Enhancing the Client Experience #4 – Suz Chadwick – Transcript

Episode details

 

Fraser Jack 

Thank you for joining me today Suz

 

Suz Chadwick 

My pleasure. Fraser’s excited to be here.

 

Fraser Jack 

I’m excited to have you along. I know it’s going to be such a high energy and an exciting conversation. So I’m really looking forward to it. So Suz Chadwick tell us a little bit about yourself.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah. So in a nutshell, what you’re just saying is that I started in HR and recruitment. I am now a business branding and mindset coach for mainly entrepreneurs. But yeah, I started in recruitment and HR, which was a great sales ground for me, I have to say, and I was there for quite a long time. And then I was working for Deloitte in the UK as the head of recruitment for consulting, and we had to hire like 100 consultants. And we had a brand agency come in. And they basically, were doing all of the ads and community builds and brand activations and all the very sexy things that I just didn’t know were a thing. And I was there managing the recruitment side of things, thinking, what is this magical world that these brand consultants live in? That seems so exciting, and fast paced and amazing. And so that was kind of when I was first bitten by the bug. And then fast forward quite a few years, I was back in Melbourne, and I got in sort of touch with a brand consultant. And we ended up working together. And then I started an employer brand agency for the business I was working for. So that’s kind of how I got into branding is I saw how exciting it was. And then I pitched it to my CEO at the time when I was working in corporate. And we ended up doing employer branding for some really large global businesses, financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail, all the rest of it across the Americas, Amir and Asia pack. And then I eventually went into my own business where I started working with some corporates at the time, and entrepreneurs around how they build magnetic brands to attract the clients that they want. And we come to present day.

 

Fraser Jack 

Well, fantastic. Such an amazing journey. I love when people say in a nutshell, it NZ stuck in a nutshell. Now, I love the love the concept, too, whether you mentioned the the concept of your mindset coach in that space, because you because there is the concept, obviously, of branding and business and how it all works. And then there’s the getting your head around a part, which is probably equally as important.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, it’s really interesting, I find that if you work for a company, then a lot of times people feel quite safe because they’re behind a brand. But when you decide to go out on your own, whether you’re an advisor, or you’re an entrepreneur of another kind, you become the brand. And when you become the brand, there’s a lot of mindset stuff that gets in the way like, but I don’t want to be seen and what if I say the wrong thing? And what will people think and all of these things that we don’t experience when we’re sometimes working for somebody else?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, one of my one of my favorites in that space is this concept of what is professional? Like it’s a professional brand. It’s a professional human. But what does that mean? Is it authentic? Is it like just me being, you know, straight up and down? Like I’m standing there in a some sort of a military opposed, like, how does professional work for individual human being? And I think that’s probably something that you’ve nailed. I think it’s

 

Suz Chadwick 

really open to interpretation, because I think it depends on your audience, everything varies, it depends on your audience. Because if your audience see professional, as bold and colorful and fun and out there, like you know, a professional brand for, you know, Patagonia could be a very different professional brand for Credit Suisse. Like it’s open to interpretation. And I think professional is just something that you have to decide and define what that is for you, in relation to your audience and what they need and want from you.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep, fantastic segue because we are talking about the client and the user journey, the user experience and, and how important that is, tell us tell us a little bit about what your thoughts are and how important the the user experience or the user emotional feeling of what they’re going through is for any business.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, it’s really interesting. So I love I love the books, the brand gap by Marty Neumeier. He is the godfather of branding, if you ever want to read any of you know, brand brand content, then he’s he’s the go to person. But he sort of talks about the fact that your brand is an emotional connection that you have with your audience. Because at the end of the day, we don’t always buy logically we buy emotionally, and so will make decisions that you know, don’t always make sense on paper because the brand says something about who we are and what we want and how We want to be in the world. And so when it comes to customer experience, there’s a very real connection between customer experience and brand. Because at the end of the day, your brand is a collective of the experiences that your clients and your customers have with you. So I think it’s really important for us not to kind of look at it and go, Oh, that’s a nice to have, it’s not actually a nice to have, it’s a really critical, essential part of building a successful business that has longevity and a great reputation. Because if people are not having good experiences with you, that’s probably the things that they’re going to talk about the most.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I think I think with money, especially conversations, you mentioned that unconsciousness or that the decisions are made emotionally, in the past, and you sort of said the collective experiences that they have with us probably also a collective experiences that they’ve had in the past as well, or they’re all of these, all of these things that didn’t go right or wrong, or that what their parents used to say is that as their kids, it’s you’re not just dealing with what you’re bringing to the table, you’re trying to probably deal with a whole lot of other stuff as well. Now

 

Suz Chadwick 

Jays now we’re getting into like the unconscious mind Fraser, which that’s a whole other podcast episode. But I think that it is important. You know, we’re gonna talk more about customer experience today. But I think it’s really important for us to understand our customers. And there will be a type of customer or a belief system that your customers might have, that it is important to kind of understand as much as possible. Because a lot of times when it comes to branding, and marketing and messaging, those are the key things that we want to start to tap into, to attract the type of people that have those beliefs, and have those values and have those desires and want that identity and those outcomes. So it is important for us to understand, you know, that background a bit as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep, yep. And now let’s, let’s talk about some of the process that human beings go through. When they’re, you know, making decisions, or when they’re thinking or subconsciously and consciously about these, these, you know, choosing advisors, and when they’re going through a journey or a process or a buying decision. Tell us about the the different stages. Yeah, so

