Market Leaders Podcast Episode 80: “Mastering Client Experience: Strategies for Success in Professional Services” with Mitchell Reno

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David Ackert

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David Ackert

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David Ackert

Welcome back to the Market Leader’s podcast. I’m David Accurate and today our guest is Mitch Reno, a principal and the director of client experience at Raymond. Mitch, great to have you with us.

00:00:51:27 – 00:00:53:12

Mitch Reno

Great to be here, David.

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David Ackert

So, Mitch, you wanted to talk to us about client experience, and I am eager to dive into that topic. But first I was wondering if you could just give us some background on yourself.

00:01:03:02 – 00:01:35:20

Mitch Reno

Absolutely. I’ve really been working in the world of professional services, accounting and wealth management firms for about 22 years now. Before that, I worked in hospitality and a little bit in manufacturing for about four or five years, and I’ve really found a passion for client experience and focusing on how firms can grow by focusing on the needs of the client before getting involved deeply in entrenching myself in client experience.

00:01:35:22 – 00:01:38:27

Mitch Reno

I was the chief marketing and sales officer at our firm.

00:01:39:02 – 00:01:47:19

David Ackert

And so the transition from chief marketing and sales officer to client experience. Talk to us a little bit about that. How did that happen?

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Mitch Reno

You know, for me, I became more and more immersed in trying to understand how you build a brand at a professional service organization. And I had always been committed to the idea that a brand isn’t advertisements and messages from professional service firms, although organizations certainly have to do that and build messaging in the marketplace. But in fact, that and a professional service organization, a brand, is built in every interaction that our professionals have with our clients.

00:02:20:15 – 00:02:45:10

Mitch Reno

Those are the foundation, a solid brand in any given market, in any given industry. And so as I began to study that more and more and wanted to have a bigger impact on that, I realized I had to really reshape what my work was going to be. And I at one point I thought, you know, I think this is really about experience.

00:02:45:11 – 00:03:12:23

Mitch Reno

This is about creating that connection between human beings and creating outcomes through that collaboration. So one afternoon after I thought that I’m going to I’m going to start just saying I work in client experience. I turned to my computer and I typed in the words client experience, sent to my friend Google. And my friend Google informed me that there was a whole world of customer experience activities.

00:03:12:26 – 00:03:39:21

Mitch Reno

But frankly, the B2B and the professional services environment had really not been catching up. That was probably a decade ago. And I recognized, boy, we as a profession need to dust off our old best practices and really start focusing on probably what’s a far more natural way to build our brands and build our business.

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David Ackert

So talk to me a little bit about scope. How large is RIM and how many client experience is are we talking about here in terms of you getting your arms around this endeavor at your firm?

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Mitch Reno

On any given day, we have probably upwards of 32,000 clients that are having any number of interactions with our company. So we’re about 80% B2B and about 20% B2C or business to consumer. So we’ve got quite a bit of variety in the types of interactions that we have with our client base, as well as as variety within the industries that we serve.

00:04:23:11 – 00:04:51:29

Mitch Reno

So we work anywhere from government and public sectors with higher education and schools all the way over to privately held businesses with families, over to working with individuals and high net worth families. So we have a huge variety in the type of work that we do, but we find that variety and the small to midsize marketplace a great place for us as an organization.

00:04:51:29 – 00:05:15:26

Mitch Reno

Since we started our business in Michigan. And we’re probably comfortable saying we’re a great Main Street company that has the ability to go into big markets and make some big things happen because of technical expertise that we brought on board to bring to life a comprehensive experience for our clients.

00:05:15:28 – 00:05:38:13

David Ackert

You know, I was in a room a few weeks ago with managing partners and the topic of client service is really came up. And the question was how many of you would say that your firm delivers excellent client service? And all the hands went up, right? Everybody acknowledged. Of course, that’s one of the things that we really pride ourselves on.

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David Ackert

And then the follow up question was how many of you have documented standards of excellence for these services that you deliver? And almost none of them had that right. So there was this. Oh, yeah, the client experience at our firm is fantastic, but none of them could really put their finger on where that starts, where that ends. A lot of it was, well, it’s just common sense or well, people just kind of pick it up by osmosis.

00:06:02:05 – 00:06:23:10

David Ackert

So it seems like one of these things that really does warrant having some leadership, having some structure, and ultimately having a vision that gets fulfilled upon. Because to your point, at a professional services firm, it is the service that we are selling and that service creates an experience for the client. Now, I am not an expert in this as you are.

