Digitally Transforming Customer Engagement In Professional Services Businesses
Professional services businesses provide skills and expertise towards relevant outcomes for their clients. Traditionally, the business models have given primacy to "delivering" these skills, while client outcomes often remain secondary. Digital business technologies and today's market contexts have presented an opportunity for effective transformation, where client outcomes are in active focus for a professional services business, leading to not just better outcomes for the customers but also growth and increased influence for the firm. This is true for firms providing services to businesses or to individual clients.
Today's professional services customers expect more, and organisations can truly differentiate themselves from the competition by continually improving the client experience. Reliably delivering better outcomes for clients requires a much deeper understanding of the client's context and concerns, as well as their increased involvement. These have to couple with accountability towards results and also providing follow on support and continued interaction. In short, customer engagement becomes the core of a professional services business.
No longer the professional services industry can rely on mere personal interaction by a few account representatives. The interactions have broadened with multiple touchpoints, both in terms of people connected and the mediums. Online visibility, digital presence, social media, etc., all now are legitimate channels of experience delivery, and excelling at all of them—and being consistent across—is essential for the professional services firms. Professional service providers may vary by industry, but their mission remains the same: to deliver expertise, experience, and specific knowledge to clients in order to help them achieve their objectives. Clients that are engaged become brand advocates, provide important input, and contribute to service innovation.
Customer engagement must be a critical part of professional businesses, especially as today's services businesses need to respond rapidly to address changing customer needs and preferences. Delivery of services has to evolve with the customer and aid the same. Well-designed customer interactions make brands more desirable and provide deeper insights into existing and new customers.
Delivering superior client experience through the engagement cycle requires a cohesive approach leveraging consistent (and continuously updated) artifacts that are clearly relevant to the client. The key elements thus are client insights, provisioning relevant expertise, work alignment with outcomes, and insights-led service evolution. Digital approaches towards these are critical not just for delivering better but also for ensuring firm's survival in light of increased competition for both business and talent.
Digital initiatives that a professional services firm must consider thus, include online presence, which builds credibility in expertise, allowing more open interactions, involvement, and learning. Firms must also consider building platforms allowing for the building and sharing of expertise and the ability to use the available expertise in a smarter way. These must be augmented by automation which keeps teams accountable to client goals with work management (covering assignments, scheduling, tracking, etc.). These must create a unified data set which allows firms to quickly identify interventions needed, shifts in client preferences, and at the same time, keep the clients informed, interested, and involved.
Businesses that have evolved their client experience have a broader client interaction with many touchpoints, both in terms of people linked and channels. Online visibility, digital presence, social media, etc., are now legitimate channels of experience delivery, and excelling at all of them—and being consistent across—is essential for professional services firms. Firms are increasingly personalising their interactions by presenting customised messaging, offers, and products to each individual Clint (whether a business or an individual customer) based on information gleaned from the customer's profile, trends, service needs, feedback (on social media or otherwise), and so on.
Professional services used to be more about providing knowledge or experience; now, they care more about results. Providing meaningful outcomes is more about getting work done and being transparent about the status of the job. Digital approaches allow newer and more effective ways of interacting, delivering and reporting, which use a range of channels. Businesses are overhauling customer experience and building on a modern customer interaction cycle to deliver relevance in the new manner of managing professional services. Such undertaking starts with brand discovery and connection and continues with service, feedback, and loyalty. This fosters a trusted and high-value relationship between clients and firms.
*The author is Manish Godha, Founder & CEO at Advaiya