 

Suz Chadwick 

you know, everybody will have a different process. But there is an overall process that, you know, from a brand perspective and from a consumer and buying behavior process that we understand generally in the market. And the first thing is, obviously, awareness. So there’s a problem there. And now I want to become aware of who is able to solve that problem. And so which advisor is going to be right for me? And what exactly does my criteria for good look alike as well. So everybody’s gonna have their own criteria for what good looks like. And so understanding what that is for your ideal client for your dream client is always good as well. And then once they have discovered you, number one, how are they going to discover year? So I think there’s a whole marketing element there. The second thing is, once I discover you, how am I going to get to know you? What’s the connection point gonna be? Is there a values alignment? Is there a brand story I’m going to connect to? Is it the people in the organization? You know, what is that point of connection that you want to give your customers? Once they’ve got that point of connection? Like, okay, yes, these two companies or these two advisors seem to be what I may be looking for, then I want to build trust. So once I’m aware of you, and now I have some connection to you, it could be from a referral. So somebody else I know has said that you’re good. And so there’s a connection point. Now I’m going to make my own assessment. And that’s either going to be through your thought leadership, the things that you share the content that you share, when I read your website, when I read testimonials, when I read research, whatever it is that you provide, how are you building trust with me? And so once I think, yeah, this person seems like what I’m looking for, and I believe that based on what I want, they seem to be able to deliver that. Now I’m looking for, are they really going to get me what I deeply desire. So there’s a reputation and results there. So when we talk about the results, we’re able to get our clients, you know, the stories that we can share about what we’ve done and who we’ve worked with, or what’s happened, that builds desire for your customer or for your potential customer will, like, look like, you know, they got this this kind of returns or they were able to achieve those financial goals like Wow, and so now you’ve piqued my desire that you could potentially help me to get there. And then once I make that decision that you’re the person and this is all before I bought so let’s just let’s just make that distinction. So before I’ve even bought, there’s awareness. There’s discovery and connection. There’s the building of the chat. Ask and there’s the building of desire. And now I might buy from you. So you’ve got a lot of work to do before I actually hand over all my money and sign on the dotted line and say, now you’ve done all of this work, don’t let it fall over afterwards. And that’s where that brand experience builds loyalty and retention. So now that I’ve made all these decisions, and I’ve come on board, it’s from this point on that I decide whether I stay and how much I invest. And what else I do.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

Yep. Yeah, yeah, Fanta, I love that user journey, that you just went through there and understanding those different steps. And, and what’s really interesting to me in that point is when you start looking at websites, or marketing, or all these things, before you purchase often before you’ve even made the decision or to book an appointment, or come into an office or to speak to that planner, and are you taking that potential client, through that journey on the way at the same time, at the same time, as all your existing clients, then looking at it from a branding point of view to say, what’s that loyalty and retention? So I guess, are they could they be the similar things as loyalty retention going to be same as awareness discovery in, you know, trust as well,

 

Suz Chadwick 

not really, because you’re now in a relationship. So you’ve kind of got pre relationship or building relationship. And then now you’ve got, I’m, you know, a customer and I have a different expectation, when I’m in that pre purchase, I’m still kind of, you know, making my own assessment. And yes, you can caught me, and you can, you know, help me understand, and we can start to build the relationship. But once I’m in a relationship, my expectations, just like went 10 times higher. Because now I have like saying, I’m, I’m gonna give this to you now. Show me what you’ve got. And so it can be really basic things as well, like, once I’ve signed on the dotted line, and I’ve committed to it is that how easy was it to onboard? And how, you know, how easy was it to have meetings? And what’s my reporting like? And what’s the conversations I’m having? Now? They do, I feel like I understand them, and that you’re speaking to me at my level. So I think we’ve got a very different, you know, experience pre purchase, and post purchase. And I also think that you’ve also got to have different objectives as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. You know, what, I want to dive in a little bit further into the brand conversation, because it’s part it’s a, it’s a big part of the user experience. But a lot of people don’t sort of understand the importance. It’s like, Oh, we did this. And then we did something else, or ad hoc, and we did something else. And we haven’t necessarily put it all together from the clients and consumers point of view. How is that brand such an important part to that? You know, that loyalty and retention?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, it’s really interesting, because brand builds trust. So let’s say I find you through whatever means and then I go and look at socials, I go look at website, I speak to people, and there’s an inconsistency that will be like the end of trust right there. So when we’ve got consistency of our brand, and we’re really clear what our brand is about. And so that’s really taking a look at, you know, what your what your visual brand looks like, you’ve got your, you know, your purpose. So your vision, your mission, your values, you’ve got your customer experience, which we’ve talked about and your brand experience, you’ve got personal brands, so the leaders in the organization, what’s their reputation? Like? You’ve also got brand positioning, so are you Kmart, or are you Chanel, you know, and and also that has a big impact on pricing and things like that, and also, my identity. And so I think that, especially when we are talking to advisors, and you might be dealing with, you know, high net worth individuals, you’ve really got to think about how did they see themselves? And how do they expect to see you if you’re going to be the person representing them from a financial perspective. And so brand positioning is really important as well. And so your brand voice, your tone, the language, all of that speaks to a certain position in the market as well. And then really just looking at brand awareness. So if you are working with high net individuals, you’re not going to be potentially advertising inside the local paper. Yeah. So it’s really being where your customers are, and creating a brand that speaks to them at the level they expect to be spoken at, and to be treated at a level that they expect to be treated as well. And so that’s crafted. That’s not something that accidentally happens. That’s actually does does our business look the way we need it to look. Does it sound the way we need it to sound? Is it positioned where we need it to position are we priced where we need to be? In order for that person, this one person to have that trust and feel the desire to work with us, that’s what brand does.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s really interesting and crafted that crafted conversation around there. You just mentioned there. I think we did some media training years ago. And the first thing I really remembered from that was, don’t say what you know, know what you’re going to say. And I’ve always, I’ve always remembered it, not that I do that, but probably I spelt stuff off, because I’m like, Hey, I’m being authentic. But I guess brand when a personal brand doesn’t need to be authentic. But it also needs to be, like you said, well crafted and understanding that it’s not about you, it’s about the person who’s going to be reading it or listening to it or seeing it. Yeah, it’s