00:06:23:11 – 00:06:33:07

David Ackert

I’d love to hear your definition of what is SCS as it pertains to a professional services firm context.

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Mitch Reno

Thank you for asking that question because I think it’s a great starting point and honestly, I don’t think client experience is client service. I think a firm can have a strong client service philosophy approach and good business standards that fit into a client experience program. And that’s one part of it. But I would hope that the listeners of the podcast today would be thinking of client experience as every touch, every moment that your clients have with your organization.

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David Ackert

So not just limited to service.

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Mitch Reno

Not just limited to service. Absolutely. And and so I want I want you to think of that from the standpoint of the human interactions that they might have, the digital interactions, all of the administrative, the physical interactions within facilities. I want those revenue touch points, whether it’s a quoting process or invoicing process, any of those moments that can create friction or create joy and happiness with clients.

00:07:45:22 – 00:08:18:21

Mitch Reno

All of those accumulate to create a client experience that is measured in a number of different ways by different organizations. So I think for your listeners today, I think what’s important is to think about the entire client journey. So I know it’s a broad way to think about client experience, but it honestly is the first moment that they are aware that you exist as an organization that they might do business with through that entire awareness phase, all the touch points of that awareness.

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Mitch Reno

And then at one point they think I might want to hire those fine people. And that begins a selection process that they go through. So we go through awareness, then we go through a selection process and they say, Oh my gosh, you folks are the people we should be working with the business, the the choice that we should be making.

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Mitch Reno

And then they go through an onboarding process. All of that has accumulated to the point before we’ve even begun to work with them.

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David Ackert

That’s right.

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Mitch Reno

And then we have the opportunity of deploying some of our best practices to deliver exceptional results to them through a service delivery process that we hope many times is iterative and repeats itself over and over, across time. And then there is sometimes an off boarding process. We have onboarding, we have off boarding process. So I like that five segment cycle of selection, awareness, onboarding service, and off boarding is thinking of that entire lifecycle and all of those moments and all of those touches and interactions that we have that build to a cumulative understanding of.

00:09:32:21 – 00:09:37:01

Mitch Reno

That’s what my experi consists of working with Raymond.

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David Ackert

Yes. So why are professional services firms focusing on C now? As you mentioned, customer service is something that has been around for a long time, but now professional services firms are starting to acknowledge, Oh, there’s client service and that’s something that we also need to start to adopt.

00:09:58:23 – 00:10:44:10

Mitch Reno

Absolutely. I think we’re seeing a lot of the experience phenomenon out in the business to consumer marketplace. I think with professional service firms there just in the last 5 to 8 years really begin to opening their eyes to this idea that, hey, we need to focus more on a way to differentiate our business from our competitors and this concept of building engineering, creating a better experience that can be replicated and actually build a better brand in the marketplace is a very strong way to create a differentiated brand that in many cases, people will pay more for.

00:10:44:12 – 00:11:25:07

David Ackert

One of the challenges that I know a lot of professional services firms have, and I have this conversation primarily through the marketing lens. But, you know, a partner at Raymond today may end up being a partner at another firm tomorrow. And so how do you ultimately get your arms around and manage a client experience when the parts of that whole are ultimately very individual, not necessarily all that adaptable and don’t really, at the end of the day, view themselves as an extension of a brand or an extension of a firm.

00:11:25:12 – 00:11:30:13

David Ackert

Sure, it’s the logo on their business card, but at the end of the day, that logo could change tomorrow.

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Mitch Reno

Absolutely. It’s interesting. Professional service firms are different than corporations.

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David Ackert

Yeah.

00:11:38:03 – 00:11:51:25

Mitch Reno

We have an owner group and we have a group of leaders some many times outside of that owner group who many might describe as wild cats trying to somehow be herded and.

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David Ackert

That’s right.

00:11:52:17 – 00:12:22:02

Mitch Reno

Into a common direction. Right. So that is a big challenge because many people within their careers have grown up doing things a certain way. It’s made them successful. They’re used to doing them that way, and that’s what they’re comfortable doing on a day to day basis. In my role as a client experience executive, as I do a few different things, I start by listening to the client and to the associates that work within the firm.

