Finding Riches in the Wealth Advisors' Experience

Jackie, what's your top tip for cx?

All right, here's the thing. Be stubborn about your goals, but flexible about your methods.

Hello, I'm Adam Durrell and I'm the host of the Account Experience Podcast. If you're a regular of the Account Experience Podcast, you'll know that in every episode, I like to catch up with inspiring industry leaders or thinkers or practitioners who are there to share their best practices and tips to help you develop your own B2B account experience program. And I'm always really curious to see how customer experience works in different sectors. Both of the news that you read about is about customer experience, probably from the B2C sector. You know, that's we're all consumers, after all. But B2B is a really interesting thing to unpack, especially for those where you've got long term commercial relationships where success is important to both parties, both client and supplier. And this episode really takes this idea to the extreme because, well, this is all about the experience of financial advisors who are managing the world's wealth. Not just the super rich, to be honest, but the pension funds of people like you and I. According to the website of this company, $4.3 trillion of this because today's company is Orion. And it's a company that might not be a household name, but it is one of the premier suppliers of technology to financial advisors. And to give it its full name, Orion Advisor Solutions. It's based in Omaha, Nebraska, and its software and investment management solutions portfolio drives their advisors to grow their business and deliver excellent client experiences, which is what it's all, especially for the super rich. We'll get into that and we'll find out more about it by talking to our guests today. So I'd like to welcome Jackie Kesterson and Jackie's Director of Client experience for Orion. And I'm hoping we can hear about how she's building those strong client relationships and really how she's making that client centric culture come alive. So welcome, Jackie. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Lovely to be here.

It's great to have you on, Jackie. I mean, I wanted to talk to you for a time because what a unique sector that you're in with these people. But let's get to that in a minute. I want to hear about you. So how did you work on your journey to become head of Client Experience?

Yeah, I mean, similar to, you know, a lot of young individuals in high school and college, I always worked in, you know, restaurants and retail and, you know, Client facing customer service roles, but never had any exposure to kind of the broader discipline of client experience until I joined a financial services company right out of college. I joined their call center, so again, talking to clients. But that's when I was first exposed to nps. So I would get NPS surveys for my client conversations. And, you know, being very competitive, I decided that I was gonna have stellar NPS scores. And I had a perfect three quarters, and I was working on my perfect fourth quarter, and I got a zero. That was a pretty big, you know, humbling moment for me, a good reality check. So, you know, I'm frantically looking through the client, trying to figure out what I did wrong or where I could learn from the experience. And the survey actually had nothing to do with me. They had confused us with an insurance company, which, you know, it happens. But it did kind of spark a fire in me to better understand a broader discipline around client experience. And, you know, I decided I would want to figure out how I could influence the client experience at every, you know, journey touch point. So that kind of started my interest in client experience. And then fast forward, you know, 10 years, kind of building different programs for this financial services company. We were purchased by another financial services company, a merger very common in the industry. My position was going to be eliminated as part of that merger. So it was really an opportunity for me to kind of jump off and take that next step into client experience. And I was lucky enough to find the opening in Orion and started working on the product team here. Launched an in app NPS survey pilot to gather product feedback. And that kind of sparked the strategic decision for the organization to consolidate all of our feedback loops into one program. So I was given the opportunity to kind of lead that. So four years later, here I am, still kind of building and evolving and learning, of course, and seeing what we can do to influence the client experience.

All right, I'm going to get back to the specifics of your program a bit later. But first, hold the bus, because I don't think I've ever spoken to anybody who's had quite the same story as you, where you actually, you've been on the receiving end of that NPS feedback. So, look, and I wasn't expecting to do this, but tell us what that was like. I mean, if you were getting perfect scores, that's great, but if you were not getting perfect scores, how did you feel about that?

Oh, it's hard. I mean, yeah, it's hard, right? Like, when someone doesn't have a great experience and you Know, you know, those moments when you fell down for the client and you weren't at your best that day, or, you know, you didn't have the training necessary to have the right conversation or technology issues or whatever it might be. Right. Like, there's a lot that's outside of your control.

