How Accounting Firms Decide to “Do CX”

?

Our company lost this ideal prospect twice before they became a perfect client. ?

This article details the dialog between CX Pilots (CX consultancy for accounting firms) and a large regional accounting firm in the US, trying to figure out how to approach CX. We were in talks to add a perfect client to the CX Pilots family. This is that story.???

It started with Alison, a young woman whom I had met at an AAM conference for accounting professionals in the marketing function. She attended a talk I was giving on Outcome-Oriented Customer Journey Mapping. She came up to the podium after my presentation and asked if I might be interested in doing that same talk at her company. This was a week before the pandemic locked us all down. I said, sure, let’s talk about where your company is on its client experience path and whether CX Pilots would be a good contributor to your specific mission. She worked at a large CPA firm with about 600 employees and a dozen offices.??

After a few weeks of back and forth, we agreed to do a screen share meeting with her boss, the Marketing Director. We could tell she was enthusiastic about engaging us but warned her boss was “pretty stoic.”???

The morning we were to meet, we got an email that five key people were not going to be in attendance. She said only she, her boss, the Marketing Director, and the CEO’s assistant would be there. This is common. Most CPA firm leadership, we’ve learned, are already doing 65 hours a week and a new initiative like CX feels like a lower priority.??

We kicked off the meeting sharply at 10:00 AM with context and gratitude and immediately went into the way CPA firms ought to approach CX in general, and client journey mapping, specifically.??Within five minutes, the Marketing Director interjected,

“Hey Steven, have you ever worked with a big accounting firm like ours in the past? Your language feels like you don’t know accounting firms or how we make money.”??

OUCH!

I responded in a way that I would later learn was interpreted as ‘arrogant’ and ‘dismissive.’? “Yes,” I responded. “Well, sort of. We have never worked with a firm as small as yours, but we have spent years working with Deloitte, and Ernst, and one of CX Pilots’ principals is both a KPMG and RSM McGladrey alum. We’ve been writing CX-related strategies for your sector for over a decade. We’re pretty comfortable with the predominant business model in accounting.”???

I recall her response, vividly, “Huh—well okay then.” Her tone was sarcastic and harsh.? I remember feeling like a real asshole for saying what I said next but never meant to be confrontational.??

After her comment, I said, “Anita, (not her real name) one of the biggest mistakes we see in your field is decision-makers benchmarking themselves exclusively against other accounting firms—which gives you an empty picture. We know from our research that accounting firms, along with law firms, have historically, and continue to this day, lagged in their pursuits to realize the full range of benefits CX can provide. We encourage you to examine how other professional services firms are capturing the benefits of an experience-led approach until your sector catches up.”??

The Worst CX Ever—I Was the Offender

At this point, the young woman who worked for the Marketing Director intervened and said, “Steven, can you just send us the presentation in PowerPoint or PDF, and we’ll take it from there? I am not sure we are ready, as a firm, to consider what your agency has to offer.??

There it was. The first real interaction was a disaster. I sat in the irony of being a client experience advisor who had just delivered the worst experience I could imagine. This firm was a perfect fit for CX Pilots. They were a regional leader, with between 500 – 1,000 employees, revenues north of $200 million and had a highly-educated CX advocate pushing for her firm to adopt experience-led principles. This is what CX Pilots calls an ideal client—a partnership we work hard to create and nurture. And I screwed it up.??

Or Was I?

Fast forward three months. It was the spring of 2020, the pandemic was raging, and everyone was working from home. I get an email from the Marketing Director asking if I can jump on a quick call. Of course, I immediately responded, and we set up a call for the following morning. This is roughly how it went:??

Anita: “Hey, Steven, thanks for taking my call. I meant to follow up with you earlier, but tax season is a really bad time for us to take up new pursuits. I wanted to thank you for connecting with Alison (not her real name) and sharing your company’s work on journey mapping. She is a highly respected employee and we have learned to listen to what she says. She claims CX Pilots is a leader in CX for firms like ours and I don’t doubt that. However, you must realize, we’ve been in business for over 50 years, and I personally felt like you treated us like confused and stupid little pilgrims on our last call. I know you probably didn’t intend for that to happen—I just want you to know that is how I interpreted it. That's what it felt like.”?

Steven: “My God, Anita. I am really sorry. You’re right on two fronts. First, I am guilty of characterizing your knowledge as less than because of the industry you’re in and I am sorry. Second, you’re right, in no way did I intend for it to be interpreted that way. I intended to validate research data in a way that serves as a wake-up call and persuade you to take it seriously. Admittedly, I struggle with accounting firms and law firms because there is so much undeniable potential that falls on deaf ears and it kinda drives me crazy over time. In any case, my approach lacked tact and empathy. Please know that I am deeply sorry.”?

Anita: “You’re cool, seriously, I just wanted you to have that feedback. Now, for the reason I wanted to reconnect. You hit a nerve. The CEO’s assistant, Helen (not her real name) gave your PowerPoint to our CEO who asked me to walk him through it. It scared the shit out of me because I didn’t know how to read your complex graphics and interpret your data, but I faked my way through it and his question to me was,

‘Do you think we need to do this CX program?’ I told him yes, that we did need to begin considering CX as a way to differentiate, prepare for our undeniable market consolidation, and to build stronger cultural ties, for our employees, internally. He agreed. So here we are. What do you think we need to do first?”?

Steven: “Wow, this is not what I thought this call was going to be about. That’s terrific. I think you need to do three things in this order. First, you need to hold space for your leadership to take it in. Everyone in firms like yours accumulates information differently and assesses its criticality differently. CX is critical. Your leadership will come at it from a dozen different angles and gauge its priority relative to other corporate initiatives without really knowing the value it can create. Then it will get deprioritized, back shelved and you’ll never get it off the ground. We do something called CX Value-Driver Planning designed exactly for this—to educate, stimulate passion in experience-led differentiation, and build consensus around your firm’s best path into and through CX. The reality is there is so much useless bullshit out there about CX is irrelevant to firms like yours. We are 100% focused on professional services firms like yours so we filter out all the extraneous crap and help you pinpoint what matters most right now in driving benefit from experience-led approaches.”??

“Second, your firm’s leadership needs to take the outcomes from the CX Value-Driver Planning workshop and define your firm’s unique point of view on CX. It will likely result in a mission-articulated approach to CX. Why your firm needs to do it, what it means for everyone, specifically, and what your new client experience orientation will yield. You want everyone in the firm to buy in and believe in it.”?

“Third, you need to establish your firm’s unique maturity level along all the dimensions of CX that matter most to your firm, and only your firm—not a generic assessment that will steer you in the wrong direction. Then you need an objective, independent assessment of where you are along those maturity dimensions, so you have the data to inform where you need to prioritize and resource energy into driving your unique, right-sized outcomes.”??

What is Customer Experience?

Anita: “I hear what you’re saying, and I somewhat agree. I guess I just don’t fully understand what CX is—or at least the way you are seeing it. On one hand, you talk about CX as if it’s a project then on the other hand, you make it sound like a business model. I guess I am confused about what CX really is. Explain CX in more relatable terms for me. I mean, I’m not an idiot but we don’t see CX the same, I can tell by the way you talk about it.”?

