What does it mean to provide a great client experience? This is a difficult question to answer in a day and age where clients are expecting to simply be satisfied with service. However, a satisfying experience is not good enough – your clients want a uniquely great client experience that defies their expectations.
In order to implement the experience, you must first decide what you want your clients' experience to be and work backwards from there.
Begin with segmentation. Is this client in the right place with your firm? Are you meeting the client's needs, and are they meeting yours? There are two parts of segmentation. The science of segmentation requires examining the documentation and specific details to determine if they are worth retaining as a client. Examine the revenue they provide, if they've provided referrals, if they use multiple services of the firm, if they're easy to work wit, and any other factor you can think of. You can quantify all these items and sort people into groups. However, you need to balance the science of segmentation with the art of segmentation when you divide your clients into groups.
The art of segmentation is your gut feeling of where the client should be. This would be the client you examine above the numbers, the client you feel the need to work with no matter what. Whatever the case, you need to know your break-even point and determine which clients are unprofitable. For help on determining your client breakeven point, click here and enter the code "segment" to download our Client Segmentation Spreadsheet.
