The Art and Science of Client Relationships

Across all industries, data and analytics increasingly underpin how businesses serve their clients, offering insights that help meet their needs today and even anticipate their needs tomorrow. As a science builds around this, companies that leverage data wisely and with a focus on their clients will have a competitive advantage.

This science is now an essential management tool to enable growth – but the art of client relationships isn’t going away.  In fact, it’s growing in importance.

Meeting clients one-on-one is essential to bringing life to the growing amount of data available and deeply understanding what’s important. While each client is unique, I would like to share two of the learnings I’ve taken from client conversations:

• People remember the moment of truth in their relationship with you – with great clarity. It may be they needed help starting their business, or they were dealing with an unexpected family emergency. These are vivid moments – and people remember how they felt, what they were thinking and who helped them (or didn’t). What’s essential to understand is that some clients view their entire relationship with a company through the lens of this one moment of truth.
• Clients remember people. As I headed out to our bank’s Client Appreciation Day last week to meet clients in London, Ontario, I received a letter from a client with a 60+ year relationship with our bank. In it, he thanked our team for all they had done for him over the years, starting in his 20s when he earned his CA designation and was starting a business. What struck me about his letter is that he remembered vividly the names of the people who helped him (as far back as the 1950s) and recalled those interactions as being critical to helping him realize his ambitions in life.

The common thread in these learnings is that a significant part of any effort to build a client-focused business comes down to people and culture. Any interaction could be that moment of truth, and any person could be the one who’s name is recalled with gratitude years in the future.

You can’t manage for these specific moments – but you can establish a connected culture and a client-focused mindset that allows people to recognize them and act accordingly. That may be face-to-face, or increasingly, digitally.

Data enriched by the real stories of your clients is the most valuable kind. The science behind relationships will continue to underpin client focused strategies, but getting the art of relationships right – based on people and culture – is essential to long term success.