00:12:22:05 – 00:12:50:06

Mitch Reno

So I want to understand how the clients describe the experience. I want to understand how the associates that do the work describe the experience. I want to see those overlaps. I want to understand that across the entire journey that they have. What’s it like to see Raymond as a prospect in the marketplace and begin interacting with us? What’s it like to go through the process of choosing us?

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Mitch Reno

What was the onboarding process like and what were the positives and negatives about that process? Where can it be improved? And then the real core, the ME. Finally we get to the dinner table. What’s it like to go through a cycle of having your audit done or going through a business valuation or working with a tax and wealth advisory team to build a comprehensive financial plan for you and your family.

00:13:19:28 – 00:13:48:29

Mitch Reno

Let’s begin to dig in and map out what those experiences are. And by listening to clients and listening to our employee is we’re able to identify friction points and moments of opportunity where we can not just try to do a better job, but we can engineer the experience to create the better outcome. We can take that re-engineered experience.

00:13:49:01 – 00:14:25:28

Mitch Reno

We can make it replicable. We can train people. We can guide everyone in doing something in a more consistent way that delivers more consistent results. And what are we doing in that process? We’re building an external brand that isn’t built on messages where everybody raises their hand in a room and says, We all provide great service, but instead you’re building a brand on people in the marketplace saying, Wow, when you work with Raymond, here’s what happens and here’s what the outcomes are that make it a better choice.

00:14:26:04 – 00:14:48:21

David Ackert

There is so much to unpack there, but one of the things that I really want to highlight is that you start with interviews. Client Facing interviews, internal facing interviews. And I think historically firms have really dropped that ball. There’s been this attitude of, We don’t want to kick the bear. Right. I mean, as long as clients aren’t firing us, they must adore us.

00:14:48:21 – 00:15:09:17

David Ackert

And as long as people aren’t leaving the firm, they must be happy. And there’s a big leap between the truth of the matter and the nuances of an experience, whether that’s the client experience or in your other example, an employee experience and a fulfilled employee or client of the firm.

00:15:09:20 – 00:15:38:27

Mitch Reno

Absolutely. Let’s face it, today, whether it’s attorneys, accountants, whatever it’s going to be in a professional asset service environment. It’s going to be the rare case where you go out to the club and have somebody badmouthing somebody and driving them into the crowd. It’s just not professionally acceptable right there. There are exceptions to that. And and people earn those exceptions.

00:15:38:27 – 00:16:08:22

Mitch Reno

Right. But but the challenge and all of the listening efforts is that people don’t want to say as a business professional and you’re a business professional, I’m not in love with the work that you’re doing. So what happens is, is by the time a relationship in the professional services arena begins to break, a lot has been added to the negative experience side before the relationship actually dissolves.

00:16:08:24 – 00:16:35:08

Mitch Reno

And at that point, many times it’s beyond repair. So the power of listening has to be raised to a level. You need to do focus groups with clients, you need to do individual surveys, you need to personal interviews, you need to be listening in ways aggressively that you haven’t been doing before to find the small places where you can make improvements.

00:16:35:08 – 00:16:57:25

Mitch Reno

And that’s what I love about client experience, is because when you start doing client journey mapping with clients and say, Well, hey, you’ve been with us for three years, let’s just map out what your experiences look like and tell us what happened here and here and here. And it’s a really comfortable environment and they’ve got a few other clients that may be involved in the process that are sharing as well.

00:16:57:29 – 00:17:18:23

Mitch Reno

When they all start talking and start saying, Oh yeah, but you could have done that better, they say, Oh gosh, John, John, You know, I was just waiting and begging for you to ask me for the sale. But it took till the third meeting until you actually asked me for the sale. And I was ready to buy in at the first moment.

00:17:18:23 – 00:17:21:07

Mitch Reno

But. But you were comfortable asking. I could just.

00:17:21:07 – 00:17:23:12

David Ackert

Tell you had me at. Hello?

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Mitch Reno

Yeah. And so it’s so critical and professional services firms that we dig deeper because in most cases in professional services, it’s not considered good business etiquette to challenge openly a relationship.

00:17:41:16 – 00:18:08:12

David Ackert

Well, and it all starts with the humility, the willingness to acknowledge that perhaps we are not perfect, perhaps we haven’t figured it all out. And that’s very difficult for highly educated advisors to acknowledge many times. Right. So if you can start with the look, we’re great, but we could be better positioned, then you actually have some room for this client experience.