 

Suz Chadwick 

an interesting one. I think that with personal brand, I do think you need to be authentic, but hopefully everything that you’re doing is authentic. So it’s not something you need to consciously think Am I being you know, I think that if you know what you’re talking about, and you want to be known in the market for a certain thing, then I think just, you know, being authentic as in talking about it on a consistent basis, you know, challenging your own thoughts, as well as other thoughts, I think that that’s what we’re looking for in personal brands as well. We’re not just looking for somebody who’s a cookie cutter, we’re not looking for somebody who’s just says what everybody else says, like if you want to build a strong personal brand. And I do think that you know, even when you’re in an organization where there’s more than one person, you know, the leaders matter, I used to when I was running the employer brand agency, I used to do personal brand training with leaders, because we would be going to market saying, This is what the organization is about, this is what your experience is going to be like, when you come and work here, here’s all of the amazing things that you’re going to get. But we needed to make sure that the leaders were visible and that their opinions were being heard and that they were actually people who somebody else wanted to work for, because you couldn’t attract top talent, when you’ve got a leader that’s not visible and doesn’t have a personal brand. You know, really great people want to work for people who are leaders in their industry.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. And obviously, as you mentioned, you know, having a good brand, having a good messaging, all those things are great for clients, but they’re also really good for attracting and retaining staff.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, you’ve got to remember that, you know, you’ve got your employee experience, you’ve got your customer experience, you know, you’ve got your brand experience. So your brand experience could be people who have not yet bought from you, but they are experiencing you in the market, and your reputation and everything else. And then you’ve got your client and customer experience, which are purchases of you, and now they’re in that cycle of being a customer. And you’ve got your employee experience as well. So what is it like for employers, when they go through the recruitment process, and you know, that was something the very first time like I was saying, when I was working at Deloitte, you know, and I was on the recruitment side, and we had the brand agency, my job was to make sure that whatever we were saying in the market was being reflected in the recruitment process, and that the hiring managers were, you know, able to talk about the business in the way that we wanted them to that they were giving candidates the right experience as well. And so that was really important. And so I think that when you’ve got employees, you’ve got to take a look at their, their journey, and what it is that’s happening for them and make sure that it’s a good one, otherwise, you’ll lose really great people.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

So thanks, Susie. So I’ve worked with you and been in workshops with you in the past. And we’ve talked about, obviously, at financial advice conferences, for example, you obviously work with a lot of businesses from small businesses, as you mentioned, and advice firms tell us about some of those businesses, you’ll work with some of the good ideas and things that you see across this. Yeah,

 

Suz Chadwick 

I think for me, there’s no kind of one set, great thing to do, because I think like we said earlier, it really is so customed to clients and industries as well. And so I think it’s important to understand your customer base, and then defined what kind of brand and what kind of experience you want to create for your clients. So for me, you know, working with sort of SMEs or small to medium enterprises, as well as your massive financial groups and things like that. We really chunked it down a lot of the time. So we might say, Okay, so for if I talk about consulting, so say for consulting, we might have a certain type of customer experience based on what we want to do within that particular part of the business. Whereas in innovation, we had a very different culture, very different type of, I guess, strategy around it. And so I think it’s just really important to come come up with things that are working right now to when the market changes and shifts. And we are right now in a hyper customization, and personalization stage of the consumer journey. Yeah. So with everything digital and all the rest of it, you know, that personal touch matters even more now, because so many businesses aren’t doing it or don’t see the importance of it. And so once again, with advisors, especially, you know, when I did meet you at the conference that I was speaking at, that was one of the things that we talked about. And I have to say, one of the things I noticed was a lot of people had very similar ideas of what they wanted to do with customers. And I think that that’s fine, I think just doing it, you’re getting like a gold star, right? They’re just doing it. But the thing that I would get you to think about and the things that worked well, for clients that I’ve worked with in the past, is really understanding their customer deeply and coming up with new and innovative ways to connect with them, reward them, give them the experience that they want. And one of the ways that you can think about it is that you may have different groups of customers. So you might have different value levels of customers to kind of put it crudely is that, for example, you know, a customer that spends, I don’t know up to $3,000, I might spend X amount on them and give them a certain thing. And they might have a certain experience somebody who ends up spending 1015 20 50,000, they get a completely different experience. And so I think it’s about understanding those dynamics within your business, understanding what each of those customers expect. And then being able to implement that in a way that works. And hopefully in a way that doesn’t, isn’t like really heavy and laborious for you, you want to be able to automate and make it easier. And so I think that hyper customization and personalization, and also then looking at how you automate things, so that it becomes easy for you to do that.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