Yeah.

So it's easy to make excuses, you know, when you're on the front line, talk, you know, client and saying, like, well, that's not my fault. Product is, you know, that's the problem. Or, you know, technology is the problem or sales is the problem. But the reality is, like, I think in that position, I learned that you are kind of the conduit for all of those other pieces coming together and being able to deliver at that moment in time the best client experience that you're able to. And so, yeah, when you get to, you know, tough feedback, that's tough. Like, it'll ruin your day if you have the right mindset for it. Right. Like, if you actually care about improving the client experience, it's will ruin your day. But it's all learning experience. Right. Our CEO at the time, who was one of the kind of foundational people, most influential people in my career, I would say his name was Tim Hockey. He always said feedback is a gift.

Yeah.

And he was very transparent and open as a leader. He wanted feedback from employees, from clients. You know, he was all about client experience, and he really lived and breathed that every day and was a great role model for that, you know. So if you think about, like, feedback is a gift, like, what can you do to maximize the impact of that? How can you, you know, learn more or do more for the client next time? Yeah, I think that's the right mindset to have, and it really influenced how I approached it.

I love that. So thanks for unpacking that. That's really interesting. And saying what you were doing before, which is working in the catering trade or, you know, in front of clients, I mean, you've really had the journey of understanding what it's like to work with clients. And one of the things I always talk about is that, you know, you shouldn't necessarily take feedback personally because it can be those other organ, those other parts of the organization. But, yeah, you can't fear it. You've got to learn from it. That's a difficult transition, though, isn't it? For many people?

Yeah, it absolutely is. And I still struggle with it today. You know, I still have that mindset of feedback is a gift. But when someone is, you know, pinpointing A, you know, particular service issue or a particular product issue. You know, me being able to translate that into an insight for the business in a nice way, but in a pointed way to say, you know, this is a really important piece of our client experience where we have an opportunity to make a huge difference. Some people do take it personally. You know, it's like this particular part of the product is their baby and they've been growing it from the start. And so yeah, it's a challenge. And I think it's about trying to figure out where they're at and meeting them there and having really good communication and working towards that common goal of, you know, we want to improve. Right.

The other thing I really, this is really also why I love doing B2B feedback. Because rarely people are, you know, personal.

Right.

Or if they are, it's because they've, they're having their own bad day.

Sure.

And then they think about it. So one of the things I think is so important is going back and just saying, hey, tell us more about that. You know, it's that curiosity about going back and saying, what was that all about? How can we get better or less? And then you really get to the kernels of truth on that. You know, how are you able to do that in your organization? How are you promoting that?

Jackie, when I came into this role, I was really kind of starting the program from the ground up. We had a survey, but it was a little bit disjointed, like not playing from the same sheet music for all the different players involved. Right. Like so, you know, focusing on kind of that foundation which one of those pieces Absolutely is insight. Right. Like being able to generate quick wins and delivering those insights that really are relevant to leaders across the business, helps kind of build that trust and demonstrate the program's value and starts to make incremental improvements towards a better client experience. So, you know, it's thinking about different communication channels, different reporting tools, different, you know, data, different insights, understanding, you know, what's important to different leaders across the organization and then really trying to hone and deliver that.

Hey, let's talk a little bit about the organization because we've been talking about you, but tell us a little bit more about Orion and about what it does for its clients.

Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of think about us as like an operating system. So we are a technology platform that is kind of the backbone of a financial advisor's practice. So we connect everything from client management tools, you know, client facing websites, to financial planning tools and software investment solutions. And then kind of everything in between. So a CRM, reporting, compliance, you know, all of kind of the technology and investment solutions for an advisor to be able to deliver not only a great experience, but to deliver financial success for their end clients as well. So we are certainly a B2B organization, but I always am thinking about that and B2C component as well. You know, how can we set our advisors up for success with their clients and what does that client experience look like and how can we help them on this journey of continuous improvement as well?