00:18:08:12 – 00:18:30:03

Mitch Reno

Endeavor Years ago, our Chief Executive officer at that time, Steve Kelley, taught me a great question to ask clients that leads right into what you’re saying. And it really is to make it easy on the clients. He said his favorite question to ask was, What are we doing pretty well right now that you think we could be doing better?

00:18:30:05 – 00:18:31:03

David Ackert

Yeah, that’s great.

00:18:31:04 – 00:19:05:24

Mitch Reno

So making it safe for the client not to challenge you or offend you, but to say let’s work together to understand what can be improved. And that’s ultimately when we talk about client experience, we’re talking about trying to engineer better outcomes. And those outcomes aren’t just in the final result. Outcomes happen, as I said earlier, with every touchpoint, Sometimes it’s, Oh my gosh, those forms that you’re asking me to go on to the website and fill out in that portal, they’re too complicated and difficult.

00:19:05:24 – 00:19:27:12

Mitch Reno

And the technology was cumbersome or or maybe it’s, gosh, whenever I try to call and get a hold of somebody, I always have to leave a message. I can never talk with a person. All of those small little things begin to add up into what people say, the relationship and the experience is.

00:19:27:14 – 00:19:36:18

David Ackert

Yeah, and those are all vulnerabilities that a competitor can leverage to switch the client over to another provider.

00:19:36:20 – 00:20:03:07

Mitch Reno

That’s exactly the truth. And I said at the beginning of the conversation, why would people want to focus on client experience? Well, if you’re committed to engineering something that’s better for your clients and your employees, imagine improving retention of your workforce. And then in the world of CPAs, there are a few firms that have an annual retention rate above 85%.

00:20:03:09 – 00:20:38:22

Mitch Reno

Yeah, a few firms. We were at 89% last year and I talked to many firms who were under 80% in their retention rate of employees. And then if you look at retention of clients, if you can improve retention of associates and retention of your client base and create better experiences and an ability to expand and broaden those relationships, you will impact the top and bottom line so fast within your organization, it will be hard to keep up.

00:20:38:24 – 00:21:09:00

David Ackert

That’s right. That’s absolutely right. Okay. So I have a question for you. You’ve gone, I imagine, many times through the process of interviewing associates, interviewing clients, asking them what I imagine is a set list of questions right there, a certain kind of go to question so you can get a baseline. And can you share with us maybe something that you were doing pretty well that you learned you could be doing better and what you did with that information?

00:21:09:02 – 00:21:52:00

Mitch Reno

We felt very good when we were began our process of a digital transformation project a number of years ago, about 2000. Yeah. Before before the pandemic, we had we started a project to do digital transformation. And I reached out to the digital transformation team and I said, Hey, guys, what if instead of trying to improve digital operations from an internal operational standpoint, what if we interviewed clients in Journey, mapped all the digital experience touchpoints that they have with our organization and figure out how we could make improvements based on their feedback.

00:21:52:02 – 00:22:15:07

Mitch Reno

And we did that and we went through a pretty exhaustive process of trying to listen to them map those ideas out, and we worked with them as a client focused group only, I think eight, eight different organizations, but they were committed to helping us. And through that process, we had always felt like, well, we probably do a nice job of onboarding our clients.

00:22:15:07 – 00:23:02:24

Mitch Reno

And we discovered we probably weren’t doing a great job of getting started with new clients. So we have completely redesigned from a human, from a process and from an IT technical digital approach, how we are onboarding our clients. We have an onboarding concierge now that is introduced at the beginning of the process. They go through a defined detailed workflow to make sure that the client and the service team, the employees are on the same page and everything’s being covered properly and they conclude the process of onboarding, bringing the client and the service team together to get the project started and to kick it off with some enthusiasm and excitement.

00:23:02:27 – 00:23:20:10

Mitch Reno

All of that is the beauty of the human experience, the digital experience, and that process experience of engineering, something that produces consistent, better results that before we listened to clients, we didn’t know we needed to do it right.

00:23:20:10 – 00:23:48:20

David Ackert

So in order to responsibly run and maintain a function at a firm as large as Raymond, how many times in a year do you need to run through the interview process? How many data points ultimately are you looking to collect to be able to say, Ah, here’s an area where the experience that we’re delivering is falling short of our vision?

