BKD Wealth Advisors LLC has sought to retain its affluent clientele by improving its customer service with the help of the former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotels.
BKD Wealth Advisors President Jack Thurman said the Springfield-based wealth management firm, which surpassed $2 billion in assets under management in 2012, has twice received consulting services from a name synonymous with the luxury hotel industry: Horst Schulze. Thurman and top BKD Wealth executives took a chartered flight to Atlanta in 2010 and paid Schulze for his advice – at a clip of $10,000 per hour. Despite the hefty price, the experience was so valuable Thurman hired Schulze for a one-on-one conversation about customer service the following year.
“In March 2010, I hired him to speak for a couple hours. He unloads on us for four hours – I brought my leadership team down with me – and we got our money’s worth in the first hour,” Thurman said. “For the next three hours, all he did was give us icing on the cake.”
The results, Thurman said, have been significant. BKD Wealth Advisors, a division of Springfield-based national accounting firm BKD LLP, ranked No. 9 on Accounting Today’s 2012 Top Firms by AUM. BKD Wealth customers have indicated a 4.8 satisfaction rating in 2013 – out of 5 points possible – from 4.1 in 2007, based on its own surveys. The firm also boasts a 97 percent retention rating, and Thurman credits Schulze’s advice for the company’s renewed focus on client service.
“It’s not just happenstance, and it is not just by being friendly, but by having systemized approaches to hiring the right people, to orientating people to make sure the systems work right – and if they don’t, having a system to correct them – so that you have highly satisfied guests or clients,” Thurman said.
Schulze, who now leads Atlanta-based luxury-hotel management firm Capella Hotel Group, said he rarely provides consulting services, but he has in the past for automaker Lexus, as well as various law firms and retailers. He said a common mistake is that companies don’t have processes in place to meet customers’ expectations.
“Nothing comes by chance. Everything comes by design, including good service,” the German-born Schulze said by phone before boarding a flight to Asia for a hotel opening. “If you go to a bank, and it has a lousy teller, but the bank advertises service, then if you ask her what she knows about service, she says, ‘Nothing.’ She only learned about the functions of the teller, if you will. That’s a common thing in all industries. If you ask them what is their process to accomplish service, they have none. But they talk about it as important.
“If it is important, then you should have a process to accomplish it, shouldn’t you?”
With BKD, and to others he has given advice, he asks what the service expectations are so that processes can be built around delivering on those common expectations.
“When you buy a bottle of water, what do you expect?” he said. “You expect the bottle of water has no defect. You wouldn’t know – but if it was leaking, you would know. What else do you expect? You don’t want to wait for it, do you? And you want the people who give it to you to be nice to you. One, two, three – the company that sells the water should be prepared to do exactly that. It should have its bottles full, no leaks, and then the company should have systems so that you don’t have to wait for it. Then, the company should have systems so that the people who give it to you are nice to you. Those are the expectations that you have and that every human being has when they buy anything.
“What then causes the most satisfaction in you? The bottle of water that doesn’t leak? No. The fact that you don’t wait? No. The fact that people are nice to you? Yes. Isn’t that interesting?” he said.
Schulze said the next step is customizing service through a company’s processes that seek to better understand the needs of the individual.
“At Capella Hotels, we call every customer before they come to the hotel,” Schulze said. “We say, ‘You are coming to Washington, or Singapore, or wherever. We’re here for you. What can we do for you? Do you have a diet? Do you have allergies? Is there anything we can do for you here in Singapore?’”
Inspired by Schulze, BKD Wealth has implemented an internal service program dubbed W.A. Way, which stands for Wealth Adviser Way. The program’s standardized processes help advisers stay in tune with their clients – from knowing if clients made their charitable contributions for the year to whether they like ice in their drinks.
“We constantly have agenda prompts in our computerized system of the last thing we talked about and what the status of that is. So, we help our clients follow through on things that really don’t have anything to do with us, but have everything to do with taking care of the client to simplify their lives,” Thurman said. “We have our client-services associates, which is our administrative staff, stage a conference room ahead of time if a client is coming in. If a client is coming in at 9 a.m., they will make sure at 8:30 a.m. that there is a pad of paper, a pen, that the temperature is regulated in the room. If they like Diet Coke with no ice, there will be a Diet Coke with a glass.”
Stephanie Hein, assistant professor and interim head of the department of hospitality and restaurant administration at Missouri State University, said BKD Wealth selected the cream of the crop in the hospitality industry in working with the former leader of Ritz-Carlton.
“Ritz-Carlton was one of the first proponents in the hospitality industry of empowering its people,” Hein said. “It gives its employees the ability to solve problems on the ground. Instead of having to run a problem up the chain and have it solved from the top down, it gives its employees the power to solve a problem right then and there.”
She said many businesses could learn from what most hospitality representatives already know – customer service is king.
“It is a very sophisticated industry, and so I think we’ve figured out how to strike a balance between delivering excellent customer service and running profitable businesses.”[[In-content Ad]]