Yep, yeah, pent up when you when you said different values, I was wondering if you’re talking about the actual clients values, and you’re going, Oh, we value or the financial. But I was gonna say, Wow, how do you do that? You ask them about the event? Like? Yeah, absolutely. And so this is really interesting point, right, hyper customization and personalization. You want it to be really customized and personalized, so you kind of do need to know about them, but then automating that, either with technology or other types of automation, where you might use providers, and you’ve, you’ve come up with plenty of great examples before. Whether it’s using companies that do cars and using companies that do these other types of personal touches, what What have you come across in that space?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there are, I’ve got clients who have these, I guess, higher financial value customers. So I’ve got some clients where they’ve got like a personal assistant, who knows exactly what clients want. And so they do custom. They do custom experiences for clients. And obviously, once again, you have to that has to work for your business and your profit margins. And now you want to be, but you know, just starting off by taking a look. So even for us, even at a lower level, we will send gifts to customers, but we know Do you drink alcohol? Do you have an allergy? Is there something like would you prefer food? Or would you prefer wellness products? Like, is there anything that you, you know, don’t like things like that. And so really simple. And this is like at a really basic level. So when a customer say buys a product from me, like they join a program or something like that, in the cart, we’ve got these questions. So we’ve got like, say that because a lot of my customers are on Instagram, we’ve got their Instagram handle. And then we ask them, Do you drink alcohol? What’s your favorite food? You know, would you prefer wellness or food products is as a gift, or audible. So educational gifts, and they just check a box. And so then my VA, my virtual assistant, when we send out gifts to clients, she’ll go to a site that we use that kind of has all of these things, but she’ll go and she’ll take a look at what they actually put on their form. And so that’s automated, that doesn’t take time or effort. And so we’re like, okay, they they’re non alcoholic, so we don’t get them anything like that, and they prefer this. And so that’s what we do, you know, even at retreats, things like that. We might ask them what their favorite food is. And when they get to their room. They’ve got a customized gift waiting for them and it doesn’t have to be expensive and I think this is the thing. Sometimes we we kind of assume that highly customized is highly expensive. And it’s actually not but you know, the little bit of extra time that somebody takes to do it is actually worth it because they will never forget that.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s the it goes. But always back to the it’s the thought that counts.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Our mother was always thought that counts.

 

Fraser Jack 

I used to say that what it was I missed somebody’s birthday, or sorry, is the thought they can’t. Happy birthday. It’s a thought that counts. They’re like, where’s my president? But you’re absolutely right. Like the gifts they don’t have to be. They don’t have to be expensive, but they just have to be thoughtful. And you mentioned the concept of they’re on social media often though, they’re devoting their lives anyway. And their Facebook or Instagram accounts are so the sort of things that they do resonate with.

 

Suz Chadwick 

But do you know why I ask for their Instagram? Fraser? It’s because I like to send them a personalized voice message to welcome them.

 

Fraser Jack 

Oh, that’s so sweet. That’s a great, didn’t cost me any. It’s the thought that counts. Again, we’re spending time thinking about you and chatting with you. The the personalized message is a great thing on Instagram. It’s actually there’s probably a few other great products out there that can produce personalized messages, even if you just pick up your phone and record a video.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, there’s a there’s a product and I don’t use it. So I’m not. But I know that a lot of my clients use it is bonjoro. And so you can Yeah, it’s kind of branded and stuff. And you can just record a little 32nd video and I get I get quite a few of those from customers and things like that, which which is always nice.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s funny, because you know exactly what they’re doing. But it still feels good.

