When clients are not just wealthy but super-wealthy, the service they expect surpasses the already high standards of most wealth managers.
So when our client wanted to understand how their UHNW clients felt about them and the service offered, they looked to find a partner for an appropriate solution that was fitting for such clients.
The Challenge
This was the first time they would be conducting external research with their clients and were nervous about how their advisers and senior management would feel about it.
They were naturally very protective about the relationships they have with their clients.
Our approach
We believe research with such valuable individuals is best done in a high touch fashion. Whilst another agency proposed a short online survey, we encouraged our client to take a more nuanced approach.
We set up confidential, qualitative interviews, as the free-flowing and discursive nature of these would allow clients to talk about the issues most important to them. Given the relatively large number of interviews conducted (n=75), we also asked a handful of KPIs in a consistent manner in order to quantify some results.
The interviews were conducted by phone or face-to-face, at a time of the UHNWI’s choosing. At the end of each interview, we asked if we could share the responses with our client.
Fundamentally, this approach relied on the client advisers being comfortable with us, an external third party, speaking to their clients directly. To get their buy-in, our experienced interviewers met with senior stakeholders and conducted test interviews with each of them.
The outcome
Our analysis of the interviews was used to create a number of different outputs for different audiences/ purposes:
– For management: a high level report and presentation highlighted some key strategic improvements in how they positioned and communicated their investment approach to clients, thereby helping manage client expectations more effectively.
– For the regulator: we collected evidence for our client to demonstrate that they monitor that they ‘Treat Customers Fairly’.
– For an awards submission: the results helped our client win an award for outstanding service, further boosting their credentials as a leading wealth manager for UHNWIs.
– For the client advisers: we created individual client reports so they know precisely where they excel and where their clients identify improvements, effectively helping us to answer “How will this help me do a better job tomorrow?”