The Challenge
Maritz managed a global wealth management firm’s customer satisfaction research among their high net-worth wealth management customers since 2006. Given a new corporate objective of achieving a high-level of satisfaction among their customers, helping their Financial Advisors grow their business and improve performance, and linking that performance with Financial Advisor compensation, the client engaged Maritz to design a research and performance improvement program that would help them meet this objective.
Solution
Maritz recommended a quarterly approach to contacting the clients’ customers, giving the Firm and its Financial Advisors a regular read on performance.
Today, Maritz receives approximately 125,000 completed mail surveys over the course of the year. Reporting is disseminated through an interactive website hosted and developed by Maritz. This website provides the Advisors with a reporting portal enabling them to grow, retain, and acquire new business.
Additionally, the client uses these results as part of their overall Financial Advisor compensation. The design of the compensation program took into account several design parameters including, but not limited to:
- Measurements used – i.e., Satisfaction, Likelihood to recommend, etc.
- How measurements are combined – single measure, composite score, etc.
- Time period – current score vs. period-to-period score
- Level of compensation – all or nothing, or graduated scale
Since Maritz redesigned this program, a number of key business outcomes have been achieved:
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The questionnaire was redesigned and is now linked to Financial Advisor compensation
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A website was designed for the clients’ users and allows each Financial Advisor to view results and focus on areas of improvement
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“Offline” reporting and analysis is provided to study key drivers of satisfaction as well as customer ‘churn’
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The program has evolved from one focused initially on satisfaction results to one where Advisors and their Managers interact with results and use reports as an integral part of building their business