 

Suz Chadwick 

It does feel good. You know, I think that I think that in such a fast paced world right now, when somebody takes the time to do something nice. It, it makes a difference. It’s great. You know, it’s valued.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Especially, especially with the financial advice process being such a long drawn out in many cases process, it’s good to touch base a couple of times, maybe the beginning, even at the end of that process, as well just, you know, thank people and let them know how far they’ve come.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, absolutely. And just and just understanding, you know, I think that this was something that I spoke about at the conference. So we, we were at is understanding how clients like to be communicated with. So some people were like, you know, something, it’s fine. If I don’t talk to you for three months, just said, like, just let me know, when it’s all done at the end, you’ve got those clients. And then you’ve got clients that are like, if you’ve not touched base with me in two weeks, I think that the deals fallen over, I think that we’re no longer in business together. And so I think it’s really important for you to take the time, at the beginning to maybe find out a couple of things, it doesn’t need to be like every you don’t need to find out, you know, from the minute they were born, everything that happened. But just finding out what they care about, and what’s important to them, and then also how they like to be communicated with. So even just, you know, this is going to be a long process, would you like me to update you like there’s not going to really be updates on a regular basis. But if you would like me to touch base with you on a fortnightly basis, or whatever, however long you think is appropriate, then I’m more than happy to do that. Because I just want you to feel, you know, looked after, where somebody else will be like, they need to speak to me until like three months later phrase another problem. That’s right.

 

Fraser Jack 

And then you need to put the pieces in place to get to do that right as well to be able to say if if you need those regular columns that just say, Hey, we’re still working on it, you could probably automate some of that. So I was

 

Suz Chadwick 

just about to say, you could totally automate that. So even like just thinking technically here, not to go into it. But you know, even in my email system, I can just add a tag to somebody and they’ll automatically be subscribed to a automation emails, you know, that we’ve already set up. And so you could have two or three tags where you’re like, Okay, I spoke to this customer, they’re high touch, meaning that they want more comps. So let’s just put the hashtag in, you know, or the tag, high touch, and they are now subscribed to the emails for that particular product, which is custom to that product. And every two weeks, they just get a little message that says, hey, Fraser, just let you know, we’re still working on it. If you’ve got any questions, this is the stage we’re at. So it could be you know, we’re currently at stage one, or whatever it might be.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. So we follow along on the pizza tracker and let you know when the pizza is going to be delivered. I love that. I love it. It’s great. A great example of customer experience. Speaking of other markets and great examples, talk to us a little bit about what you’re seeing from not just financial services, but if we said you know, forget about financial services, what are some great things that you have come across for great client experiences?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, I mean, I do think that some of the basics just even what you were talking about, like the Ubers and the DVDs and stuff, you know, it’s it can be really simple thing is that just to help people feel secure, and that feel like I know exactly what’s going on. I think a lot of times things people lose trust with They feel like they don’t know what’s going on. So even seeing where my car’s going, you know, rating my driver, knowing that, that that, you know, I can share that with a trusted person. Like there’s little things like that that are embedded in some experiences that just make us feel like we can trust it. And that it’s okay for me to do this. And so I think that’s important as well, you know, and I was I was looking at some recent was 2022 2022 research, which was, according to Gartner survey, 81% of companies compete mostly, or completely on the basis of customer experience, making it the key competitive differentiator for financial institutions in 2022. And beyond, and I would even dare to say every organization like every industry, is really starting to is competing on customer experience, you know, and making sure that they understand what their customers want and what what they’re going to do. And so, quite a few sporting organizations do a lot of physical customer experiences with you know, celebrity, celebrity athletes, things like that. And so I know it’s so random, but like UX UX see is the ultimate fighter. So what is UFC? UFC Ultimate Fighter? Yeah, so they have got like a pretty crazy fan base. And they are, they’re like the Red Bull

 

Fraser Jack 

have been crazy big or just crazy. Let’s go with both

 

Suz Chadwick 

our fans if you’re a UFC fan, but they’re like the Red Bull, you know, Red Bulls always been customer experience and brand experience and you know, for a long time for many years now. And we’ve sort of seen some groups like UFC, things like that, where they are constantly we’ll talk about this in a bit where they’re constantly thinking of what else can we do with our customers? How else can we build that loyalty? Yeah, and so I just think that that’s definitely something. There isn’t a particular business, I’m thinking of UFC came to mind. Uber comes to mind, Apple always comes to mind, you know, but it’s, it’s just thinking differently. I think that’s the competitive advantage. Because if they all did exactly the same thing wouldn’t be different. But they’re all kind of going, what could we do for our audience that we know would be really attractive? that engages them on an ongoing basis?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I feel like they’re all firms that you’ve talked about, that really know their brain and understand that this is how we communicate and how we how we do things and, and don’t get distracted by all the noise out there, or what or what other people are doing.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, and I think that you know, something, it can be even if you’re a small business, it can be simple, it can be simple, you’ve just got to take the time to think about it. And I think that’s it, like when I think about what my customers love, and what you know, they get excited about and what they engaged in, like if I sat down and really thought about, well, what could I do that would be a little bit different that could really, you know, connect with them. i There’s a few different ideas I could come up with. But I think we’ve just got to commit some of the resources to do that.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

