The role of the CFO has evolved in scope as organizations transform in a rapidly changing digital economy. Beyond a singular focus on the numbers, a progressive finance leader is committed to improving operations, capabilities, and overall client satisfaction. In fact, over the last several years, client experience has become a critical differentiator in a highly competitive environment. CFOs drive a client-centric culture that leads to meaningful and measurable outcomes.
Finance visionaries who embrace data analytics and adopt a client-first mindset can guide strategic decision-making that exceeds client expectations. As a result, CFOs can achieve higher organizational performance and become critical business partners to sales and delivery teams.
By putting clients at the center of everything they do, finance teams have the opportunity to create value and build trust.
1. Growing client relationships
The first step toward building a client-centric culture is understanding and defining each client’s needs by taking the time to understand their unique pain points. Clients expect personalized solutions that cater to their individual needs and preferences—enhancing the quality of feedback, providing insightful analysis of business performance, and cultivating relationships that create additional value.
Finance teams can achieve personalization by offering customized and flexible financial options that address multiple consumption models that reflect both OpEx and CapEx considerations.
Finance teams should also work closely with other departments, such as sales and client experience, to gather feedback and insights to identify areas to add value and remove obstacles. By attending quarterly business reviews, finance can better understand the client’s mood and address areas of concern. In addition, finance can help implement measurable performance indicators with deadlines that reflect a path to success.
Regardless of size, the CFO must put the client and their needs at the forefront of every decision. Whether it is a startup or a large corporation, the primary question before any business decision is: Will this benefit our clients? To answer this, you must learn who your clients are, their preferences, and how to provide the best possible service to meet their needs.
2. Be involved in assessing performance
By assessing a client’s performance, CFOs can identify areas where expectations are being met and where to focus efforts on improvement. While widely useful, this information is most valuable for informing strategic decisions to help achieve set objectives.
CFOs with a client-centric approach to financial functions can provide valuable direction that evaluates the fiscal implications of decisions made by other departments to ensure that economic health and success are always top of mind. For example, engineering a solution that is financially structured to meet the capital requirements of a unique client demonstrates your willingness to listen and be flexible.
Effective communication of those assessments is critical for building trust and fostering long-term relationships. Work with the account team members to document your understanding and assumptions and ensure the client agrees before implementing changes. They should also be able to impart financial information in a way that is easy to understand, avoiding technical jargon and using visuals where possible. This communication will help build confidence and trust in the organization’s financial performance.
Finance teams should work together to create an atmosphere that values feedback and is committed to delivering exceptional service to internal and external clients. This approach incorporates client input into decision-making and measures employee performance against key performance indicators.
Organizations must take a comprehensive approach to better understand their client’s business by understanding the macroeconomic, industry-specific drivers. This methodology will help identify patterns and allow teams to learn more about future needs through predictive analytics. The finance team should be involved in account planning, where they may lend a different perspective to the conversation based on a financial outlook. By doing so, they can find their most profitable and fastest-growing clients and determine how their needs are changing over time. This analysis requires a cross-company view, and the CFO is in the best position to lead this effort.
3. Enhancing operational delivery
Delivery should be frictionless and operate with the client’s needs in mind.
An overall positive client experience is critical to building lasting loyalty and retention. Finance’s functional teams can enhance a client’s perspective by streamlining processes and improving response times and self-service options. Doing so can make it easier for clients to interact with the organization and access the necessary detailed information.
Garnering a holistic view of a client’s preferences ensures that teams can organize resources appropriately to provide prompt and efficient service. This effort involves ensuring clients receive essential information regularly and on time. It may also require additional critical changes, such as adapting product lines to meet evolving client needs, understanding their financial abilities and limitations, and reconfiguring pricing models accordingly.
In summary, developing a client-centric culture requires a deep knowledge of individual needs and a commitment to exceptional service. Following the fundamentals outlined here, organizations can build a client-focused finance mentality, build trust, and foster long-term relationships that result in mutually beneficial success.
Shannon Mullen is responsible for accounting, finance, collections, accounts payable, sourcing functions, and the analytics and insights that drive overall client satisfaction. She served as Senior Vice President of Administrative Services from 2020 until 2022, when she became Chief Financial Officer.
