How to Offer a ‘Mind-Blowing’ Client Experience

"They are our eyes and ears. It gets the creative juices flowing—and it's contagious," says Friday. "Gone are the days of simply sending someone flowers for a birthday. The intention here is to create a lasting impression."

In one recent WOW, a Mid Atlantic Capital employee learned that her contact—an administrative assistant for a third-party 401(k) record-keeper—was taking on a side job teaching Zumba to pay for her daughter's dance lessons. The employee and eight other Mid Atlantic Capital colleagues drove an hour and a half during off-hours to participate in the woman's first class.

Friday has taken WOW a step further, creating an "Extra Mile" program that recognizes employees internally. "At random times the WOW committee and others will show up at the employee's desk with noisemakers, balloons and a gift card," he says. "It doesn't need to cost a lot of money. It's all about stopping and saying 'Hey, we really appreciate you' to people with whom we have daily interactions."

Keep It Authentic. Certified financial planner Christina Povenmire, who heads CMP Financial Planning in Columbus, Ohio, had been trying for years to develop a "secondary message" to impart to her 55 clients. Nothing fit until Povenmire, a self-described health nut, began to share her own success at living a healthier lifestyle.

She routinely talks at client meetings about the importance of diet, nutrition and exercise, and she's given most of her clients a book by neuroscientist Daniel Amen.

"The whole theme is to help clients live the healthiest life possible, financially and beyond. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback," she says. "I was always looking for that secondary message to give credibility—something that would let them know I care about their business, of course, but I also care about them. What I found is that the best theme is sharing something that runs true for you. Then you can talk about it passionately."

Share the Love. Since 1996, CPA David Pope has grown his accounting business from three to nearly 1,900 clients with these principles in mind: Give them access. Listen. Make them feel important.

Pope, president of three firms in Wyoming and Colorado, says the clients he has lost over the years were those who focused on pricing only. "The clients who stayed and grew with me were the clients I cared about—and the ones my employees cared about," says Pope, who considers a caring nature vital to an employee's job description.

The love starts at the beginning, when a new client receives a care package that includes sweets and a coffee cup with the company logo. There have been heroic moments—like when Pope retrieved a client's server from smoldering rubble when the man's construction equipment facility burned to the ground on a New Year's Eve. Pope took the server back to his conference room and hired an analyst who was able to extract the hard drive and retrieve 96% of the data.

Six months ago, Pope started a blog in which he shares personal news such as the death of his bull terrier Maggie along with professional insights. "There's so much more to life than accounting," he says. "I think my clients see that." The blog had 10,000 hits during the first four months it went live.

"We are competing against people who are willing to lower prices to get a client. If we had followed that paradigm, we would have died a little more each year," says Pope. "That's why we have tried to separate ourselves."

Make It 'Rare and Wonderful.' On its website, high-end wealth management firm Aspiriant, headquartered in San Francisco, says its clients experience something "rare and wonderful" as a result of a forward-thinking business model that encompasses things like love, empowerment, "brainy" and farsightedness.

As an example, New York City advisor Lisa Colletti headed a team that helped a senior level investment company executive prepare for retirement. Not only were there decisions to make about pension elections and payouts but Colletti worked on a complex cost basis project that took months to sort out, in part because many historical documents had been destroyed during the 9/11 attacks.

Last year, the retired executive and his wife asked Colletti to chair a family meeting and share the parents' $110 million net worth statement with their two adult children for the first time.

"Working with this family has been the quintessential experience every advisor talks about being involved in. Being brought into that conversation was the biggest compliment any client could give," says Colletti. "When you get into the type of planning we are doing and the amount of time we are involved in these relationships, there needs to be a feeling of being cared for and loved. I am taking care of these folks the way I would take care of my own family."

The Technology Play. While the human touch is critical to any successful client experience, there is a growing role that technology can play to maximize good will, according to Neesha Hathi, senior vice president of Advisor Technology Solutions for Schwab Advisor Services in San Francisco.

"It feels to me as if many advisors, by brute force, have created a superlative client experience. That's the human connection and while it's a really important part of the secret sauce, you need to reinforce that with something scalable," Hathi says. "That's where we think of opportunities with technology. If you can't scale the relationship management model, what you can do is help scale the relationship manager."

The cloud and big data are bringing more and more information to client-facing advisors, she notes, and web analytics can track how clients are interacting with an advisor's website or mobile apps. All of that, Hathi adds, allows the advisor to create relevance about what clients need and what's important to them.

In response to demand for anytime, anywhere service, Schwab recently introduced a branded mobile app that enables advisors to have a 24/7 connection with clients.

"Technology is foundational in helping advisors meet their clients' expectations," she said. "Technology is going to make it easier to create a superlative client experience."