Back to the kitchen?

Understanding what is the core focus of individuals when they first start to engage with your business is fundamental in assessing how to interact with them, but it is only one part of the equation.

Without understanding how an individual thinks about things, processes information, makes decisions and how they feel during this process, the standard engagement techniques "taught" in financial services fall well short of the mark in the attempt to deliver a compelling customer experience.

The solution? More information. More information about the customer in regard to their experiences and decision making capabilities and approach. More information about what's important to them. More information about how they see the world. More information about how they see themselves and how they want to see themselves.

20 years ago, when we sat across the kitchen table with a customer, immersed in the evenings goings on, all of this information came at a rush. Trainers call this "rapport". What it is, is being human, being real, being social, being genuinely interested it what is going on about you so you can draw conclusions and confidently make statements about what is really important to someone. It's about knowing people.

With the kitchen table dialogue long gone, technically adept individuals engage clients with theory, spreadsheets, modelling tools and strategy explanations. These are decoded by the people we are wanting to engage as a demonstration of how much we know about the text and how little we know about people, about them.

So do we return to the kitchen table? Maybe. Better still why not apply the kitchen table techniques in an easily replicable solution and process that at it's core identifies how an individual thinks about things, processes information, makes decisions and how they feel during this process.

Maybe that's a questionnaire, an engagement process that's defined and adhered to, a way of doing things, a stated discovery interview. Those tools and methods are actually easy to design. What's really needed is a focus on the person sitting across from you and who they are as a person. The most exciting part about that is you might just learn something about you and them.