Your resources, an interesting thing, because obviously sitting down, like you mentioned, taking the time out of your business to work on that as well, as, you know, the we mentioned the idea of how you’re going to design that how are you going to tell the story? What sort of gives my give? I don’t know, is there a? Is there a is there a percentage of a turnover that people normally spend on this? Or is it like you mentioned 81% of companies? Say they can compete heavily on this from the from the survey, but, you know, are they committing? I guess they’re the ones that are committing the budget?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah. I mean, I think you’ve got to ask yourself, what is your competitive advantage? And if the market is moving towards a customer experience as competitive advantage, you’ve got to decide, what’s that worth to you? You know, so I think that that’s the other thing, what are and also just what are you competing on? So when you are looking at your marketplace, and how you are competing? What what are you competing on? And if you were to invest a bit into this, could that really help you stand out? And so, you know, I’m not gonna say throw everything in the kitchen sink at it. But I think it’s about starting to build on that and then seeing seeing the impact of it, but also not waiting too long to do that. Like, I just think it’s now like now is the time to ensure that you’re doing it and making sure that it’s part of your business, that it’s not sort of an afterthought, but that you’re, you know, like I said, when somebody goes and buys we’re already asking the questions because we know what we’re going to be doing for the for the customer or for the client. And so I definitely think it’s worth kind of starting to really look at how you do that. And I did look on seek and there’s 22,000 Customer Experience Manager jobs in Australia at the moment. So, you know, let’s not underestimate that big business understands that this is a competitive advantage.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

Yeah. Well, that’s That is incredible. And you mentioned you just you mentioned that concept of including it in the process, not at not the afterthought. I think it’s really important points that we’re making here. It’s about the concept of too often, I think financial advice practices have been as are we going to do this process is based on compliance, right? It’s because we have to, yes, it has to be compliant. But if we’re actually designing this from, from scratch, and I want to ask you about this, too, if we were to just to design a device business from scratch. You know, we don’t necessarily we want it to be compliant. But if we were bringing this from branding and the user experience point of view, where would we start? And what would we do?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, and I feel like you know, it’s important, like, you will have somebody who’s maybe responsible for marketing, you’ll have somebody who’s responsible financially, you’ll have somebody who’s responsible for HR, you need to have somebody who’s responsible for customer experience, and that might sit with your brand and marketing team. But it does need to be, you know, ELT level, like executive level, this is not like some VA or some assistant, who maybe sometimes does things for you. Like this needs to be a highly visible part of the business. Because the thing is, I just want you to think about, if you got an experience wrong for a customer, where they had a really poor experience, literally, that could be costing you millions of dollars. So I think it’s just ensuring you understand that. So if you were starting from scratch, or if this is something that you want to do, then the first thing is really taking a look at who is our customer? So who is our customer? What matters to them? You know, what do we want our customer experience to be for that person? And I think, you know, really kind of looking at it, like, what is the desire of the person? What is the financial level of the person? What is the brands that they expect? Or what is the experience that they expect, but also never assuming? So it’s kind of going back to that question of how do you like to be communicated with? Do you want us to touch base with you every two weeks? Or are you happy to touch base at the end of three months. And so a lot of this can be a lot, some of its research, and you knowing your customer, like when I think about who my customer is, I know them really well. Like I can tell you what they want for themselves, I can tell you what they’re you know, what they’re trying to achieve. So just you knowing that is important, which I’m sure you already do.

 

Fraser Jack 

So just just as we go through that, I think financial advisors have a really good opportunity here with their fact finding information. Like if I’m asking you what sort of, you know, what sort of car you have, I’m gonna get a good indication of what sort of a purchaser, you know, like you mentioned, the Chanel came out before, you know, it’s probably the same. Do you drive a Honda or a Lexus? You know, like, what’s the, what’s the similar thing in a lot of the, you know, the location of their suburb, their their home, where they live, all these sorts of things, will give you a pretty good indication of, of how you can, you know, market to them and brand yourself to them. Yeah, and

 

Suz Chadwick 

I think that that absolutely works for a high percentage of your customer base. But I’ll Oh, I can’t remember who it was, I’ll have to find out. But I just remember a story where there was a guy who was worth like millions, if not billions. And he used to, like drive a really rubbish car. And he used to not dress particularly well, because he didn’t care about that stuff. But then he had like a multimillion dollar, like real estate portfolio, because real estate was his thing. So I think that it, it’s a rule of thumb 80% 90% of the time, but this is where it’s important for us not to assume at all. So definitely understand your audience, get a general understanding of probably what it is that they like, etc. But asking questions is always worthwhile as well. And so yeah, so I would definitely do that. But like, it’s like we were saying, you can automate a lot of this. And so it’s definitely something at the beginning. And you know, something explaining to your client, why you’re asking these questions, I think is actually another five star kind of opportunity or Goldstar opportunity. Because if you say to somebody, you know something, I’m going to ask you a whole lot of personal questions. And you it might seem really strange as other organizations may not ask you this. But the reason that we ask you is because we want to make sure that the experience that you have with us is one that is for you. And that is customed to you, and what’s important to you. I keep that in there. Somebody said that to you, like you just feel like oh, that’s so nice.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, you care, you care. And you’re setting those expectations before you’re asking questions that might seem across like what do you need to know? Do you need to know that my money?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, so I think that, you know, I think that we can make that a benefit of working with pass as well. So yeah, so you can definitely automate stuff. And so having great systems in place and making sure that you’ve kind of run through and said, Okay, once somebody fills in all of this, are we going to be able to do what it is that we want to do? So I think that it’s important to kind of have this as a little bit of a fluid thing at the beginning, where you’re like, Okay, what’s our brand? What’s the experience? Who’s our clients? What do we want to do for them? Okay, if we want to do these things for them? Now, let’s go back to the beginning. What questions do we need to ask them? Yeah, so I think that’s where it just needs to be a little bit fluid as well. And then also just, you know, what do they expect from a personalized service, too? So like, we were saying, everybody’s a little bit different. You know, whilst champagne might be an amazing celebration gift for somebody, as somebody who doesn’t drinks just like, well, what are we going to do? What are my plans with that? So I think just making sure that you understand that. And then we did talk about having tiers of customers. So you know, the financial value of a customer, you could have different customer except experience processes for them, as well. And it could just be a budget. So once again, we can keep it simple to start with and say, you know, for customers at this level, we’ve got a budget of, I don’t know, $500. For customers at this level, we spend 1000, whatever it is, and you might also have different, different points as well. So there might be a welcome gift. I know that when we were at the conference, we were talking about that I think anniversaries and birthdays, things like that, you know, maybe if something amazing happens for them, that sort of thing, sending a gift then, and it doesn’t always have to be a gift. Like there’s other experiences that you could create as well. And then the really big one, like we sort of talked about at the beginning, who’s responsible for it, and don’t give it to somebody where customer experience is not their forte. Like they’re not somebody who thinks about people in a certain way, or is considerate, or who really loves to do this sort of stuff. Because otherwise they’ll come to you with really crappy ideas. Somebody who can’t be bothered with this, or just be like, yeah, just give him some br they’ll be fine. So you want somebody who you want somebody who their personality is like they love to give

