Success Story

Blue Chip Partners

Standing Out In A Crowd

Creating customer service that is unique in the eyes of the consumer is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s competitive environment. For successful enterprises, clients have to be the center of attention. That’s why forward-thinking companies such as Blue Chip Partners no longer solely focus on a strong foundation of customer service; they rely on delivering unparalleled customer service by continuously managing the customer experience.

Make no mistake about it, customer service is as important as ever, and delivering great customer service is one of the most visible methods for improving customer retention and driving more assets under management. But customer service is only a single component of the customer experience.

Customer service is generally limited to human interaction with the client: a phone call, an in-person meeting, or a personalized email. While human interaction is one of the most visible methods for improving client retention and increasing the rate of referrals, consumers are increasingly leveraging self-help tools via the Internet, such as web portals, frequently asked questions, and website content. In contrast, the customer experience is the sum of all touch points that starts with the first impression and extends throughout the entire customer life cycle.

For Blue Chip Partners, the customer experience for prospects and existing customers can begin on its newly enhanced website; people can find out about investment philosophies, learn about the team and its extensive qualifications, and sign in to a secure document vault to view important documents.

In most cases, the customer experience begins with a phone call. When an existing client contacts Blue Chip Partners by phone, he or she will speak directly to the advisor who is responsible for daily management of his or her portfolio. If the primary advisor is out of the office, the client can speak to a secondary advisor who is familiar with the portfolio and investment situation. Blue Chip Partners aims to anticipate and address every imaginable question and need of the customer. The result is an experience that—to the customer—seems effortless. But this type of experience doesn’t happen automatically; it requires planning and the right technology. And, as we all know, it’s often difficult to make something look easy.

Making the right investments

To help create this seamless experience and improve company communication, Blue Chip Partners recognized the benefits of CRM software. With the right CRM, the company can benefit from improved client satisfaction, better marketing insights, and increased customer loyalty and advocacy. When it came to CRM software, no vendor could match the integration features and efficiency of Advisor CRM, which is a highly customized version of Microsoft Dynamics® CRM for investment advisors.

Before making the switch to Advisor CRM, Blue Chip Partners chose Junxure® as its CRM provider, but the company quickly realized the additional investment associated with a locally installed CRM. Managing a local CRM was increasing IT overhead because it required the staff at Blue Chip Partners to install and update the CRM and back up the data each night. As a true software as a service (SaaS) solution, Advisor CRM provided the scalability that Blue Chip Partners was looking for. Because Advisor CRM is a web-based application, there’s no hardware or software to install or maintain. All data is securely backed up at Tamarac’s SAS 70 II compliant data centers, and the CRM is available at any time from any device with an Internet connection.

"One thing that really attracted us to Advisor CRM was the fact that it’s a web-based offering," recalls Daniel Seder, Advisor at Blue Chip Partners. "We wanted a CRM that didn’t require us to channel our resources into buying hardware or maintaining software. Advisor CRM gives us the flexibility to focus our resources on the needs of the business."

The ability to group clients and prospects based on related information was a key consideration for Blue Chip Partners. For a more personalized service, the company groups its customers into households and then tracks activity based on the groups. "We household all of our customers," says Cynthia Steinberg, Office Manager at Blue Chip Partners. "We looked at a few competitors, but they didn’t provide the same level of household functionality that Advisor CRM does."

Another key consideration for Blue Chip Partners was the capability to centrally capture and track responses to marketing campaigns. Advisor CRM provides marketing functionality that is easy to use and engineered to fit the needs of investment advisors. The company can create on-the-fly campaigns with the Quick Campaign Wizard and distribute the campaigns and communications instantly.

The user adoption

The success of the CRM relied upon devoted user adoption of the solution. With the integration between Advisor CRM and Microsoft Outlook®, users at Blue Chip Partners quickly became productive with the new tool. The high level of comfort with Outlook helped to drive user adoption and success.

Integration with Outlook means users spend less time continually switching between several disparate applications, which improves productivity and user adoption. With Advisor CRM’s integration with Outlook, users can send email to anyone in the CRM, and the conversation can be tracked on a message-by-message basis. This ability to track conversations greatly elevates the customer experience because users can reference the notes in the CRM for more personalized service. The seamless integration between Microsoft Outlook and Advisor CRM also means users have personalized email marketing capabilities and streamlined mail merge functionality.

"Our previous solution had several usability issues that interfered with our productivity," Cynthia recalls. "For example, you couldn’t open multiple windows at once, and there were so many open source fields that it was really difficult to organize data. The user interface and integration with Outlook makes Advisor CRM easy to work with."

Unlocking the full potential

Since deploying the Tamarac solution, Blue Chip Partners has strengthened its marketing efforts, boosted productivity, and enhanced service delivery to clients. By leveraging automated workflows, the company has reduced its reliance on manual processes for many of its core business functions.

The efficiency of Blue Chip Partners has also improved as a result of implementing Advisor CRM. Advisor CRM stores information on every prospect meeting, phone call, and email, and tracks where the potential client is in the sales cycle. The staff is confident and more productive now that key information from Advisor Rebalancing can be seen from directly within the CRM. By having key portfolio information at their fingertips, employees are able to resolve customer questions, issues and requests quickly for a high-quality customer experience. Overall, implementing Advisor CRM has greatly improved the customer experience as a result of having a complete picture of all customer touch points.

Blue Chip Partners is continuously evolving and discovering new and efficient ways to improve the customer experience. The company feels that it has only begun to leverage the powerful automation features of Advisor CRM that will automate many of its manual processes. It is also looking to take advantage of the marketing features of Advisor CRM that will help transform customer touch points into intelligent marketing opportunities.

"Advisor CRM has had a tremendous impact on the customer experience, but we’re always looking for ways to build upon our successes," says Cynthia. "As we continue to refine the customer experience and adapt to meet the needs of the market, we’re confident that Tamarac will give us the tools we need to succeed."