Client Experience Quietly Makes or Breaks Growth for Professional Services Firms

I have a keynote speech this summer and I’m providing copies of The Modern Seller for the event. Because it’s a few months out, I ordered the books for shipment to me. Then I’ll ship them to the hotel.

This is what arrived at my door: Over a dozen separate packages for a single order of 125 books.

What if I allowed that shipment to go directly to its destination? While nothing was technically wrong and everything arrived, optics and ease matter. It doesn’t matter about the logo on the outside of the box. That experience would’ve tarnished my brand with the client and the experience they have with me.

The lesson here is that client experience isn’t just the work (in my case the content of my books or the keynote). It’s how the work arrives and how the client feels about the work being done that matters equally.

This is where it’s easy to go wrong in professional services. You’ve never heard a firm say, “we aren’t experts. Our technical delivery is middle of the road.”

Strong delivery of technical work is an important part of the future sales process and for developing that trusted advisor status.

But often what happens, very quietly, is a fragmented experience to surround it.

Amy Franko works with CEOs, Chief Growth Officers, and Chief Business Development Officers in professional services firms to improve their growth processes, including specific elements of the sales cycle. Client experience is a significant part of the sales cycle. When implemented well, client experience leads to improved organic growth through both client expansion and new client logos.

Client Experience Growth Strategy 1: Experience Is a Leadership Choice

Professional services firms anchor themselves on technical expertise, and that is considered table stakes by most clients, unless it is something highly specialized. Your client or prospect has invited your professional services firm to the game because they believe you have the level of expertise to compete.

Client experience doesn’t happen on its own. It reflects what firm leadership has decided to value, prioritize, or in some cases, tolerate. Even excellent work can feel average when the overall experience is unpredictable or plagued by lack of attention to detail.

Those values, priorities, and tolerations show themselves in a variety of ways:

• The consistency of the team through the pre-sales and post-sales process
• The ease of beginning an engagement
• Clarity with communication (and defining what makes for good communication in an engagement)
• Consistency (and not heroics) with deliverables (if your firm needs heroics, the chances are good this is a poor ideal client profile fit)
• Team coordination and camaraderie (this includes the team at the client)

Client Experience Growth Strategy 2: Remove the Small Frictions Create Big Doubt

Just like no firm claims to be average, most clients don’t outright say, “well, that was an average experience.”

That’s what my book shipment represents. Average. Annoying friction that wasn’t necessary. Each separate package says, “lack of coordination.”

Inside professional services firms, these are some common examples of how average asserts itself. None of these on their own is typically a big failure. Many average actions connected together over time however, signals friction.

• Uncoordinated touch points and communication across partners or teams
• Deliverables that vary in format or quality
• Billing or administrative inconsistency
• Inconsistent business development and cross-selling practices
• Firm leaders and staff not paying attention to sales opportunities within their current engagements

Unless it’s something egregious, firms aren’t likely to hear it directly. Firms may hear these sentiments much later in client surveys. Firms who consistently improve growth plan for this level of candid dialogue as part of your client experience.

Client Experience Growth Strategy 3: Integrate Client Experience into Firm Sales Processes

Client experience is underestimated as a growth lever, but it contributes to critical growth activities:

• Expansion within the client, especially cross-selling services. Those services can often be sold at higher realization.
• Retention is improved. This solidifies the base from which a firm can innovate and grow. The “bottom of the funnel” isn’t leaking with existing client losses.
• The client is more willing to make introductions to new prospects on the firm’s behalf.
• Stronger brand recognition is created, which can improve the impact of the firm’s marketing strategy.
• Strong firms attract strong talent, which further reinforces the value the firm can provide. Often, this strong talent is ideal to cultivate for future business development growth.

Client Experience Growth Strategy 4: Audit the Existing Client Experience

This is an opportunity to view your firm in the way your clients do. What is actually delivered. Not strategy and not what was planned for.

• This is where an outside advisory perspective, balanced with your view and the client’s view, can be a powerful combination. An underestimated view is your staff who is closest to the client and doing the daily work.
• Invest in reviewing the entire experience across all major functions: Marketing and sales, all phases of client onboarding and delivery, through your industry segments, administration, and technology.
• Where do we have a poor client fit, and how does that get addressed? Client experience is a two-way street. It includes not only how a firm works with the client, but how the client works with the firm.

To close this out with the book shipment. I had a similar experience with a smaller client shipment in the past. Remembering that and thinking a few steps ahead is what made the difference. I can better control the experience and my brand, by adding an extra step to the process. That works for my brand and for my client.

Where Can Chief Growth Officers in Professional Services Firms turn for help?

If you’d like to explore how Amy Franko could accelerate your firm’s growth, schedule a growth strategy conversation now.