Steven: “Sure. And I am sorry I am again using terms that aren’t resonating. I am guilty of having been in the trenches of CX so long that I often forget others don’t geek at the same level sometimes. Ironically, I am not practicing what we preach about empathy for the client. My apologies.”??

Anita: “Yeah, it’s okay, just go full-on fundamentals with me. How would you describe CX to a middle school class?”?

Steven: “Perfect. I got you. I would say that CX is both a mindset that firms adopt to better empathize with their clients and a program of many smaller projects that helps firm employees understand and embrace everything they do from the client’s perspective—putting the client’s experience in front of their own at every turn. In practice, your accountants who work directly with clients should be asking themselves what the client is about to experience from this service I am providing to them. Is it being done in the context our client values, expects, and understands—or not?”??

CX is a Mindset

Anita: “Okay, what do you mean by mindset? How is CX a mindset?”???

Steven: “Sure. Let me share a real-life anecdote. Most professional services firms like yours are outstanding at providing technical expertise within services like tax and audit and a host of other CPA-related or business advisory services their clients pay them to do. In fact, they have become so good at them, and they have removed all inefficiencies from those processes that it almost becomes robotic. Yeah, sure, they have an alright relationship with the client but when the firm decides it needs to move toward cross-selling advisory services to an annual tax client, these accountants who have been doing their client’s SALT work and auditing for 15 years, freeze up. They aren’t salespeople and they don’t really feel comfortable telling their clients to buy more stuff that neither the firm accountant nor the client knows a lot about. However, there remains the mandate to upsell or cross-sell more advisory services. Your CEO probably talks about selling more of the firm, am I right?”??

“Okay, so there are a few decisions that need to be made. Either the staff accountant who has been with this client for over a decade, steps aside and lets another partner try to intervene and sell advisory services, or they learn more about it and sell those services to their client, themselves through the trusted relationship. The question is, how to get comfortable with that and how to do it, when is the right time to do it, what will the client think? How will they react? The staff accountant is sort of freezing up and wondering why in the hell he can’t just keep doing the client’s taxes and leave them alone. He's worrying about breaching trust, right? That, right there, is a mindset. The guy just wants to leave the poor client alone. He doesn’t know how the client is experiencing the firm but is assuming they just want to be left alone because his own view of the experience is that his client is not interested and wants to be left alone. He’s afraid of burdening the client. However, if you interview enough accountant clients and ask them why they left the firm, you’d see in plain data, the client left because the accountant didn’t understand them, or their business, and never really showed an interest or curiosity in getting to know their business in a wider context. It happens all the time. It boils down to the mindset the front-line, client-facing accountant had and how he lived (or didn’t live) the client-centric mindset.”?

Anita: “Yep. That very scenario is happening at our firm today. Exactly as you have laid it out. Now I get your comment a few months ago about how you've worked with all the larger firms. Makes sense. You know this market—I'm sorry I doubted you.”?

Steven: “No apology needed. I know. It’s happening to every accounting firm we talk to. I have personally interviewed a lot of these people and their clients on the other side of the table.”??

Anita: “Seriously? What are the clients saying?”??

What Clients Say About Their Accounting Firm Experiences?

Steven: “A whole bunch of things. The sum of it is, though, they are okay with learning about other services so long as they are relevant and can help them grow and remain compliant. In the case I laid out above, we talked to that very client and learned a handful of facts and sentiments that opened that accountant’s eyes.? For instance, when we asked to interview his client, he was adamantly against it. In fact, he said, ‘no one knows my client as well as I do. I know what he wants, and I make sure he gets it.’? What we found through the interview was the exact opposite. Once we earned the accountant’s confidence and showed him the exact question/interview script we were going to follow in talking to his client, only then did he reluctantly agree to it.”??

“The client, as it turns out, didn’t really like his accountant that much. He claimed it was simpler to remain with the firm than to go somewhere else because they’ve been doing our company’s ‘IRS and annual banking and insurance compliance stuff’ for over 10 years. The client used the term ‘captive’ to describe his relationship with the firm. He went into detail about a competitive pest control company he talked to and occasionally mentioned their growth was due in large part to their business advisory/accounting partner who was a ‘ninja.’ The client we were interviewing said, “My accountant is anything but a ninja. I’d say he’s more of a toad.” The client went on to say, my CPA firm doesn’t really know who we are or where we want to go. They only really have a snapshot of where we’ve been. He commented, “You know, it's like, how well can you get to know a founder by looking at him in the rear-view mirror for a few hours a year?”???

“We went on in that interview and asked, “How well are you aware of your accounting firm’s advisory services?” His response was painful to hear. He said, “I don’t even know what that means. I guess that is the stuff my competitors use from their accounting firm to edge me out of the suburbs where most of our growth should be coming from.”??

“We asked, “How receptive would you be to learning about relevant advisory services that would help your company grow and compete?” He replied, “Are you kidding me? A lot! A lot receptive! My guy at (accounting firm name excluded) wouldn’t know because he’s never brought it up. I mean, I guess he thinks I am too busy or something to not bring it up. I don’t know, I guess it’s incumbent upon me to ask. You’d think they would want to help me a bit more. I hope you aren’t going to tell him or his boss all this, I’d hate to hurt the old guy’s feelings. He does a thing for us, we need that thing done annually, other than that, they’re not terribly helpful. I guess I’d just say my accountant’s superpower isn’t growth, it’s just kept me out of trouble. I guess that’s worth something.”??

“Toward the end of the interview, we suggested on our call that this gentleman broach the subject of advisory services with his accountant to break the ice and begin capturing more of the services his CPA firm had to offer. Being cautious of overstepping our bounds and veering way off our interview script, we at CX Pilots, felt an obligation to mediate just enough to keep the relationship alive.”??

“But therein lies the mindset. The staff accountant had been doing this pest control company’s accounting work for 12 years. His perception of the relationship was the opposite of the client's perception, even though he was 100% sure he knew his client and further, knew what was best for his client. Neither he nor the firm’s other senior partners knew one of their top 20 clients was actually a flight risk who articulated his relationship with the firm as ‘captive.’”?

What CX Feels Like

“Firms that intentionally adopt CX, or a client experience mindset begin anew with every client relationship from a place of learning. They want to learn more about their client’s real, true, lived experiences at every interaction. They make space and take time to empathize with every step, interaction, feeling, and expectation their clients have. This mindset, when scaled throughout the entire firm then becomes viral. Everyone in the firm sees that everyone else is taking time for client feedback gathering and analysis, thoroughly mapping their client experiences with the firm, and finding spots where they can remove any tensions, and service friction, or new slightly more innovative ways to provide value to their clients. They move with authenticity and the intention to learn more and do better with every interaction with every client. The CX mindset is a willingness to suspend one’s presuppositions about their client and instead open themselves to a new preoccupation to provide their services in a way that the client feels truly valued and understood. Part of this mindset is to get accountants to think of sales—cross-selling, as an act of valued service.”??

Anita: “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I get the mindset of CX. To echo back to you what I think I heard—our firm’s CX mindset would be for our Executive Management Team to drive a top-down mentality that we all have to do better in serving our clients and stop thinking we already know everything our clients are thinking. Am I right?”??

