soul of Connect and customer experience. It is where most companies fail and where they should be focusing,

Overall, if you use Technology, Design and Connect you will deliver great customer experience, which  drives…

word of mouth marketing

loyalty

higher profits

…and more business.

Do or die.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Some Get it and Some Don’t. Why?

There has been  a lot of recent news and write ups of success (and failures) on retail customer service/experience programmes. 

A few success stories:

Tony Hsieh of Zappos (of course!).

Nordstrom’s department stores.

Wegman’s supermarkets.

Why are some retailers more successful than others and generally more successful than other industries at customer experience?

Because the successful ones focus on and reach out to the customer. The customer is King. The service culture is instilled in the business and comes from top down.

They engage and focus on the client and all aspects around the client.

To back this up, a recent retail survey by the Retail Council of Canada (along with Wharton and Verde) titled “Discovering WOW,”  shows that, of the top five categories of great shopping experiences, the top priority for loyalty and customer experience is ENGAGEMENT.

Statistics and Gaps 

The following statistics and information from a CMO Council  study tells us something….

“38 percent said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers.”

“Only 31 percent rate their company’s commitment to customer listening highly.”

“Many companies have are discovering that they have no idea what their clients’ real customer experiences are. ”

It tells us that there are a lot of gaps when it comes to customer experience.

Filling the Gaps: Success in the Insurance Business Through Engagement and Client Focus

One insurance company has filled the gaps and understands why it is important..

Aviva (Norwich Union) are the fifth largest insurance company in the world and the largest in the UK. They deal with “real moments of truth”- floods, fires, accidents, death- and need to get customer experience right.

Aviva’s worldwide mantra is  ”Prosperity, peach of mind, health & wealth. ” They need to live up to this to survive. And during these tough times it is even more important,  since the insurance industry’s reputation  is jaded and there is lack of trust overall.

Darren Cornish, Director Customer Experience, Norwich Union, worked with Beyond Philosophy (a leading customer experience consulting firm in the UK) to help them fill the gaps.

Quoting Mr. Cornish on his work with Beyond Philosophy:  ”The best thing to do before designing any form of startegy is to go out and talk directly to the customers (and to the staff)- the front line.”

He found out that there was a degree of disconnect and it all distilled into two principles- customers want to trust us and want Norwich Union to “do what we say we do. ”

He also discovered that Norwich Union (and the insurance industry in general ) did not seem to demonstrate  that they cared- they were not interested in “me  (the client) as a person”.

Customers were often seen as a number. Customers felt like THEY were the victim. This killed the trust factor.

So what were the first steps? Engage senior management- work it from the top.

He discovered that “Our processes have been designed from the inside for efficiency and not with the customer in mind. The measurement and the incentives in place were damaging the customer experience. The IT systems needed to be shifted towards the customers. Marketing and communications were all about acquisition and not  customer connections.”

Norwich Union went on to build a successful customer experience program through engagement and client focus.

“I am a broken record when it comes to saying, ‘We have to focus on the consumer.’…I don’t think the answers are just in the numbers. You have to get out and look.” - A.G. Lafley, former CEO, Procter & Gamble

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore