Championing Client Experience - Chad Person - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #51

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome! I'm super excited to have one of our own Your CMO Fractional CMOs on the show today, Chad Hurston. Chad is, uh, quite the extraordinary marketer. We're going to be talking a little bit about that. He's got quite a bit of background in the professional services arena and has recently joined our team and added a lot of value straight away. Super excited to have you here, Chad, and can't wait to get into our conversation. But before we kind of get into some, maybe some marketing speak, let's talk about something that you're keen on right now, something that you think is really important for other C-suite professionals to be aware of or understand more.

Yeah, thanks, Joe. Yeah, you know, I've had the opportunity, a little bit of an opportunity to think about that question. And You know what I would want, Joe, is I would want the attention of CEOs and managing partners of professional services firms. And I would want to tell them not to underestimate the impact client experience, what I like to call this client experience movement, will have on their firm in the coming months and weeks and years. It's big. It's here. It's been— client experience as a topic has been hot for the last I'd say 3, 4 years, but it's hotter than ever. It's important. Okay, you can't afford as a CEO or managing partner of a professional services firm, you can't afford to ignore it. And then finally, I would want to tell them that it's hard. You know, it's not easy to perfect or be really one of the leaders in client experience. So you better start now because you're going to need the time and space to work on it. So, and I'd be happy to talk about each of those areas more, but That's what I would—

I'd love to unpack it a little bit. So when you define client experience, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, I don't know, a movement several years ago about like creating wow experiences in general. And how would you define this, this new movement now? What's different about it or what's special about it?

Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't necessarily think that it is a new movement. Other than, Joe, it's finally showed up in the professional services B2B area.

Okay.

You know, it's really been something that, as you know, B2C is focused on for quite a long time. But it kind of always seems that these types of trends and focus seem to kind of eventually get around to B2B. And, and sometimes it feels like the professional services space is always one of the last few to kind of jump in on it, but it's here, as I said before. And what you said just a second ago, I think is important. And that is to say, let's take a step back and, and really frame what client experience is, because that can sometimes be a bit confusing to folks. You know, to try to keep it as simple as possible, you know, client experience is how your clients perceive their interactions with your firm. It is, it's the sum really of all the interactions. I mean, I think for, you know, look, look for, look at a client interacting with a sophisticated professional services firm. There are hundreds, if not thousands of touchpoints that exist in that client's journey. And, you know, they exist in that pre-purchase phase. They exist in that, you know, that, that purchase phase and then the post-interactions as well. And so it's really kind of the totality of all those And so, you know, again, the reason why CEOs need to really pay attention is because if you can deliver, you know, an experience that is superior to your competitors, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna increase client loyalty, you're going to decrease churn, you're going to drive significant revenue growth.

I'm curious. So I love how you just said it's finally come to B2B, because that makes sense, because it was raving fans for years in the B2C space. And now in a B2B space. How do you measure it? Because I'll just speak from my perspective at your CMO, we are often trying to understand how our client experience is going. And it's difficult with traditional tools like NPS scores and surveys, because the client is, you know, I mean, it's so intimate, that relationship, that it's weird to stop and say, hey, fill out this, you know, would you refer me, 9 out of, you know, 1 through 10 kind of scale. So What have you seen as a healthy or a unique or effective way to measure it?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think as difficult as it can be to measure, I think, Joe, some of the metrics that you threw out there are still some of the better or best ways to measure it. I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that I like about where your head's at right now is that it must be something that is measurable. And one of the things that I think professional services firms often make a mistake when they think about client experience is they look at it as if it's, you know, something that is kind of soft and warm and fuzzy. You know, it's about how much you love your clients. And look, we all love our clients, don't get me wrong, but really it's about business results and results that you should be able to measure. So yeah, I mean, I would go back and I think it's important for a firm to say, look, what are the results that we want to achieve? How do we want to grow our business? And what kind of firm do we want to have into the future? And base it, you know, find the metrics that match up with that vision of what you want to become. I do think, you know, and I know you'll be familiar with these, some of these KPIs, but, you know, client lifetime value, right? What is the amount of churn that goes on in your clients today? I do think measuring, and NPS is one way, but measuring loyalty. And then obviously one simple way to do it is how many, in some cases, how much is your revenue increasing and how much is it increasing per client? All those are ways that you can and should be able to measure your investment in CX. If you are not seeing improvements in some of those key KPIs, then something's not right.

Yeah. Yeah, you have to be able to measure it. What we found is that it's probably the same with any survey or any measurement response. Not 100% of the people respond and give you the answers that you need to try to get some sort of consensus on how you're doing. But that's a problem against all types of surveys. Measuring tools is you just can't get it. You can't guarantee 100%. And it is— it has to be objective and not subjective for it to be, I think, meaningful to have a benchmark at least. The other question that I have, which I think is really unique, is in your opinion and your experience, is client satisfaction, or experience I should say, different with respect to fractional services and/or traditional professional services? Should there be a different expectation for what those experiences are, or how are they different?

That's an interesting question. Out of the gate, I guess I would say there should be little difference in terms of expectations. I think the key would be pinpointing the expectations to begin with. I mean, I think you had mentioned a moment ago trying to survey clients and get a sense of how your performance is from a client experience perspective. And I guess one of the things that I would say is survey and those KPIs associated with surveying like NPS and so forth, they are a great addition to your knowledge bank in terms of how you are performing and providing superior client experiences, hopefully a superior client experience. But, you know, oftentimes those things can be lagging in some cases. And one of the, you know, one of the things that you should be looking at is those leading indicators of how many opportunities are in the pipeline, how many proposals are being generated with your existing clients and things like that. Again, going back to some of those KPIs, you know, the customer lifetime value and so forth. But back to your question, Joe, in terms of like, is it different with fractional services versus traditional services? You know, I don't, I don't think so. I think, I think clients all have very specific needs, very specific goals that they have in place, and, and kind of the mode or model in which you choose, or they choose to have those services or solutions delivered, probably doesn't impact the outcomes they're looking to achieve much. And if it does, then that in and of itself may, may be the reason they'll make a decision to go with a fractional person or more traditional approach.

Yeah, I think you're right. I feel like the difference— there's not a difference in expectations, just difference in scope.

Yeah.

And what we found is, you know, we've spent a lot of energy the last couple years really focusing on the client experience part of our business. Because we understand how Yeah, and one of our core values is that, you know, your success is our success. And in our, in our role as fractional chief marketing officers, the client success is, is, you know, marketing results, uh, and more importantly, marketing wins. And, uh, as you know, in marketing, it's difficult sometimes to quantifiably show all of the value that you can provide, but we know how important it is to have those expectations clearly identified with the client ahead of time. And make sure we're meeting those expectations, because every client's expectation of marketing is different. And so as marketers, we know we bring value one way, but clients' perception of value is different. So we've spent a lot of time trying to align client expectations of value with our delivery of and communication of value to those clients. And that's where we spent our energy, making sure that that communication around what winning looks like is clear to all players in the process. And when it's clear, then we can deliver to meet their expectations and exceed it ultimately.

Absolutely. The work that you're doing and have done to kind of identify, as you said, their expectations and what value really looks like in their eyes is some of the heavy lifting that needs to happen. And then the other thing I would throw out there, and again, my head always goes back to the experiences I've had leading marketing for professional services firms. You know, having that information is critical, but being able to translate that into meaningful improvements in your people and your process and your technology can oftentimes be the most challenging thing. So it's going to be important to not only uncover those, what value looks like in the eyes of your client, but you've got to be able to take that and respond to it, right? Create something meaningful out of it.

So, you know, we— client experience has arrived in the B2B space. Why is it so important in your mind?

Yeah, well, so, so, you know, I talked about how it's arrived. And I mean, you know, just quickly, You know, you know, B2B buyers, and I kind of said in the beginning that it kind of took a while, it seems like, to kind of get around and impact the B2B space. But B2B buyers, yeah, are finally changing. And as you know, you know, they're changing in many ways. But most, most, you know, all of those ways that they're evolving are being influenced and have been influenced by technology, right? Technology, the accessibility of data, you know, we kind of live because of you know, having access to so much information at our fingertips at any time through that kind of that omni experience, we kind of are in a, in a DIY environment now where we want to kind of be a part of things and the process of things that maybe in some cases, processes that we weren't a part of in the past, if that makes sense. But again, you know, B2C giants like Amazon and Apple, all the ones that have influenced all this, but today clients are looking you know, for an experience that meets them in the B2B space where they are, you know, when it's convenient for them. And, you know, all the results, you know, you know, all of this results in a consumer that expects companies to kind of understand them and where they're at and what they're looking for. And this is, this is new territory for B2B, especially in the professional services space. I mean, you know, I'll take accounting as a quick example. I mean, audit and tax work for accounting firms. That's something that's kind of, it's been done one way forever. And those folks are not really used to making adjustments and meeting clients where they're at in terms of delivering some of those things. So it's here and it's important because the preferences of the buyers today and certainly those emerging leaders in the future have been impacted by all these other areas where technology and other things have made their buying decisions more convenient. In terms of—

I think also— Yeah. Don't mean to interrupt, but I think also the pain to change is so much less. It used to be really difficult to change B2B vendors. It's not anymore. You've got— because of technology and SaaS and flexible contracts and more savvy buyers, consumers, it's not difficult to make a big change like it used to be.

I would agree technology is, has significantly improved, or I guess made it easier, as you said, to kind of move to a new professional services provider. And make no mistake, as more and more of your clients move into the cloud and are leveraging, you know, increasingly technology to operate their businesses, that's going to become even more easy as we, as we look forward for sure. So you had asked me about, you know, why it's so important You know, I mean, at the end of the day, it's, you know, over the next few years, I, you know, every professional services firm I believe will be competing based upon their client experience. And honestly, the fact is they already, you know, do just that. They just don't realize it, you know, frankly. I mean, your client's propensity to buy from you again, right, to make, to recommend, uh, your firm to a, to a, to a colleague, to appear, or to take their business somewhere else, as we were just talking about, right? It's all really based upon and as a result of the experience that you're delivering to them today, right? So, you know, not acting, uh, will put you, I believe, because again, so many of these, these buyers of professional services, their preferences are changing. They're putting I think pressure on some of the larger leading professional services firms are already ahead of this change and making investments in people and processing technology to kind of meet those changing preferences. But not acting will put you at a competitive disadvantage for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, well, we know that experience is going to drive retention, but I think at some point it starts to become a table stake. You have to have a certain level of experience to even get there. And if you don't invest in it now, you're not going to be able to compete. But I think what's interesting, maybe to dive in even deeper, is you mentioned that it's hard. And I'm curious why it's so hard. I mean, it's common sense, right? Take care of your client, make sure they're happy, and it's good. But But it isn't. It's not that simple. What makes it so hard? And is it particularly hard in the B2B space versus the B2C space?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it is, you know, it's, it's, it is pretty straightforward intellectually speaking in terms of, hey, you know, create positive experiences for clients. It's pretty easy to wrap your mind around. But yeah, Joe, I mean, the execution of it is, is not always that easy. You know, a lot of, especially in professional services, you know, you've got a lot of organizations that are delivering lots of different services to clients today. You know, you've got, you know, the traditional, let's say, accounting or tax services, but many— and again, I keep focusing on CPA firms, but they're a great example— many of those firms are offering technology services or offering estate planning or succession, business succession planning services. So they have a lot of different types of services that they provide. And when you start talking about impacting client experiences across that many lines of businesses to those— to that number of unique consumers, it becomes challenging. It can seem overwhelming for sure.

It is overwhelming. I mean, I can tell you from from our perspective, the— and what's relatively a simple scope of work, fractional CMO, we come in, we help clients build their strategies and oversee the execution. But there's presale activity touchpoints, there's onboarding touchpoints, and then there's ongoing touchpoints. And then there are multiple people involved in our process, from the CMO to the coordinator to client success manager to me as an owner. And there's so many variables then in play, different touchpoints, different people, different client personalities, different internal team personalities. You just have one oops, one wrong person has a wrong conversation at the wrong time and the whole thing can blow up and it can taint the entire experience for that one client. It's so hard to manage all those different variables.

It is, you know, I've, uh, statistically speaking, um, it's, it's, uh, you know, I've read recently, read studies where, um, if you again take a sophisticated professional services firm, um, and, and, and, and serving a, let's say, a sophisticated client business, right, on average between 8 and 8 in 10 internal teams inside of that professional services organization play a role in serving a sophisticated client. 8 in 10. So you're talking about, um, operations, you're talking about technology, you're talking about marketing, you're talking about sales, you're talking about, let's say, audit and tax. I mean, you're talking about all these different groups that are involved in serving one sophisticated client.. And all of those different groups have different goals. They have different perspectives. And you can imagine the type of, you know, internal misalignment and disjointed, frustrating experience that can create for a client. Absolutely. Yeah. So again, that's, that's one of the things that makes it, makes it challenging.

So then how does marketing help all of that?

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I, you know, one of the reasons why I'm as passionate about client experience as I am is because, you know, first and foremost, I do believe it belongs in that marketing area, right? You know, it's marketing, as you know, is, you know, plays such an integral part of creating and delivering value to clients. And so, you know, whether it's the branding and marketing communications that we create to play a critical role in shaping the client's expectations, or it's, you know, our responsibility kind of historically to be the ones collecting the data on clients and, and understanding and sharing with our stakeholders, you know, their needs and preferences and behaviors. Those are all things that I think, you know, are important and owned by marketing. The, you know, in terms of marketing's role, you know, I really believe that one of the things that we can do as marketers is probably be the leading champion. I mean, I say probably, I mean, like, be a supporting leading champion to that CEO or managing partner of that professional services firm. They've certainly got to see it and believe it and buy into it. But we need to be kind of the right-hand ambassador of client experience. And one of the ways that I think we can do that is to help professional services firms realize that in a lot of cases, they built their firm on what I like to call and what has become known as kind of inside-out thinking. And what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is most professional services firms, I believe, have built their firm on this inside-out thinking, which is when a firm kind of has made investments in people and processes and tools to serve clients. Thinking about what they, they need and want as, as, let's say, CPAs first. You know, they make investments in systems and tools that don't improve the client experience because they don't consider clients' feedback or perspective. Those investments they make when they're inside out don't improve internal efficiencies, or if they do, it's short term, based upon what's convenient for, you know, that CPA or their team. But often to the detriment of the client experience. So I think, you know, taking a step back and being kind of that voice of reason and saying, look, we've got to think and operate our business from the outside in. We've got to put, we've got to understand what our client wants and needs and their preferences, and we've got to put that first, right, as we start thinking about making investments. And by doing so, then we're putting the client experience first. We're maximizing the benefits for the client. We're in turn, you know, we're improving internal efficiencies that oftentimes are known to be pain points when trying to execute on clients' needs and goals. And so I think that's one of the first things you can do as a marketing professional is to kind of be that voice of clarity on how to make decisions about how to serve clients and run our business.

Yeah, for sure. And I think with B2B companies, the investment has such a greater ROI. And the reason I say that is, if you look at client lifetime value, and there's lots of ways to measure that, but there's a formula out there that we use that has a— it's basically take your profit margin times a multiplier based on retention rate. And it's eye-opening when you, when you show somebody that if they can increase retention rate by 10%, they can double the lifetime value of that client. A 10% increase in retention doubles the lifetime value of the client. And it's just math and it's real. And it's, it's, it's, but it's when you see it like, holy cow, that client experience is the difference maker for retention almost every time. It is. If that experience is strong, then you can have oops and mistakes and things happen. If the client experience and the relationship is strong, you can work through those. But if that experience is poor and a mistake happens, they're going to be shopping as quickly as they can.

Well, and one other thing I will throw out there too, you're 100% right. And, and, um, you know, again, statistically speaking, it has been proven again and again that your ability to confront, navigate, and navigate a problem with a client successfully, right, has a big impact on the stickiness of that relationship. So, you know, oftentimes I talk to, you know, professional services firms and leaders, and I say, look, you know, we're not talking about avoiding mistakes. You can't do that, right? What we're talking about doing is being able to be clear on what the goals are and to be able to collaborate with clients on achieving common value. And you're going to run into obstacles as you pursue that, but it's our ability to be able to communicate and confront those issues when they happen that allows us to overcome them together. And then you want to talk about loyalty from a client. Once they've kind of went into battle with you and faced things and won, you've won together, then it really starts to make that snowball effect happen, right?

Yeah, and I have to imagine that when you have these conversations with your clients about client— their client experience, and if you're having those conversations as a marketer, you're bringing a very different perspective than they've thought about it in the past because it's traditionally been more of just an operational issue. Like, oh, that's just our operations team. They just got a service, they got to figure it out. But if you think about it from a marketing perspective and you add that, that lens, It certainly is an operational solution oftentimes, but marketing can drive a lot of the right touchpoints, uncover a lot of the right areas to focus on, and come up with ideas on how to think outside the box to improve those experiences along the traditional touchpoints.

Wouldn't you agree? 100%. You know, I, you know, for some, especially I think in the professional services area, having marketing so heavily involved in the client experience can seem a little unorthodox for some, because you kind of said it, I kind of feel like for many professional services firms, they will often conflate client service with client experience, and they're different. And, you know, again, you know, when you're really looking at client experience, you are looking at it through a different lens. It is, you know, it is that, that lifecycle,, right, that begins long before that stakeholder of your professional services firm begins to interact oftentimes, you know, with that client or potential client in the sales process. So yeah, I mean, we can bring a lot of new ideas to the table. A great example of that, and one of the things that I always try to tell other marketers is, you know, the awareness stage, right, as we both know. I mean, you know, that's where in today's, you know, today's world, you've got these consumers out there doing research, right, to try to figure out not only is there a solution to my problem, but what are the handful of firms that I feel like are credible and capable of solving it. And so, you know, I often feel like that professional services firms, attorneys and CPA firms, that I feel like they for years have believed in, to some degree they have, they feel like they've cornered the market on trust, and, and cornered the market on these really closely valued relationships. And again, there's a lot of statistics that do support that. But, you know, as we were talking about before, technology has really changed even the nature of trust today. You know, I think to be seen as trustworthy, you know, in a consumer's eyes today, they've got to be able to go to your website, and they need to be able to answer all of their questions right on your website about what they're looking for, what services you offer, what industry expertise your firm has. I mean, that's where the, the trust building begins. And I think a lot of, you know, professional services, providers of services, and they're not thinking that way, right? But as marketers, we can come in and make them realize that this client journey starts well ahead of delivering a service.