 

Fraser Jack 

you loves Christmas, or loves the whole idea of going out and buying a million presents about three months before Christmas, and the whole excitement that really lights them up inside.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, yeah. So I think the who is important as well, because that’ll make your job. If you’re the owner of the business, and it’s not what you want to be doing, then hire somebody. Yeah, that’s such a good check point. Do you love Christmas? What do you do at Christmas time? Tell me or whatever holiday like you know, I think that that’s important. How

 

Fraser Jack 

many Christmas lights do you put up? That’s a telling sign. Maybe they should put that on the 22,000 job ads on seek at the moment. Just for somebody who loves Christmas checks, we should be in marketing. Yeah, you’re exactly right about that. That’s it’s a real personality thing, isn’t it? So it’s not necessarily a you know, a job description of somebody who wants to be in that space? Yeah.

 

Suz Chadwick 

And you know, somebody at something, somebody who is in marketing and somebody who does events, they would be good people for this as well, because they’ve gotten attention to detail. And they care about the experience. So somebody who does events, they’re like, when somebody walks in, this is what they see. There’s the flowers on the table, they’ve got to drink as they come in, like, that’s somebody who’s attention to the experience is going to be there. So if you’ve got somebody in the business, who does really well with that sort of thing, it could it doesn’t have to be a dedicated role, but just find somebody who cares enough to want to do it.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep, exactly. When I was talking to someone the other day that was doing events for professionals, and they were like, oh, what should we do? We’ve never been in a professional city, but you’d be running events all the time. Do we do that thing because that prepares me they don’t try and mix the two and say, you know, we’re trying to do this from a professional point of view. And, and you’ve also got some other things that I guess we’ve talked about when it comes to EQ to feedback loops and understanding like asking your clients, what are some of the other things

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, and I just think, you know, constantly optimizing because we learn as we go So, you know, I think at the beginning we were doing things manually. I was like what like let’s put it in the checkout like as they’re buying LEDs while some older questions, you know, and then and then also just continuing to have that kind of conversation as well around what they want. So you know, for once over the client resigns with me, we’ve got different things we might give them like education, parks or books or things that I know that they love and so just continuing to stay up with that, but optimizing it wherever you can at the beginning, and then just shifts in the market. So what what’s hot right now? What are the things that people are doing? What are the trends that people are interested in? And then just really identifying opportunities. So, you know, you may have a client that you’ve had for a while and you’re just like, Well, what else could I do with them? Is there an opportunity that comes up where you could surprise and delight them? Or is there an opportunity where you could give them, you know, additional advice that, you know, in some other area or something like that? So I think it just depends on what you do. But I’m just always about constantly improving like you never want to set and forget it. I think it’s just about how do we do this better? How do we make it easier? And how do we create better opportunities for our clients to have a great experience with us, whatever that is? Yeah,

 