In CX, Services Are Not Experiences

Steven: “Close. You’re getting there. There are a few things that I would add or change if you’ll permit me to be a tiny bit more pedantic or technical.”?

Anita: “Sure, of course. What am I missing?”???

Steven: “Well, your capture of what I said indicated that it was top-down and that it had to do with better servicing clients. I would try to persuade you that those two parts of it aren’t exactly right. It doesn’t have to start from the top-down, but it does need executive-level sponsorship for everyone in the middle, down, who interfaces with your clients to take it seriously. We see charismatic accountants taking the initiative immediately once they come out of our CX training sessions. I mean, they grasp it and run with it full speed, and it works.”?

“The other thing is that a powerful CX mindset isn’t preoccupied with service as much as it is focused on the experiences of clients. Service and experience are two completely different things. In fact, we’ve found that the principal reason so many firms struggle with CX is that they cannot separate the service they provide from the experience clients have with those provided services.”???

“Let me give you an example: you can receive good service and still have a poor overall experience. It happened to me last month. I had a plumber to my house to fix a toilet that wouldn’t quit running and a sink in our basement that stopped up whenever we used our dishwasher or disposal in the kitchen upstairs. In the final analysis, the plumber quickly and effectively fixed the two things I hired him to fix (the services I hired) but the guy was a jerk, an absolute disaster.”??

“He rubbed up against our foyer wall and spread a giant black stain all over the wall, tracked in mud, and talked on the phone the entire time he was doing his work laughing and swearing and unavailable to answer my questions. When he went back out to his truck, he exited our basement door which had just been replaced and pulled the new doorknob off the door, and then just left when he was done and emailed an invoice. He never asked if everything was good or if I was happy. I just looked outside, and he and his truck were gone. Turns out he did more than what I hired him to do for $180 less than the big national plumber. From a service standpoint both he and I knew the two problems were fixed at a discount, but the overall experience made sure I never, ever hired or contacted him or his company again. So technically, the service was done, however, my holistic experience with him, his company, and his brand was such that I would never recommend him or his company again. I am not loyal to him. He caused $275 in collateral damage by fixing what I needed fixing. Twenty minutes after his truck left my house, my next-door neighbor came over and asked me if I could share my experience with them because they too needed a plumber and noticed I had just hired one, so I told my neighbor I’d stay away from them—they were a disaster.”???

“The same basic essence happens in some accounting firms. Your outstanding staff accountants and associates perform the services, largely as expected, as they have several times in the past. Those are services that are required by your clients, performed by your staff, and in the minds of your clients, perish once consumed. The overall experience your clients have with your firm is generally so much broader than the services they hired your firm to perform, from your perspective. And when it comes to experience, it isn’t yours—it’s theirs and whatever perception they have of the total experience they had with your firm and its employees lives on long after the services they purchased are complete. They could have had a difficult time scheduling an appointment online, getting ahold of someone specific in the timeframe they desired, had a difficult time parking, waited too long in the lobby, or had subpar and lukewarm coffee while waiting. And once they were sitting with their accountant, they could have been asked too many questions they felt were irrelevant, or not enough questions they thought were necessary. They could have left wondering if they were in the best hands or not. On their way home they could have had a conversation with a friend who asked what they thought of their CPA firm, sharing how much they love theirs, and in the heat of the moment confided that the client didn’t really like them that much when compared to how their friend waxed on about how great alternatives might be.

There is a lot left to chance for many accounting firms. CX evaluates that chance and rewires the firm to design experiences that leave clients happier—removing chance from impeding loyalty.”???

“Now compound this with the consumer experiences you have with Amazon, FedEx, or even Dominoes or Chipotle. People are people and they no longer divide B2B experiences from B2C experiences. They just know what a good buying and service experience could be like. Let’s acknowledge that most service delivery mechanisms were designed in the last century and haven’t really felt the need to keep up. Well, that is all changing now.? People want every aspect of any end-to-end experience to be more fluid and flawless in total.”??

The Problem With NPS in Accounting Firms

Anita: “Oh my God, you are totally right. We are all running around with blinders because we won a service award back in 2008. We have the plaque on our wall which is such an embarrassment. It begs the question, what’s happened in the following 13 years with you people?”??

“Seriously, we are totally guilty of conflating the service with the experience. In fact, I’ll go you one further—because we believe we give legendary service, we unwittingly give ourselves permission to ignore the larger client experience. Do you see that in other firms?”?

Steven: “Oh man! You have no idea. I see that everywhere. When we work with firms, it is the single most common obstacle we face. Everyone believes their perception of the service they deliver is what creates affinity strong enough to keep clients and employees happy. It’s not. Not even close. We know this with 100% certainty.? The other thing is feedback measurement firms like Qualtrics, drive dangerous levels of false positives or false senses that everything is okay. Using NPS once a year or doing annual or even quarterly surveys asking the NPS question, ‘How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague, and why?’ isn’t telling you about the experience people have with your firm or its staff accountants and associates. It’s telling you that your client, potentially feeling captive and on the spot, isn’t having a poor enough experience to go to the trouble to bring it to your attention. It’s barely a sufficient metric to tell you whether your client is appeased.”??

Anita: “Crap, we do the NPS question once a year to about 30% of our clients and call it a day.”??

Steven: “I know. I would have guessed that. But you know what, you’re right in line with the vast majority of your peers.”??

Anita: “But we want to be and do so much more. We really are a terrific firm full of really great people who know their stuff really well. I’m serious, we’re a top-notch firm. I know because I’ve worked in many of them, and this is by far the best of them.”?????

What CX Can Accomplish for Accounting Firms

Steven: “I don’t doubt it for a second. However, do you have all the ideal clients and employees you want to have? Do you all get paid as much as you would like? Do your employees feel they have upward mobility? Do your clients fully believe you provide more value to them than any alternatives? Do any of your clients leave and go to other firms? Do any of your employees leave and go work for other firms? Are your clients writing powerful testimonials about their experience with you? Does everyone feel like they’re working for more than just a bi-weekly direct deposit? Are your people excited your firm is innovating at a rate that can balance the pressures of automation?? Are you seen as a tax and audit commodity or a must-have firm full of industry-leading wisdom to drive sustainable growth to every client through highly differentiated advisory services clients want to buy? Are you actively externalizing your firm’s competitive difference to new ideal clients who want to make sure they have a CPA partner who will provide a truly exemplary experience? Are you actively increasing the number of services per client account? Is everyone in your firm aware they are a net retention driver?”?

CX, Done Right, Touches All Areas of the Firm

Anita: “Okay, okay, okay, I get it. The answer to most of those is no, not yet. So those things you just laid out are things we can accomplish with CX? How? I don’t get it. I seriously thought CX was just client feedback loops. I mean, seriously, it’s in the name CX. CX or client experience is stuff you do to improve the experience of clients. Not employees or prospective clients. You’re talking about CX as a panacea of marketing, sales, HR, Finance, compensation, innovation, and the kitchen sink. C’mon. I mean you have to pick one thing and stick to it. CX cannot be everything—and if you say it is, I swear I am going to hang up on you.”??