Yeah, I mean, I was reflecting on that and I was looking at the website because the clients of your clients are, you know, using their advisors to look after their wealth. As I said, whether it's big or small, it doesn't matter. It's a, it's the pot that we all think about retiring on or something like that. So there's a lot of stressful interfaces that could happen if the technology goes wrong. I'm guessing. And I'm also guessing that there are some individuals out there in your client base who are going to bang the table quite hard if things go wrong. So can you talk a little bit about some of the expectations that your clients have?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I appreciate most about my position is that I can really relate to the end client and the advisor. Like, you know, everyone wants to have financial security and, you know, be able to retire or buy that lake house or, you know, whatever your financial goals are. And there's so much emotion tied up with money. Right. So then you think about the advisor that's delivering a great experience, you know, for their end client and how do we, you know, best support them? Certainly when things go wrong, it's an all hands on deck. You know, I'm fortunate enough to be in an organization that has been client centric for a long time and clients have always been, you know, a core focus of ours. I would argue that, you know, we're getting better and better. Like the culture is improving around client experience and the focus there. But, you know, we certainly have clients that are banging the table when something goes wrong. And it's all hands on deck to kind of resolve whatever that issue is, whether it's an integration that broke or a migration of data or, you know, whatever it might be. I would say there's really good communication across our organization to say, like, you need to fix this right now. Which is great for our advisors and those, you know, individuals that are kind of banging their fists on the table. I would say that those are the champions for us as well. To say, like, you know, my clients are having an issue, this needs to be fixed. Like to me, that tells me that client experience is extremely important to them.

Yeah.

You know, and they can be a champion for us as well.

So the other thing I noticed about your organization is you got a female CEO, which, you know, I work in the tech space and also in the financial space as well. It's kind of rare. So let's talk about that for a minute. What's the sort of impact of having a female at the head of the company have on customer experience?

Yeah, Natalie Wilson joined us about eight months ago. So she's fairly new to the organization, but she has, you know, day one come in and said, client experience is the most important thing to me and I'm cheering in the background, but I had never worked with her previously. She has a really great reputation in the industry. And so she comes in day one and says that and I'm like, I hope it's true. There are a lot of leaders across the space that might say client experience is a focus, but it isn't. There's other competing priorities. Right. I feel that she has lived up to that every day. She immediately came in and was asking for reports to be delivered of comments for all the NPS surveys. So she gets every, she reads every single client comment that comes through every single day. She's following up with a lot of our passive and attractor clients. She's proactively reaching out to our promoter clients. She really lives and breathes that every day. Which, you know, again, it makes my job a lot easier. So I'm very thankful for that. But you know, I think her being a woman in financial services and I can relate to this, like it's always been very male dominated industry. When I first started in a call center, I was, you know, one of 30. I was the only female in my class, you know, so she came up in that same environment and it does shape, you know, your approach. I think it forces you to develop better communication skills, better teamwork and harmonization skills. And, you know, I think she brings a lot of, you know, not only industry knowledge but empathy for our clients. She truly understands what their journey looks like and what's important to them and how to make them successful. And that's, you know, how she's steering the business is, is all focused on what is going to make our advisors successful. So yeah, having her at the helm has been a total delight. So we're very fortunate to have Her.

Oh man, that's so good. I mean, you know, just to play that back to you, really, having someone that sets the culture for customer experience, that is really interested in what the customers are saying, that sets the tone for the organization. And you know, I'm not going to stereotype it as something that females and males do, but having a leader like that, that's what counts.

But absolutely.

To your board for nominating her and also to have you in because, you know, Jackie, you've also been driving the program in there. Why don't we open the box on that a little bit? So tell us a little bit about how your program operates, you know, without giving any commercial secrets away that. But what I'm curious about is that how are you doing this? Is it working with relationships or is it transactional? Tell us a little bit about how you are getting feedback.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll kind of give you the high level overview of how our program is structured and then maybe unpack a little bit like, you know, how we got there. So we do transactional and relationship surveys. Our transactional is, you know, lights on Evergreen based on interactions with our support teams. So, you know, every time our clients are calling or chatting or emailing, you know, any kind of support issue, we're asking the NPS survey and specific drivers based on that. That kind of helps us get, you know, more of the granular service product tactical insight for where we can improve. And then we have a quarterly survey that goes out to our kind of key relationships, key decision makers that gives us more of a strategic and kind of overall view of where we have opportunities from a CX standpoint. So, you know, those two surveys together kind of help guide the strategy, I would say. And then we also kind of structure a rewards and recognition program for our teammates as well, making sure that they have really good training from a CX perspective. And then, you know, we're incentivizing and rewarding that great CX behavior. And we've seen really positive improvements from an employee morale perspective, from a results perspective. So, you know, I think that reiteration of value of CX is really important and something that's resonated well across the organization.

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But just let me just go back a bit, because what I heard you say is that you're reaching out to your clients quarterly. So that means that you're getting more, you're getting feedback from your clients more than one time a year. Is that correct?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. But this has been my big mantra this year, is that people that are just asking their clients once a year for feedback, it's not Christmas, it's you bring it into your organization the whole time.

Right, right. Yeah.

Because I'm just guessing when he first started to talk about that in the organization, they went, we can't do that. So how does that work with that continuous feedback loop? Is that welcomed by clients or do they hate it or what?

I mean, there are certainly folks like, oh my gosh, another survey. You're always going to get that, right. Yeah. When I came into the program, we were only surveying clients once or twice a year, depending on what type of client they were. And, you know, we made the decision very early on that we needed to increase the quality and quantity of feedback and increase the metabolism for that feedback, certainly without trying to cause survey fatigue, because that is a real problem as well. So we did start surveying all of our, you know, clients every quarter. We've, you know, refined and honed that process over the last couple years, certainly. But I would say the biggest thing that has been a driver for us is our relationship managers on both. We have kind of two sides of the business. Our relationship managers are really that key conduit for us to explain to clients. Your feedback is so important that we want it every single quarter. And getting them to reach out on our non responders was certainly a Big ask up front, you know, to get the teams to commit that. It's just very time consuming. Right. But, you know, as we've kind of gone on over time, it's, you know, they're embedding it in their quarterly, you know, business results conversations with them, you know, that they're having on a regular basis. And, you know, now they're paying attention to how many people have taken the survey. You know, we didn't have any from this company. You know, we didn't have any from this level. So, you know, it's now become a habit for them. It's part of their normal conversation, which is, you know, the best case scenario. Right. We're very fortunate that our teams have been so receptive to that. But they're getting really good feedback, positive and negative. Right. Where they can say, like, our relationship manager is great, but this is where we need help, or the product is, you know, fantastic, but, you know, service needs some help with training or whatever it might be. So they're seeing the benefit of that our relationship managers are, and they're able to build better relationships with their clients based on that feedback. So it's just this positive, you know, cycle.

Yeah, it's like a sort of conversation starter, isn't it? You know, I know we're always asking you for feedback, but there's a reason for it because we want to get better. And, you know, by the way, how is it going on? You know, it's this kind of thing. And then by Kim's, you know, I always got this idea that it's like a muscle, you know, after you practice a little bit. So, yeah, of course I'm going to give you a few things. Yeah. Everything's fine or no, this, you know, because it's that virtuous cycle. Yeah, that's what I really believe in.

You know, I think where we have kind of the next opportunity is being better about telling our clients, hey, we hurt. You know, we do in a broad sense, you know, release notes and certainly we're improving, working on technology and the development. Really, you know, all of these, these positive things that do impact the client experience, but we don't do a great job of today, I'll admit, is, you know, something that we're working on is being able to better close the loop with our clients to say, hey, you asked for this specific thing, we delivered it. And being able to connect the dots between those two things on a personalized level is at scale is really difficult to do, but we're going to try. We're going to try to tackle it, that's the next thing on the list.

Well, I share your pain on that. You know, I also run a software business and we have the same thing. We have customer requests. And you know, of course, the idea of being in a SaaS business, which you are, is that the requests from one customer should benefit all of the community and that you get better. And that's, you know, this is one of the things I love about it. And yeah, we also often forget to do that as well. So I share your pain on that. And then the other thing that I always like to try and do is, is to once a quarter, when I can remember to do this is to say, this is what we learned in the last three months from our clients. And, you know, this, we were able to fix this. We're working on this stuff and we're going to try and do this thing. And then the other thing, the reason why I do that is it also goes out to, of course, to non responders as well. And then it, you know, it reminds people who don't respond that it's a good, good way of doing it. So I'm training our customers. Sounds like you're doing the same thing as well.

Yeah, I mean, it builds that goodwill with clients and it shows them that their feedback is valuable whether they responded or not. Right. That we are listening and, you know, hopefully encourages additional feedback to come in in the future. So.

Well, full disclosure, you are a customer, engaged client, so it's great that you're following that playbook. I love to hear that. Hey, so why don't we move to some of the. What I'd love to hear is if you've got any sort of anecdotes that you've heard, so things that you can share with us that you've learned from customers that were either like an aha moment or, you know, is there anything you can think of that you've come across recently that you're able to change course as a result of?

Yeah. So I follow up with our detractor and passive clients as well. And I had a conversation with a client a couple weeks ago where kind of what we were just talking about, she's like, I haven't seen any improvement or changes in this, you know, trading platform for several years. And I was like, oh, that one hurts. Like, oh, that's right to the heart. Like, that's like one of our flagship pieces of our technology. And we have spent a ton of time and resources over the. Especially if you look at over the past couple years, you know, all of the things that we've done to improve. She is a very high volume user of that tool and she could not like she had no idea what had changed, what had improved. And so, you know, back to our, you know, piece of the conversation earlier, like sometimes that feedback really does ruin your day. That's a hard one to swallow, you know, but to me that just tells me that we need to do a much better job of communicating the value add for the changes that we have made. And also, you know, in taking that feedback that she had, you know, there were several very pointed pieces about the technology that she said, you know, if this was fixed and this was fixed fixed and this needs to change and there needs to be an integration here, you know, if we can, you know, again, intake that do those things, execute them well and then communicate that back to her that, you know, getting just builds that goodwill. But yeah, that one hurt to swallow.

But in general, do you feel that when you get in the responses back and the feedback, do you see a tangible benefit in terms of, you know, time saved or you know, easier to have sales relationships with clients? Can you tell a little bit about, about how it impacts your organization?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big things that we've focused on is delivering those valuable insights to the business not only from a client perspective, but from certainly an efficiency or ease of use perspective as well. Where I think we're, because of the feedback, we're continually improving our processes. We have seen a big improvement from service levels. We've also seen a big improvement from. We initially were only following up with, with detractor clients and we did some analysis around the churn rates and you know, retention and realized that a lot of the churn was coming from our passive clients. So we started following up with them as well. And we've seen great rewards there, not only from a client experience perspective, but internally our passives have gone down. So we've seen really positive things from a program perspective. And of course that translates to business results as well, where we've seen satisfaction of our client base improve over time with particular teams. And I think just the more kind of in depth analysis and in depth tools that you can provide back to the business to show them, you know, not only the value of the program, but the value of the improvement to the client experience. So we're always looking for new tools, new analytics, new insights.

Let me then just double click down on that. One of the things that I, when I talk to other clients is they've started to use referrals as a good way of thinking about monetizing their, their, their program. And I wonder if that's something that's a big part of what you're doing. Do you see much referral in it or are your advisors more secretive about, you know, they love their products and they won't tell anybody about it. How do you see that?

That's a great question. Yeah, so we don't have a formalized referral program as part of the feedback loop. It's something that we've certainly considered, but we haven't formalized that. But I would say, yeah, advisors are certainly talking to each other and wanting to learn from each other. And there's a very tight community there where referrals are absolutely a big part of our business. They're constantly looking to optimize and be successful. Right. Like I would say, financial advisors is a group that is very competitive. I would argue.