Yeah. All right, let's switch gears a little bit, Chad. What do you like to do for fun?

When you're not marketing? Well, if you know, for those that would watch video of this at all, you might notice behind me that there's a few pictures of some fish. And so I am an avid fly fisherman. My dad taught me to fly fish when I was, gosh, probably 8 or 9 and have done it really all of my life. And, you know, if it swims, I like to chase it with a fly rod. And that's really my passion outside of just spending time with family.

Oh, that's great. Remind me to introduce you to my friend Byron McFarland. He's an avid fly fisherman. He goes all over the country all the time. He's got a series on LinkedIn videos. It's something like, you know, From the River, and it's always him in his fly fisherman uniform talking about business exit strategies. It's awesome. If you haven't seen it, I think you would enjoy Byron quite a bit. Have you ever fly fished? Is that the way to say it?

In Alaska? I have not. It is on my list. I've got a bucket list of locations that I want to fly fish, and I've been able to check several of them off in the lower 48. And just recently this past year, I got a large bucket uh, if you will, filled up by going and fly fishing for a week in Belize. Oh wow. Yeah, I caught, uh, tarpon and snook and, uh, permit and bonefish. So that was incredible. But no, Alaska is, uh, is on my list. I will, I will definitely hit that before it's all said and done.

So my wife and I were, uh, in Alaska probably, I don't know, 18 years ago, and, uh, she was pregnant. That's why I know the date, uh, with our fourth. And we had, uh, I think it was Anyway, one of our kids, we had a little trip where my parents went and it was a family reunion. So for 2 days, my parents watched our other kids and we had a chance to go down to the Kenai Peninsula right off Homer. And we stayed at this little like bed and breakfast. It was beautiful. It was in Halibut Cove, Alaska. And the weather was amazing. It was middle of July, sunny. We had fresh fish every day for food, and we could choose little adventures. And we kayaked in the bay one day, and then another day we went with a guide fly fishing, and, um, for salmon. And it was a little late in the season, so we didn't really have much success. But he— we put on our waders and we walked up this, uh, for a while up the stream towards a glacier. It was a glacier runoff. And as you can imagine, it was really cold. But we had our waders on, all, you know, our whole gear up. And it's me and my wife and this guide. And my wife gets a hole in her boot or in her wader. And it starts getting really full and wet and cold. And I'm sitting there like, all right, what do we do? And the guide says, all right, Amy, hop on my back and I'll walk you down. So pregnant Amy jumps on the back of the guide and we walk down the river for, I don't know, 45 minutes or so. And I just felt like such a schmuck watching the guide carrying my pregnant wife down the river. But, uh, it was still a fun experience. We had a lot— it was my first time ever trying to fly fish. Probably not the best time to try to learn, but, uh, that, that's a fly fishing experience I'll never forget, that's for sure.

I would imagine so. I— everything I see about it says it's just, you know, everybody says it's the last frontier. It looks absolutely gorgeous, so I look forward to it.

It's a great— yeah, you should get up there. All right, well, I really appreciate your time, Chad. It was a good conversation. I hope our viewers pulled some info from it. If they want to reach out and have more conversation with you about marketing or fly fishing, what is the best way to do that?

I would say just reach out to me in an email. Chad@yourcmo.com would be, would be perfect. Or connect with me on LinkedIn, Chad Person, P-E-R-S-O-N. And I would be absolutely enthusiastic to talk about client experience, marketing, or fly fishing.

So you choose. That sounds awesome. And thanks again for being here.

I really appreciate it. Joe, thank you for the invitation.

I really appreciate it as well. And thank you to all of our listeners. If you do have a chance, please reach out to Chad and look forward to our next episode coming up. And make sure to, I think, subscribe to the podcast is what my producer says. Whatever you need to do, click like or subscribe, that always helps as well. So thank you very much for, for listening in today. And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com.

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