Steven: “[laughing] I hear what you’re saying, trust me, I do. And I don’t want you to hang up the phone. But hear me out. When your firm starts to really, thoroughly, and deliberately focus on experience, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find an area of the firm it doesn’t touch.?I will give you one thing for sure. CX is a horrible name for what it is we do for a few reasons.”???

“First, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in our space selling CX consulting and doing a really good job at it. CX is merely a container word, or acronym, coined a long time ago that referenced the experience customers have with a product or service. And nearly all these CX consultants focus on table-stakes CX projects. I'll bet you 90% of them are retail or consumer-based CX and not services-based experience advisors like CX Pilots. We only work with services-based firms who need to win and protect six-figure, and seven-figure relationships.”?

“We started 20 years ago and focused exclusively on the experience paying clients had with services companies. In fact, our first CX transformation program was in 1999 with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”??

“But over time, we saw undeniable through-lines or connections between the experiences employees had with their employers as well as the experiences prospects had trying to buy products and services from brands. As every year passed, these connections kept screaming louder at us asking to be connected.”?

Anita: “Wait a minute, what do you mean the connections between employees, customers, and prospects kept screaming louder to be connected? What are you talking about?”?

Steven: “I don’t mean literally. I mean the more we studied the client experience in services-based firms, the more our eyes opened to the interconnectedness of it all—employees, clients, partners, and prospects. When we studied client feedback from annual surveys, we noted the frequency of comments about difficulty getting started (we call it the client onboarding journey) or even before that, the difficulty of researching why one firm was a better fit than another firm or specifics about what it would be like to work with them (we call it the buyer’s journey). Turns out that if you talk to your clients and ask them more imaginative questions about their total experience, they tell you about all of it. And the accounting firm clients we’ve talked to chose to recall how hard it was to trust firms initially—to put them on a short list, interview them, and ultimately hire them. Why? Turns out accounting firms don’t share the right information with their prospective clients in ways those prospects want to learn. There are palpable missed connections. Firms talk ambiguously about their craft in superlatives. They don’t talk about what it will be like to experience the firm when things get stressful. Prospects are wired to detect authenticity and identify BS.”?

“Also, on the flip side, if employees don’t already love the firm they work for or they’re merely phoning it in, so to speak, that comes through in the quality of the client relationship. Alternatively, if the employees feel authentically engaged in what they’re doing and they don’t have to wear a fake smile to deliver on a brand promise they don’t believe in, everything changes. Philosophically, it makes all the sense in the world. Your employees must love the firm before you can expect a client to. Right? And when your employees love the firm and believe in its purpose and mission, they are so much more likely to feel engaged in their work. When they feel more engaged in their work, they won’t only deliver a more thoughtful and valuable experience to the client, but they’ll think about how to make their work even more meaningful to themselves, their peers, their leadership, the clients, the prospects, their communities, and everyone else. It’s a chain of good faith that is nearly impossible to break. That’s called a mindset.”???

“One of CX Pilots’ clients in the architecture/engineering space was voted the #2 best architecture firm to work at in the US. Know how they achieved that? They understand the chain of good faith and they care deeply about every employee, first. Their culture is insanely powerful, and their president is a remarkably humble person who cares more about his team culture than his profits. While every other architecture firm in North America is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in recruiting, they have a mile-long waiting list of people that would drop everything, get paid less, and move to the middle of Iowa to work there.”???

“The impact CX has on the clients of that firm is undeniable. Because this firm focuses on its employee experience, its focus on the client experience is made simpler. That means we, as their CX consultant of record, were able to advise them for 15 times less than normal while they achieved every award in CX there is without really trying. Their clients love them more than most people love their service providers, they’re working with more ideal clients that share their values, they’re spending less to win better business and their marketing is now focusing on the experience as opposed to hyper-focused on their beautiful and award-winning architecture. It’s a virtuous cycle."

"But it was predicated on a big leap of faith from their president who bet the farm on a mindset.”??

Anita: “Hold on a sec, how did he do that?”???

Steven: “When he assumed his new role as president, he knew to make the experience the pivotal factor around which all other pieces would fall into place. I don’t know where his inspiration came from exactly. I do know there was a woman there, a really talented architect, who attended a CX conference and took some inspiration from that conference back home and started collecting client feedback and the ball started rolling from there. She remained doggedly devoted to capturing client sentiments to make the firm better and her president had enormous trust in her. It started there, with her.”??

“This firm’s president had a strong level of courage, faith, and patience. When he was deciding on this CX transformation, their books weren’t in a place where he could just casually embark on a new initiative. He was dead serious about going at it with all the gusto their firm could muster. They hired CX Pilots to train them on the fundamental tenets of CX but I believe they, as a firm, already understood it. We take very little credit for their outrageous success—it’s all of them and the decisions they chose to make and sustain. Once they made CX their #1 corporate objective, doubled down on employee engagement, and embedded CX into their culture, everyone snapped into place because they trusted their leadership and believed in the spirit of planning and delivering on the experience—not the service. The service was table stakes.”???

Anita: “Okay, so they hired CX Pilots to do what exactly? I mean what was the engagement specifically, just ‘do’ CX?”??

Steven: “[laughing] No, not just ‘do’ CX. We started with a CX Strategy. We set out to define how to focus on employee and client experience in a way that fits their firm. For them, it made the most sense to create a simple, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-follow 3x3 matrix.? On the horizontal axis we knew we wanted to set a) strategy, b) measurement, and c) sustainability or governance. And down the vertical axis, we knew we wanted to focus on; a) value from insight creation, b) team alignment around experiences, and c) context for client experience delivery.”??

“Once we co-designed and worked through the CX Strategy with firm leadership, everyone at the top was not only aware but they enjoyed significant creator energy in the effort. It was theirs from the beginning with our guidance, not an outside strategy from a consultant that was being forced on them.”??

How Firms New to CX Take the First Few Steps

Anita: “So you’re saying CX is strategy creation?”???

Steven: “Well, strategy is an important guiding force in CX for services firms. For example, you want to know that you are spending your precious resources, like people’s time, energy, and attention, your firm’s money, and your processes on the things that are going to be the right things—the things that will drive the most value to your employees, clients, and prospects, in that order.”??

“But CX strategy is only the beginning, it’s only the blueprint. Then you must execute that strategy. The strategy, if done well, is going to tell you precisely what you need to focus on, and what not to focus on.”??

Anita: “Okay, wait a sec. I remember you just telling me before that the first thing you recommended, we do is something called CX Value-Driver Planning workshops. Which is it—the CX Strategy or the CX Value-Driver Planning? You know what I mean, this is why CX is so confusing.”??

Steven: “No. Trust me—I get it. I know it can be confusing. My earlier recommendation still stands. We wouldn’t suggest you do the CX strategy first. I was just sharing what another firm chose to do first. They came to CX with a lot of forethought, preparation, and a tightly knit group of people who had educated themselves on CX and they were involved in collecting client feedback for a year. They did not need CX Value-Driver Planning. They were already there. They knew where the value was and how to capture it on all levels. They just needed a strategy and a road map to execute it all.”???