Yeah, it's real.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, they're always looking for an edge on client experience or data or technology or whatever it might be. And there's a lot of industry wide conferences. Of course we participate in, you know, providing that best practice content around. You know, we've seen a lot of success with this particular type of advisor and the technology integrations that they're using. Here's a roadmap to be able to execute on that. So trying to, you know, bring that community together and help each other.

Yeah, you're not alone, by the way. We did a survey recently found only 10% of B2B companies thought they had a pretty good referral program. So it's one of these things I think companies can really develop and expand on. I love to see net promoters being part of that, you know, getting your tens out there. Anyway, let's think about the future a little bit as we start to come to the end of this. What are the next steps in your program? What are things you'd like to try and do?

Yeah, I mean that closed loop piece and being able to circle back to the clients to say, you know, these are the things that we delivered for you based on your feedback. That's a very difficult one from a data perspective. But that's a big priority for us is, you know, hey, we heard this, we built this for you and you know, know, reinforce that commitment to client centricity and really strengthen those relationships. So that's a big pillar for this year, you know, and then we're continuously trying to add quality and quantity feedback so, you know, adding new lines of the survey for different business units that maybe we hadn't surveyed before, different areas of our product or different technologies that we haven't, you know, asked for feedback on. So we'll be layering in some new surveys this year to kind of help drive additional change. And then I would say too, the analytics is an ongoing piece. Right. We're always looking for deeper insights, for more pointed, actionable insights that we can provide back to the business. So leveraging AI and new technologies to help us kind of pull those out from the feedback that we're getting is always an ongoing thing, but certainly a big pillar this year. Cool.

I mean that's. So I'm going to check it back in in a couple of years. I'm going to see how far you're doing on this one. Okay, so that's for you going Nexus. I know that you are really keen on travel. So personally, what is the next goal for you to go traveling on then, Jackie?

Oh, I leave tomorrow for New York City so I need to get ready for. I haven't packed, I haven't done anything, I'm working busy. Yeah, traveling wise.

But this was the important thing to do before you travel.

Yes, after I'm done with this, then I can go have fun. So. No, traveling is, is huge. I have a one year old and a three year old so we don't really travel as much as we, as much as we used to. And now when we, you know, take the kids, it's more of a trip than a vacation. Yeah, I've been there, but yeah, I don't. I just came back from London a couple weeks ago and that was an amazing little getaway. We left the kids with the grandparents, so that was lovely. Yeah, so I mean we're always looking for new experiences and new places to go. So.

Well, come and see us in Amsterdam at some stage. We'd love to see you over here. But before we go, Jackie, what about out a top tip from the way that you've been running CX over the years? If people are listening and they're going, how do I do this in my B2B organization? What's the one piece of information you'd give them?

Okay, so I have two actually. So the first one, I think about this quote a lot. Be stubborn about your goals and flexible about your methods. So, you know, especially building a program from the ground up, I think about, you know, trial runs and pilots and, you know, how can you do just test and iterate continuously. So, you know, Trying different communication methods internally for delivering insights, whether it's an intranet or a dashboard or you know, trying finding metrics that resonate with business partners. Asking clients about their survey experience. Like just continuously, you know, pushing forward on whatever your goals are. But you have to be flexible and adaptable for the methods because it's going to change over time and it might be different from one business unit to the next or one client base to the next audience. So, you know, really just test and iterate. And then the other big piece for me is finding champions internally that will help you drive that mission of improved client experience. You know, sustainable client experience improvements. Look for friends. Find friends across the organization to be able to bounce ideas off of them and you know, provide them with reporting tools and you know, ask what challenges they're facing, how can you support them and really build in those relationships. Pay pays huge dividends in helping you move your own goals forward. But then, you know, it connects you to the organization to help, you know, reciprocate and move their goals forward. And you know, it can only lead for to good things for everyone. So find your champions internally and yeah, there are people that are very passionate about the client experience in every aspect of the organization. So find those people and make friends with them.

Fantastic advice, Jackie. Thank you so much. I think that's a great place to end it it. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. It's great to hear about your experiences with customer experience in Orion and more power to your elbow. Doing great and let's check back in with you for a couple of years either here or in Amsterdam.

Thank you so much. Bye bye.