00:23:48:22 – 00:24:14:29

Mitch Reno

You know, this is this is a I’m glad you asked that question because most people, after they have a conversation with me, they get to a point. They say, it’s so big, Mitch, you’re talking about everything here. I go back to them and I say I am. But if you start listening to your clients and your associates, you’re going to identify the painful points and the friction points.

00:24:15:01 – 00:24:46:28

Mitch Reno

You do that listening as often as you need to to be able to understand what the next thing is that you can improve. There’s no reason to be listening aggressively every 90 days if you’re not able to leverage and use that information and make appropriate improvements that are going to make a difference. Right. There’s we don’t need to invest in so much listening that we can’t respond to it.

00:24:47:01 – 00:25:09:03

Mitch Reno

If we could do just enough to figure out what are a couple of things that clearly these folks say would make a big difference in their experience in working with us. And if we change those things, it’s going to be better for them. And then let’s talk with them again and figure out what are the next few things that we need to work on and improve content.

00:25:09:03 – 00:25:19:14

David Ackert

So it’s really embarking on continuous process improvement as informed by inputs from the clients and internally as well.

00:25:19:16 – 00:25:51:06

Mitch Reno

It is. But I will tell you this, David, I do recommend all professional service firms on an annual basis, do a relationship survey to assess on an overall basis what’s the satisfaction level. NPS is a likelihood to buy again or refer? Yeah, so it’s important to ask those types of questions. Ease of doing business. I like to ask questions about what clients priorities are for the coming year so that we understand those and can be responsive to them.

00:25:51:09 – 00:26:28:23

Mitch Reno

So I think it’s important to do that. I think it’s important to do personal interviews with your top clients. And the third thing I would say is I think it’s important to do some focus groups and do some of this journey mapping to say, Well, tell me what it was like to hire us. Tell me what it was like to go through your last audit with us and to really listen and map those things out, those three different activities, the overall survey listening, the individual interviews that can be done with top clients, and then the focus groups that really start to dig into sort of different segments of your business and how you need to

00:26:28:23 – 00:26:49:15

Mitch Reno

improve with particular industries or service lines and that type of thing. I think those three combinations can really lead you down a really solid path of improving the experience and more importantly, the reason that any business owner would want to do it is to make more money at the top and bottom lines.

00:26:49:17 – 00:27:16:13

David Ackert

Right. May I ask you one final question here, which is I’m very familiar with NPS scoring and recognize that that’s a great way to create a quantifiable measurement of where things stand and how we can improve and trend upward over time. Are there any other quantifiable numbers that you look to capture from this, or is a lot of it really anecdotal and you’re just kind of getting your arm and arms around themes that are emerging from the interviews?

00:27:16:16 – 00:27:57:09

Mitch Reno

You know, for me, I have always looked at the NPS score as as a sort of this trailing number that we want to understand and manage to, I think, more and more professional service organizations, be to be businesses are going to have to look at ease of doing business. We’re going to have to do that because user experience on the consumer side, we are used to that world of Amazon and how I can pick my phone up and literally 90 seconds have something at my doorstep in two days that I want.

00:27:57:09 – 00:28:25:10

Mitch Reno

Our clients are looking at us saying, okay, and that’s the type of user experience I want. And so there are a lot of challenges when we look at these things of what we’re measuring. I also think it’s always good to measure what impacts NPS or satisfaction. So if you give us a five star rating or a nine NPS, why did you do that?

00:28:25:13 – 00:28:53:02

Mitch Reno

Yeah, was it because we were really accessible and responsive? Was it because we were proactive in an innovative? Was it because we had a great value that we delivered? Was it because the quality of our work was just incredible? Those criteria are unique to any individual business, so it’s probably not just the NPS score or the satisfaction score, but in fact asking the question, Why did you say that?

00:28:53:02 – 00:29:02:12

Mitch Reno

And figuring out what those criteria are, because those criteria are the ones that you have to act forward and behave on.

00:29:02:14 – 00:29:16:24

David Ackert

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well, Mitch, this has been a fascinating conversation. I so appreciate you sharing your expertise with us. A few war stories from the trenches of sex and learnings as well.

00:29:16:26 – 00:29:21:29

Mitch Reno

Oh, absolutely. David, Thank you for having me on the podcast and wish you the best of luck.

00:29:22:01 – 00:29:34:07

David Ackert

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