Anita: “Okay. I got it. So, if we were to do CX here, you’re positive we would start with CX Value Driver Planning workshops first, then lay out our articulation or firm’s point of view on CX as we would state it to the whole company, and third, set a maturity model in place and assess where we are on that maturity model so we know how bad certain areas are—where our teams would need to focus. Do I have that right?”??

Steven: “Yep. That is the prescription for you given my understanding of your leadership and culture.”??

Anita: “How do you build maturity models for us? I mean talk to me about what goes into that and then how do you measure whatever you need to measure? Is it a generic CX maturity model that you use for every company or is it unique to us, I don’t understand that at all.”??

Steven: “Great question."

"So, we need a unique baseline first and foremost. First, we need to know what we want CX to impact within your unique firm, not generically. To do that, we need to build a model to establish how we’ll help you chart growth on those dimensions that matter to your firm—and then design your firm’s unique pathway through it. If the CX Value Driver Planning workshop with your leadership team revealed that we need to focus on employee engagement, top-line revenue, a richer mix of ideal clients, and steady improvements in your bid/win ratio, we’d design a maturity model that shows us where we are today on each of those areas and where we want to be in the future."

"The maturity model will likely have four or five levels of increased growth for each area of improvement. Every quarter we’ll measure how our work is improving these dimensions and see how well the firm is maturing. It’s like a radar screen for growth along the dimensions that matter most to you.”???

Anita: “Okay, I get it. So, at this point, we’ve run our leadership team and CX folks through CX Pilots’ CX Value-Driver Planning workshop over two days. They come out of that workshop that you facilitate with a clearer idea of what our firm wants to get out of a CX program. Then we create a CX maturity model and assess where we are today to establish a baseline and determine what we need to do along all the improvement areas we chose from the CX Value Driver workshop. And we call that what, the CX assessment? Do I understand that correctly?”?

Steven: “Yes, with one caveat. Sometimes we recommend doing a slightly different and much broader assessment before going into the CX Value Driver Planning workshop. Here’s why. In these broader assessments, we’re asking scientifically designed questions that reveal things about your firm’s culture and client orientation, and we’re asking a broader group of people rather than just starting the dialog with your firm’s leadership.”??

“When we ask leadership about the firm culture, we almost always get a far rosier depiction than when we ask the exact same questions to the other 95% of people in the firm. Executives are rarely going to reveal or even know about some of the more deeply held sentiments of front-line employees. And this gap is important in the work we do. So, when we do these broader assessments, we’re measuring the 15 dimensions of your firm that need to be strengthened to support transformational CX. But we’re also unearthing insights about how employees feel about the firm’s ability to meet certain demands for meeting your clients in a way that is truly differentiated and powerful.”?

“Oftentimes, doing the CX Assessment prior to the CX Value Driver Planning is the best course of action, depending on your firm and its current sobriety around CX and change.”?

Anita: “Did you just say sobriety? What the hell are you talking about?”??

Steven: “Yes. What we mean by that is the willingness to sit and hold truth and reality to set forth real, meaningful progress. More than half the time, we help do all the work to uncover aspects of leadership and cultures that we know will make an axis shift toward client-centricity difficult. Let me give you one common example. Say we run into a pocket of skeptics who’re later in their career tenure and aren’t necessarily interested in funding an initiative like CX because it’s so close to their retirement and they’re more interested in sliding than what they perceive to be another initiative. We must acknowledge that stuff because it’s going to preclude a successful roll-out that impedes the precise growth we know the firm is interested in gaining. We see this quite often. And you know what, we can totally empathize with these guys. They’ve earnestly worked their asses off for decades, kept their eyes on the retirement prize, and know exactly how much they’re going to walk off with once they retire, and now someone comes in and wants to charge fees to change the rules that impact their twilight years and departure plan. I get it.”??

“But what about all the other people in the firm who’re going to be there for another 15 or 20 years? Should they accept whatever’s best for the retiring class or should they want a better horizon for the whole firm, its employees, clients, partners, and bottom line?? Acknowledging that a handful of people with powerful opinions don’t want to change is a real challenge we find almost everywhere. It takes a sober approach to this problem to confront it and deal in a way that benefits everyone. We know how to approach this challenge so these folks, later in their career can see the benefit when before all they saw was a threat.”??

“In fact, because we’re nerds about this stuff, we keep an extremely thorough database of these behaviors and can tell you a lot about what drives skeptic feelings and behaviors and what we do to address them.? That’s what we mean by ‘sobriety’.”??

Anita: “Wow, that’s really cool. We have a handful of those guys here and I couldn’t be more excited for you to meet them should we decide to work with your firm.”?

Steven: “We feel the same. You know, there is nothing more exciting than solving these problems, clearing the air, and letting strong cultures thrive to do their best work. It’s almost spiritual to us—as odd as that might sound.”??

Anita: “No, I totally get it and feel the same. Not sure how our leadership feels but I am picking up what you’re laying down. So, I tell you what. I have to tee this up for a conversation our CEO wants to have with his ELT, or that’s what we call the executive-level team. I have a meeting with them—actually, I am presenting what I am calling our first few steps into CX to them next Thursday. If I have questions to best prepare for that, do you mind if I call you?”?

Steven: “Would be our pleasure to help you out. I mean that.”???

Anita: “Thank you. You know I am sort of laughing inside right now because when we first chatted, I have to tell you, I thought you were a complete asshole. You know that show with Hugh Laurie where he’s a diagnostician whose character’s name is House?”??

Steven: “I already know what you’re going to say. I’ve heard that so many times.”??

Anita: “No, but it’s totally true. You came off initially as kind of a know-it-all or prickly erudite who didn’t know anything about our firm. Turns out, you’re pretty tame and knowledgeable. And you may just be what can help us get there. This is great stuff. And now, I really like you and what your company does.”?

“So, Steven, thank you for this hour-and-a-half discussion. It was really enlightening. We’re likely to go with the CX Assessment of our broader employee base, then take those findings into a more contextual CX Value Driver Planning session with our ELT and an extended team of leadership, probably a few PMs as well, then we’ll have the foundations to craft our CX Strategy and Road Map. That sound like the right plan for us—is that what I should be recommending to our ELT?”?

Steven: “Yep, I believe so. I feel strongly that is the right setup for your firm.”??

Anita: “Okay. Thanks again. The next email from me will likely be a conversation someone on our ELT will want to have with you. Is that cool? Oh, by the way, they’re going to ask you about price or fees and timelines and how much internal resource time it will cost the firm to do this so please be prepared to have that type of discussion with them depending on who you talk to.”???

Steven: “Of course. That’s a good plan and we’re already prepared for those discussions. Thank you, Anita. It was great to talk with you.”?

Anita: “You too, see you later, House!”??

And Just Like That, Dead in the Water, Once Again??

Two and a half weeks pass before we get a small and cryptic email from Anita’s boss, the CEO. It was a bit surprising, given the conversation I had just had two weeks prior with Anita. It read:??

Dear CS [sic] Pilot,?Thank you for taking the time to chat with Anita about our customer service. We have decided as a group to get this project completed ourselves. If we run into a snag down the road, will call you. Thanks again. Best of luck to you and your company.?-Tom??

?

Later that afternoon I received a text from Anita who I learned had been bcc’d on the email from her CEO to me that morning. It read: “Can I call you in the next 5 min? This is Anita, we spoke about CX a few weeks ago”??

