CASE STUDY — JULY 2024

Financial Services Firm

By interviewing 6 of the client’s existing customers, we uncovered 13 actionable opportunities and recommendations that paved a path for optimized operations and strategic growth, providing a clear blueprint to help them scale from $1M to $5M in annual revenue.

Process

Primary user knowledge share

The client shared traits of their existing customers to provide initial insights into the customers ED&S was hired to interview.

Business visioning

The client shared what they’re most proud of accomplishing in the last 5 years, their 5 year vision for the company and specific areas of the company ED&S was to focus the research on.

ED&S facilitated a brainstorming session to understand the client’s key business problems that captured the essence of any challenges the client had faced or overcome in the past and any foreseen roadblocks ahead.

Learning objectives

ED&S facilitated the creation of learning objectives stemming from the business problems. Together with the client, ED&S worked to turn the client’s business problems into learning objectives which later shaped the direction of the interviews and the study as a whole.

Crafting the interview script

ED&S crafted an interview script, using the business problems and learning objectives as a guide. The insights gleaned during the interviews later answered all of the questions the client had, which would both expedite their growth and prevent them from hitting roadblocks on their way to accomplishing their growth goals.

Choosing interviewees

ED&S worked with the client to identify their customers who represented a specific area of the business that they wanted to target, whose revenue had most significantly contributed to their growth up until that point. Choosing these customers ensured that the insights gleaned from the interviews would teach them everything they needed to know about those customers, how to better serve them and how to get more of them.

Interviews

ED&S conducted 6 one-hour interviews.

Delivery presentation

ED&S presented the client with comprehensive synthesized data from the interviews which included notable patterns in sentiment from their customers, a hypothetical ideal customer avatar (also known as a persona) and business opportunities and recommendations to inform next steps for the client.

All of the findings answered the pre-established learning objectives with the intension of solving the primary business problems ED&S helped the client craft. The client walked away over a dozen actionable next steps pointed at their goals and aspirations.

The client received the final presentation deck, all of the raw interview recordings and notes, and all other research related artifacts.

4 of the client’s 8 business problems and the associated learning objectives

BUSINESS PROBLEMS

  • Where are business owners finding their vendor partners?

  • What triggers a client to refer a vendor partner?

  • What do business owners look for in the human connection behind their vendor partner company?

  • What makes a client search for a new provider before checking with an existing vendor partner to see if they can fulfill the need?

CLIENT RECOMMENDATIONS

Example of how 3 of the 30+ findings translated into opportunities and recommendations

Finding 1

Customers were unaware of all the firm's services.

• The firm didn’t do a good job informing their customers of what services they offered or new services that they were providing.

• Some customers received services (HR support) that other customers wanted and weren’t aware the firm offered.

• Customers had needs that the firm may not fulfill that they could consider expanding into (e.g. inventory loans, defined benefits plans)

• Given the opportunity, customers were open about the services they may need (either now or somewhere down the line) (e.g. HR support, CFO services).

Opportunity

Capture additional business from users not speaking up about additional services they desire

Recommendation

Have complimentary quarterly meetings with customers to ask how the current services the firm was offering were working for the customer and probe areas where the firm could potentially offer additional help

Finding 2

Customers urged the firm to prioritize quality service and fix inefficiencies before pursuing growth.

• It was vital that the firm’s services did not decrease in quality as they grew. Most customers felt that the firm did a good job of this, but some were concerned that the firm would have a difficult time growing due to internal inefficiencies and a lack of being nimble, flexible and customer service oriented.

• Internal inefficiencies examples given included a lack of mistake ownership causing delays, the need for the firm’s employees to double and triple check each others’ work causing higher bills, and a lack of an Account Manager role requiring bookkeepers to be both customer support specialists and accounting services experts.

Opportunity

Improve internal inefficiencies

Recommendation

Implement new trainings with team members to reduce inefficiencies mentioned by customers

Look into adding an Account Manager to the team who could act as the liaison between the customers and their financial services expert - the Account Manager’s responsibility would be improving the firm/customer relationship

Finding 3

Customers initially chose the firm for its local presence, but post-pandemic, location lost its importance

• Pre-pandemic, customers prioritized local bookkeepers for in-person interactions and quick relationship building.

• Local expertise in state tax laws was seen as an advantage.

• Post-pandemic, remote meetings had become widely accepted, reducing the need for the firm to have a local presence.

• One customer expressed a comfort in continuing to work with the firm, even though the customer had moved out of state.

• One customer expressed being fine with not even knowing if the firm was locally based anymore.

Opportunity

Build awareness of remote capabilities

Recommendation

In a post-pandemic world, where the firm’s customers no longer prioritized a local bookkeeper, it was recommended that the firm should disassociate themselves from their current market by replacing the local photos and removing the local map on their website to appeal to a more broad service area with the firm’s address just in the footer

ED&S encouraged new copy to be added to the firm’s website that welcomed users nationwide, acknowledging that the firm can work with clients in many markets

Results

In total, there were 8 business problems and 11 learning objectives which drove the research. From the interviews, 30+ key findings were synthesized by ED&S which informed 13 opportunities and recommendations for the client to take action on.

Together, the recommendations formed a blueprint for the client to take their business from $1M to $5M in annual revenue.

The research was delivered in July of 2024, and the client has been actively working on making meaningful changes to their business by applying the learnings to their operations.

The client took two immediate steps in response to the research findings.

  1. Hire additional team members to help relieve financial services experts from customer service responsibilities

  2. Contract a design agency to build a new website which communicated more clearly the client’s ability to work with customers nationwide, and one that was transparent about all of the services they offered so current and future customers were fully informed of their offerings