Your Client's Experience Starts With You
We here at the Future of Financial Advice refer to the client's experience as CX. It's a combination of User Experience, User Interface, and Customer Experience (if you want to know more about all of that, check this out).
The Advisor (A) and the Client (C) are each continuously having their own experience (X) as a result of being a complex, open system. Mary wrote about that in April of 2021, and here's an excerpt:
We humans are systems-driven. We have systems—circulatory, skeletal, respiratory, and nervous systems, to name a few. And we are part of larger systems—families, teams, communities, and industries. The systems of the human body vary in how open or closed they are, meaning the degree to which they receive input from other systems. The whole project, though—the whole human—is an open system.
The Good News About Being An Open System
We humans are built for constant change. We lose billions of cells each day and gain billions of new ones. We go through developmental changes that include hormonal and physical changes. In addition to the changes programmed into our genetic code, we have the capacity to continuously reorganize ourselves based on the influence of external factors.
That capacity is the good news.
The Neutral News That Comes With It
The neutral news is the bit about continuously reorganizing. Depending on how much intention—not to mention genetic and situational luck has been bestowed upon you—results vary. In other words, you're reorganizing all the time, either accidentally (passively), or on purpose (with intention).
Translation: If you're not paying attention to what's happening with your mind and body and someone walks into the room who, say, is very upset, you can easily end up getting upset in your own way as a result. Your system can be negatively influenced by the introduction of another system, and the shape the interaction takes slips from your present control (as in, you'll behave in all sorts of unskillful ways). People usually call this being "reactive" or being "hijacked" although the reality is more complex (more on that here).
Likewise . . .
If you regularly track your own thoughts and feelings, and you are calm, clear, and compassionate, when your upset-client walks into your office, you feel the dysregulation of their nervous system. This is not to say you feel exactly what they're feeling; you feel that they're upset.
This is when the human nervous system shines
You can help your upset-client simply by being calm, clear, and compassionate (which cannot be faked, in the event you're wondering). Your way of being is a helper; it resources your upset-client and increases their felt sense of connection, trust, and safety.
This is all to say . . .
Your client's experience (CX) starts with you.
Regardless of the state someone is in when they walk into the room, jump onto the Zoom (and Read might be able to help you with that), or answer the phone, each interaction is an opportunity for you to take the lead and be an invitation for them to get grounded, clear, and calm.
An invitation? What am I doing to invite them?
It's not so much what you're doing, but how you're being. Your way of being springs from the state of your nervous system, and when your nervous system is resourced, meaning it has plenty of compassion, calm, and clarity, the nervous systems around it gravitate toward it for help. Others sense that you're a helper. They come to you for refuge. (In relational neuroscience we use the word integration to describe the well-being that invites others to us. Julie writes about it in her award-winning paper.)
You can learn to be a place of refuge for your clients.
Join us for a one-of-a-kind course, live, full of unique learning experiences, games, and practices. Stretch your mind, your body (literally—there will be movement!) and your way of being. Learn how to be aware and prepared . . . for anything . . . for the future.