On the call with Anita, she revealed a lot. I was not expecting this, but it made sense.???

Steven: “Hey, Anita. Wow, that was the world’s shortest soap opera. Entertaining, but a bit short. There was too little character development, and the plot didn’t make a ton of sense to me.”??

Anita: “Oh my God, you are too funny. Holy Shit. I mean, what in the name of the lord just happened?! I am sorry for whatever that was. I promise Tom’s email to you was completely different than where we all landed in the ELT meeting. I mean Tom was totally on board, nodding his head and saying we need to do this. And no one in the meeting disagreed with him. I honestly don’t know what happened or why he tanked like that.”??

Steven: “It’s okay. This is what it’s like when CX interacts with firm leadership in a vacuum.”???

Anita: “What do you mean, Dr. House?”???

Steven: “That’s funny. It means you went in and presented your best case with the information we shared, and they all nodded affirmatively then after the meeting, the CFO, the COO, the head of HR and someone else called Tom on their commutes and began to slowly share their concerns and poke holes in the plan. This is common. CX is powerful and when unleashed as an idea, tends to expose a lot.”??

Anita: “What do you mean it exposes a lot?”???

How Conflating Service with Experience Kills CX

Steven: “First, before we go into that, let’s talk about Tom’s email. I don’t know why but I accidentally memorized it. First, he opened with CS Pilots and not CX Pilots. Not a big deal whatsoever but it provides the first clue. He’s thinking of Customer Service—thus the CS instead of client experience which is CX. I’m curious Anita, do you all call this stuff customer service?”??

Anita: “By this stuff, do you mean CX?”??

Steven: “Yea. I mean how your firm sets out to learn more about their clients so they can systematically serve them better. Wait, do you call people who pay your fees customers or clients?”??

Anita: “Yes, we call it customer service and we call our customers, customers. Why, does that mean you’re going to tell me we’re doing that part wrong, too?”??

Steven: “No, not at all, I was just curious about cultural nomenclature. You call them whatever you call them. The bigger issue is that you call the act of improving the firm’s client experience, ‘customer service.’ There is a mighty big gap between service and experience. I suspect that is key in Tom’s new stance.”?

Anita: “Without going into a giant monologue on this, what do you mean about the gap between customer service and customer experience? I thought they were the same thing.”???

Steven: “Everyone does. You’re not alone. But, no, they aren’t the same thing. They’re two, totally different things, and conflating them is why Tom just tanked your plan.”??

Anita: “How do you mean. In what way?”??

Steven: “Your CEO took your information and suggestions along with his direct reports and you’re sort of telling me they all seemed to get it. Right?”??

Anita: “Yes. Completely. In fact, our head of HR explicitly stated that employee wellness was among her top objectives this year and next and this was the right time and plan to begin that work. The Operations guy, Terry said he was on board and felt this ought to be an increased area of focus. I mean, what the hell…everyone was on board.”??

Steven: “Two things. Customer service is central to what your firm has been providing since it started. No one on the ELT believes outside influences are better than internal and virtually every firm believes they can improve services.?"

"But services aren’t experiences—aren’t really what needs to improve. Services live inside experiences. By that, I mean, every service your firm offers and delivers is a fraction of a much larger experience a client has with your firm. They have a buyer’s experience which includes all the activities in becoming aware of their need for your firm’s offering, researching all the alternatives, outreach to every potential provider, and shortlisting tasks like internal meetings to determine the right fit criteria and how well each firm matches your criteria. And that’s just the buyer’s experience."

“Would you agree that your prospects perform those activities before they sign a contract with your firm?”??

Anita: “Yes, I think so, but it’s actually a lot more complicated than what you just said. There’s about 10 steps having to do with legal and contracts, bid, document transfer, and 10 other things.”?

Steven: “Exactly. Are those services you provide?”???

Anita: “No.”??

Steven: “Are they instead the experiences your prospective clients have?”??

Anita: “Yes. Oh. Shit. I see what you mean. There are a ton of activities prospects experience far before they become our customer. And I get it. Same applies to everything once they become our customer. They experience a lot more than our services. Our services are what make up their overall experience. Right?”?

Steven: “Bam! That’s it, right there, my friend. You nailed it! You have control over the services you provide but much less, if any, control over how the customer perceives that service delivery in the much larger context of their experience with your firm. Your leadership believes they have much more control over loyalty-creating outcomes than they really do.”?

Anita: “God dammit. Tom thinks we’re talking about service. He now believes you’re coming in to recommend how we rewire our services.”?

Steven: “Yep. Not to sound like an asshole again, Anita, but does he have any reason not to conflate them? He, like most every other CEO, sees the relationship in fewer dimensions than really exists. My guess is that he got an MBA in the 1980’s and learned about service delivery in a way that was taught to eliminate defects and waste and not to focus on how customers feel in a wider context of experience. CX was never taught until 2014 as far as we can trace it.”?

Anita: “Why didn’t you tell me about this difference and gap before I went in to talk about CX with the ELT? I mean, that seems like a pretty big deal, and we didn’t even talk about it. And look, it backfired on us. That’s kind of upsetting.”?

Steven: “I did. You may not have remembered. It was central to our 90-minute conversation a few weeks back. Nothing backfired. Yes, I wish I would have talked about that in more detail. The problem is that there are 100 other issues just as important as the service-experience gap that need to be addressed over time. Tom will come around. I can promise you. It won’t be tomorrow. This is exactly what the CX Assessment and CX Value Driver Planning workshop reveal. They expose important decision-makers to all major unknowns so they have a basis to strategize around them.”?

“What if I told you we were contacted by your largest regional competitor who wants to hire CX Pilots to improve their rate of regional client wins and differentiate based on client and employee experience?”?

Anita: “You’re not talking about [competing firm name omitted] are you? Because if you are, Tom would seriously lose his mind. Are you? Is it them?”?

Steven: “I’m sorry, I cannot tell you who we are talking to or what we’re talking about until we draft NDA’s and non-compete and solicitation clauses—but I can say, Tom will not be happy. And it’s not just because we’re talking to a potential competitor. We’re talking to most of the bigger firms about CX in one way or another. Tom will not be happy because CX is simply the new frontier upon which business, recruiting, referrals, revenue, and loyalty are won—and he isn’t even remotely aware of it. And once he reads about it in Harvard Business Review or Forbes will he realize he’s made a mistake.”??

“Every firm is moving in this direction. Some will do it correctly and make significant headway while others will not and experience non-productive false starts, and ultimately learn more difficult lessons over longer time horizons. We’ve had a front-row seat to this for over five years now in your industry alone.”?

Anita: “How do I tell Tom in way that doesn’t sound like I’m mad that dad won’t let me borrow the car?”??

Steven: “That’s funny. Uh, well you tell him that you just learned that your competition is two weeks from hiring CX Pilots to win more ideal clients in your region and engage employees in a culture that focuses more on experience than service. That will at least get him to ask you about the difference.”??

Anita: “If we get Tom to convince his lieutenants and we set up the first few stages with you, would CX Pilots sign an NDA and non-whatever you called it—compete thingy?”??