Fraser Jack 

I like the concept of looking out for opportunities and continually looking out for them as in, it might not be time, but if you see something that they’re interested in, you can go on, it’s an opportunity, and you just obviously need to note that or have somebody say, I have somewhere in your system where you can note that down for next time and you go, that person really loved caravanning or something, you know, like, and you just go great. And here’s a something that might be handy for them for their caravan.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah. And even feedback loops, like even now I’m working with a business at the moment. And it’s a lot of email. And I’m just like, I would love to have a customer portal, where I’m not looking for the email that they sent me last week. Like, I just want to have it all in one place where we’ve got like, it’s easy to see. And, and so you know, we’re not even like, let’s get out of like gifts and experiences and stuff. But it’s just like, are you asking your customers what part of the process is easy for them? And if there was one thing that they could change about how you work together now, what would that one thing be? And so sometimes I don’t think we always welcome or ask for that feedback. And it’s the stuff that really gets under client’s skin. And it kind of questions like, it can be the most mundane, little annoying thing. But it can be the difference between them going as is too hard. Like I don’t, this feels too hard. And it’s such an easy fix for you as a business to go. Yeah, let’s create a client portal where all communications go through. And we have like the three key projects we’re working on, so that you always know what’s going on.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree more that the concept around what frustrates you? It’s a difficult question. You are right, though, it’s really hard to tell me how bad I’m doing or you know, like that. What annoys what annoys you about the you know, like, it’s not what I say, Yeah, but it’s a from a mindset point of view to want to get around. But once you do it, and you go, Oh, cool. Okay, great about our process, we can do better here. It’s a really nice some sort of nice thing to ask a client to be able to give them that opportunity.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, and I just think that, you know, a lot of times they don’t get asked that, and they do feel uncomfortable saying it sometimes. And so when you ask that question, they’re like, Oh, my God, thank you. Like, I’m so glad you asked. It’s like, oh, everything’s great. But you know what I’d really love. I’d really love this one thing. And you’re like, No, you had no idea.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be you either. It could be one of your other staff that anyway, about what what can we do? What can we do? It’s better? And they go, Oh, yeah. Because they’re not telling. They’re not having to say that you’re doing something that’s annoying them? They could say that. Every time I talked to Susie, she just doesn’t know what sorry. Anyway. Let’s talk about the concept of advice firms that maybe some quick wins for existing advice firms. What are your thoughts around that?

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah, I think just understand what information you have on your customers that could really help you customize the experience now. And so hopefully, I really, you’ve got some stuff. I also think one of the interesting conversations that I had, when I was at the conference was a lot of people were like, their tech wasn’t great, potentially, to capture all of that. And so you’ve maybe have really great tech in other parts of your business. But this particular part of your business, you’re like, Yeah, we don’t really have a lot of that information. So I do think that, you know, this is only going to help you. So really looking at Do we have the tech do we need to add something on? Or do we need to, you know, get it customized, or whatever it is to be able to capture this information is really important. As we said, so many times, see what you can automate. Because I think a lot of times businesses are like us, this all feels really hard and like too much and I don’t really want to do it. But I think once again, just thinking let’s go back to mindset, assuming that it’s going to be hard, is probably the block that you’ve got and the barrier to doing this really well. There might be a really simple and easy solution. And once again, giving it to somebody who’s really passionate about Doing this, they’ll go in, and they’ll figure it out. And they’ll make it happen. And they’ll make it happen well, or they’ll tell you what they need to make it happen well, and so I think that just don’t assume that things are hard. You know, make sure that you’re, you’re, you’re improving all the time. And then I think, as we said before, just really think differently. Like, you can come up with lots of ideas that other people have come up with. But, you know, if you if you have conversations, and you also make your staff aware, or your people aware that this is something that as a business we want to get better at. And so I want you even when you’re in conversations, even if it’s not directly asking the customer what it is that they want, or they don’t want, just being great at listening, and kind of, you know, putting that somewhere, as far as on the system goes so that we can start to become a more customer experience and customer centered or centric organization, I think is always worth your time.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I like I like the idea of, you know, challenging stuff, and then celebrating those that are able to find those things, come up with good ideas, and just keep celebrating those good ideas and eventually becomes part of the culture of the business.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah. And also, you know, really live with like, if you get a lot of thank you notes from customers, and it comes to like a single person. What about if you shared that with the organization? What about if you shared that with more people at Friday drinks, or whatever you do on Slack, or wherever you communicate? It’s kind of like, I just want to share with everybody like, it’s not kind of my client thought I was amazing. But it’s, it’s like, let me tell you about this. Thank You card. I just got it’s more about the team. You know, it’s more about as a team, like, our clients are loving what we’re doing. And I wanted to share like these thank you notes and that with everybody.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And these are all the thank you notes I wrote on myself. So it’s definitely it was I definitely think it needs to become part of the culture, the whole user experience, everything they said. So thank you so much for coming and chatting with us today. If if firms help firms work with you, how can they get ahold of you? What how do you work with people? I know we’ve done workshops, bits and pieces before but we do a lot of speaking.

 

Suz Chadwick 

Yeah. So mainly as a speaker and I do do workshops, just to break like just to work through customer experience and personal branding and things like that. I mainly work with women in business and female leaders, but also you know, I’ve spoken at conferences where lots of different people and so that’s that’s something that I love to do as well.

 

Tom Reddacliff 

Brilliant, fantastic. And tell us about where people can find you.

 

Suz Chadwick 

They can find me at Sue’s chadwicks at SU Zed Chadwick or one word.com And I’m on to access Chadwick on all socials as well. But yeah, the websites probably the best place and I’ve also got a podcast which is called the brandbuilders Lab podcast as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic, great podcast tune into that. Thank you so much Suz for coming on and sharing your gold nuggets of wisdom. I really appreciate it. My pleasure.