Steven: “I cannot share what private conversations are being had. I can tell you that I, personally, feel your firm is an ideal client fit for CX Pilots and I am more energized by speaking with you than I am with the vendor procurement liaison representing your competitor.”??

Anita: “Okay, I gotta run. Thank you for the 15-minute psychiatrist appointment on short notice, Dr. House. I didn’t mean to snap at you for not sharing the service-experience gap. You’re right, we did talk about that, I just forgot. This is my fault. Shit. Sorry about that. I think I have an idea about how to approach this with Tom. He’s a great guy and I know he listens to me most of the time. His ELT, on the other hand, I must watch those people, lord knows.? Goodbye, for now. I’ll give you an update when I have it.”??

?

That was a good call with Anita. She knew she had a new angle into Tom, her CEO, by focusing on the vast differences between service and experience. And she also had new information that we were in initial talks with a competitor whick felt very uncomfortable to mention.? I tried to caution Anita not to put too much stock into CX Pilots talking with other, competing firm because, at any one time, we’re in long, protracted talks with dozens of similar firms who’re all trying to figure out their best play in CX.???

?

Two days following Anita’s call, we get an email from Tom’s assistant into our [email protected] general website address. It reads:??

To whom it may concern,???

I am the administrative assistant to Mr. Tom [last name omitted] at [firm name omitted] and am reaching out on behalf of Mr. [name omitted] to set up a phone call this afternoon or tomorrow morning depending on your availability. As this is an escalated priority, Mr. [omitted] wanted me to also leave his cell # with you with a request to call as soon possible if you’re available before tomorrow or the following day. He can be reached at [omitted].?

Best regards and gratitude,???

Wow, I thought. That was awfully fast. To gauge urgency, I called Tom back immediately.??

?

Tom: “Yea, hello, this is Tom.”??

Steven: “Tom, this is Steven from CX Pilots, I just got an email from your staff about dropping you a line. How are you doing? Is this a good time?”??

Tom: “Jesus Christ, Keith, that was fast. I just finished sending that email to my assistant not more than 20 minutes ago. Thanks for calling. I sent you an email a while back about going it alone on the customer service project. Wait, are you Steven or are you Keith?”??

Steven: “Steven is my first name. Keith is my family’s last name. We’re Scottish; known for a lot of first names for last names. I’m doing well and yes; we try to be highly responsive and accessible. Too much irony for me to deal with if we actually sucked at client experience. And yes, I recall your email.”???

Tom: “Yea, well. Hey Steven, I don’t want to take up a lot of your time solving my firm’s problems when you’re not getting paid for it, but I wanted to clarify something on my end. There’s a woman I work with who runs most all our marketing and growth portfolio stuff that I absolutely adore. I mean we’d be screwed without this woman, that’s how goddamned important her role is over here. I think you’ve been talking to her.”???

“Look, I want you to know I’ve been working with her for a lot of years. In fact, I asked her to come here from the previous firm we both worked at, and behold, she did just that. I mean she is a committed and intelligent person. And if there is any respect left on the table for this one, I’d just as soon sweep it all up and put it in her—you know, I really respect her and her drive. I know she only wants the very best for all us old duffers.”???

“So, about a month ago, she called me on a Saturday morning and starts talking about CX. Which I know is your bag and all. She is telling me that it’s really important stuff and that we are actually risking a bunch of stuff by not focusing on it. And she just doesn’t say things like that unless it’s really serious. So, I am sitting there hearing sirens go off and wondering what she’s talking about.”???

Steven: “Yeah, Tom, Anita, and I have had a handful of conversations about CX and your industry and your firm, specifically. I presume you’re talking about Anita.”?

Tom: “Yeah. Oh, okay good, so, yeah, you two have become acquainted. Good. Well, yeah, Anita set up a meeting with my management team and she is presenting this plan of attack, and while it all sounded good, we hadn’t really budgeted anything for this, and my team and I did a lot of other side chatting about how we felt pretty strongly that we can do this on our own, so we made that decision. Well, you’d think we set Anita’s house on fire. I mean she was pissed. Never seen her really lit up like that. So, she goes on and tells me that we don’t really understand the differences between serving customers and tallying up how they feel about us and all. So, I gave her the floor after my team, and I decided to keep this work inside. She mentions you guys and how much opportunity our firm is leaving on the table and then she says you guys are the best and our cross-town rivals are gearing up to hire you.”??

“So, I am processing all this new information and thought I’d just give you a quick call and see what we’re missing. Is Anita right? You all signing a contract with [firm name omitted]?”??

Steven: “Well Tom, we aren’t signing any contracts this week that I know of, but I am never at liberty to discuss who our firm is talking to about their business. We wouldn’t talk about signing a contract with you to your cross-town rivals.”??

Tom: “Jesus, I wish you would. Scaring those clowns is a favorite pastime of mine! Joking of course. No, no, of course. I get it. Well, how much do you guys charge to do this kind of project?”?

Steven: “My conversation with Anita was very pointed to laying the proper foundations. And Tom, I am not trying to elude your fee question, but I am also trying to avoid an empty, ‘it depends’ answer. But the truth is it really does depend on where your firm is today and where it wants to go. My guess is that you don’t yet fully see CX or client experience as a mechanism to get you there, yet. I assure you, your competitors do, and they’re lining up to get this work underway in their firms. That’s just a reality.”??

Negotiating CX Initiatives With the CEO

“As for cost, we typically start out by saying you should first learn about what CX is why the leaders are moving their chips all in on CX and the laggards aren’t even at the table yet. By learning about CX, I spoke with Anita about CX Pilots’ CX Assessment and the CX Value-Driver Planning workshop as foundations you lay before you establish a CX Strategy and Roadmap.”???

"The CX Assessments generally run about $65,000 for a firm your size and reveal a lot about where your firm’s greatest opportunities are hiding. It’s essentially a combination of phone interviews and an online survey we ask you, your leadership team, managers, employees, and a handful of clients to participate in. Generally. it’s about 40-50 questions, takes about 15-20 minutes for an employee or client to fill out and leaves us with a lot of data about where to focus client- and employee-centric initiatives that can have the greatest impact.”???

“Once we’re done with that and reveal all the data and analysis to you and your management team, we then sit you all down in what we call a CX Value-Driver Planning workshop to help raise the collective CX knowledge threshold so you can make decisions about where to focus resources. In that workshop, we’ll lay out about 20 directions you can take CX: from increasing revenue per account, improving win rates, engaging employees, enhancing the client experience by doing outcome-oriented journey mapping, and so on. That workshop will be facilitated in such a way that you and your lieutenants will leave with added certainty about your best move and a playbook to coordinate your new CX priorities.”??

Tom: “No, Steven, I really like the sound of this, and you said that’s all $25,000, all in?”??

Steven: “The CX Assessment is around $65,000 for a firm your size and the CX Value-Driver Planning Workshop is about $35,000 - $45,000. So, all in on your first two major foundation-setting steps is just north of $100K.”???

Tom: “Gotcha. Gotcha. I understand. And when we’re done with that, we’ll know what we need to do. Am I right?”???

Steven: “Yes, you’ll have your firm’s MRI. Everything you need to know about the direction you need to take CX that is unique to your firm. But you won’t have the execution strategy in a way your Operations lead will need it laid out. The third step is creating your CX Strategy and Road Map. It’s important to see this in stages. The Assessment and the Value-Drivers tell you where you are and where you need to go. They won’t tell you how to organize to get there. That is what the CX Strategy does. The CX Strategy for your firm would likely be in the $85,000 range.”??

Tom: “Okay, now. I think we’re just now approaching the impossible. You’re talking about $180,000 or more to get marching orders and a map. That’s just way too rich for our blood, here. I doubt very much we’d sign on to do that. Because, think about it for a minute, we drop just a hair under $200 grand and we will be standing there with a plan. Is that what you’re telling me?”?

Steven: “How much is your average new client worth to the firm?”??

Tom: “What do you mean? You mean how much will they sign on for?”????

Steven: “I mean, over the course of that client’s relationship with your firm over the years, how much will they spend with you? I am talking about client lifetime value.”??

Tom: “I don’t know exactly but I could guess. I am sure that most clients only do one, or maybe two projects with us over the course of the year and they stay with us for 10-12 years. And, hell, I don’t know, maybe average $80,000 to $110,000 per project. That’s about average.”??

Steven: “So our fee to help you learn how to increase client lifetime value, win and keep more ideal clients, drive employee engagement deeper into your firm culture, and improve your client relationship longevity is roughly equal to two new clients in terms of lifetime fees.? If you won one new ideal client, eliminated churn from 10 percent of your existing clients, and made recommendations to help empower your employees, would you say it’s worth it?”?

Tom: “Well, if you put it that way, then I guess knowing how to do all that would probably be worth it. The problem, Steven, is that we haven’t paid an outside vendor that much since our CRM/ERP integration which, incidentally, was our firm’s worst nightmare.”??

Steven: “I get that. We’re doing that at CX Pilots as well and if I had any hair left, I’d be pulling it out.”??

Tom: “Here’s the deal, Steven. I feel like if we don’t do this, I am going to either piss off or lose Anita. I mean she isn’t showing any signs of relenting on CX. I mean that woman is determined to make this happen and I have to listen to her. The bottom line, she's smarter than most of us old bird dogs and I get that. But I ain’t going to make a unilateral decision to do this and my team is pretty keen about keeping this inside the firm.”??

Steven: “How close are they to retiring, may I ask?”??

Tom: “Yea, shit, you just nailed it on the head. I mean 80 percent of them are out in the next three years. We’ve been working hard on the succession stuff going on for two years now. It’s not looking as solid as I’d like it to be looking at this point in the game.”?

Steven: “And when they retire, you’re selling the firm?”??

Tom: “What?!”???

Steven: “When those people in leadership retire, you’re selling the firm?”??

Tom: “No. Why do you guess that? I am curious?”???

Steven: “It sounds to me like once they retire, your firm’s purpose will have been largely fulfilled. Their ideas about what is best for your firm are to hold while more aggressive acquiring firms are going all in on CX to win and keep more ideal business and focus on innovating into the 21st Century and ultimately to cement their leadership position by consolidating more, lesser aggressive targets. Am I wrong about that?”??

Tom: “Jesus, that’s a pretty harsh characterization. I see your point, but no, we aren’t selling, not yet anyway. We are just starting to see our better future. You are right about M&A though. It’s off the charts. You’re thinking is that if we don’t get with the program, we become a more attractive acquisition target because of our inaction on this, right?”??

Steven: “Tom, do you know what percent of acquiring firms are practicing CX management within their firms? All of them. That should tell us both something important.”???

Tom: “Okay, I am hearing $180,000 to get us to Strategy and Roadmap stage. At that point we will know precisely what we need to do and the best path for our firm to get there with schedules, priorities, measures, and all of that.? Let me ask you, how long will finishing these three steps take you guys?”??

Steven: “It doesn’t matter how long it takes us—what matters is how long it takes you. We can move only as fast as our clients can move and have done this exact roll-out about 50 times. It will take your people four weeks for the CX Assessment, three weeks for the CX Value-Driver Planning Workshop and about eight weeks to finalize the CX Strategy and Roadmap. So, altogether, it will take your firm 15 weeks or about four months.”???

“Importantly, Tom, it will take you and your ELT two hours for the first step, the Assessment, nine hours for the CX Value Driver Planning, and about twelve hours for the CX Strategy. That’s equivalent to two solid weeks of involvement in this foundational work to set the right pilings and establish sponsorship as needed from you and your team. It will take about 20 percent of Anita’s time over the next three months, and we would damn near require her to lead it for your firm. She’s brilliant, gets it, and is a respected thinker and executor—someone we’re 100 percent confident will make every aspect of this successful. In my talks with her, she clearly demonstrates the highest level of piercing curiosity, diligence, and understanding plus she’s terrific at reframing things that make everything clearer for you and your firm. She’s top-notch.”?

Tom: “Jesus Christ, Steven. You’re really killing me here. If you said, it was $75,000 and not a penny more no matter what, and it wasn’t going to take a full two weeks of my time in the next three months and 20 percent of Anita’s time, I’d give you the green light right now. What do you say, can you work on that price and the time of our most important people?”???

Steven: “Tom, you make sure the IRS doesn’t sneak up on your clients and that they are best situated to get what they need from their banks and all—I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, but just bear with me. How many of your clients tell you to shave $25,000 off a routine audit and annual tax filing? And if they did, what would you tell them?”?

Tom: “I get it. I get it. No, we don’t. I have to reconvene the ELT and talk them into this. I don’t make unilateral decisions this big. I’m bought in on Anita’s sense of imperative alone. I also know she has done her research or she wouldn’t be hitting me up this hard. She's never laid down the law to me like this before. If I didn't think she was serious about this, you and I wouldn't even be talking, to tell you the truth. Let me get back to you in the next week with our decision.”?

Steven: “You got it, Tom.”??

Tom: “Steven, you know I appreciate your energy. We think a lot alike. Let me ask a favor of you if you don’t mind. I’m 90 percent sure we can sign in the next few weeks. Can you please tell [competitive firm name] to go screw themselves?”??

Steven: “I cannot do that, but I do sense an alignment with you and certainly love the thought of helping Anita out so I can promise, I will press pause with them.”?

Tom: “I’ll make that worth your time, thank you. Great talking to you. I’ll get this legislated over here and you’ll hear back from Anita soon. Hey, Steven…thanks.”??

Steven: “You got it. Have a good week.”??????????

?

Exactly one week following my call with Tom, we get an email from Anita. It reads:??

?Steven,??

We’re all in. Thanks for whatever you said to Tom. It worked. Let’s set up a call in the next week to get started. Send me three of your client references soon so I can get that underway.??

Thanks??

This scenario is common for us. We share it to help you understand what it’s like to onboard CX in an accounting firm and how we talk about it transparently with CX leaders who understand the need to integrate CX into their firms.

We hope that you find some comfort in knowing how people ask questions and find answers about CX. If you would like to discuss CX with a firm willing to walk through the process, we’re here and ready for you.?[email protected]

Steven Keith is the founder and principal transformation advisor for accounting firms embracing CX. His writing can be found at cxpilots.com