Abby Morton is the Director of Customer Success at Elements, a fintech software company, where she's played various vital roles, including Chief of Staff and Marketing and Partner Manager. Starting her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, Abby earned her CFP and devoted herself to advocating for positive employee experiences as a pathway to customer satisfaction. At Elements, she champions the importance of financial health through innovative technology, turning complex financial data into digestible and actionable metrics for advisors and clients. With a strong foundation in financial advising at Dentist Advisors, Abby brings her extensive experience and proactive mindset to every client interaction, ensuring the success of Elements' mission and the well-being of its stakeholders.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:10] Abby Morton discusses how Elements helps its clients assess their financial health
[6:23] The 12 financial metrics Elements uses to customize advice for today's diverse and evolving clients
[9:16] The importance of understanding a varied mix of assets and how Elements communication appeals to today's visual and tech-savvy consumers
[14:51] AI’s potential in enhancing customer experience
[20:43] Abby's belief in the correlation between employee happiness and customer satisfaction
[25:38] Metrics and indicators used to assess customer satisfaction within a Customer Success role
[33:02] How Abby leverages community and leadership to foster growth and personal development
In this episode…
Want to know how financial health can be more than just an emergency fund and a pension plan? What if there was a way to measure financial vitality through simple, understandable metrics? How does a FinTech company operate on the fine line between innovation and established wisdom to promote client well-being?
Certified Financial Planner Abby Morton dives into how Elements equips financial advisors with novel tools to distill complex financial concepts into tangible, easy-to-grasp data for clients. She emphasizes the value of treating employees well to ensure they deliver the best customer experience. She also discusses the potential of AI in customer interactions and the continuous effort to improve customer experiences by staying attuned to their evolving needs.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Abby Morton, Director of Customer Success at Elements, about the innovative ways of transforming financial planning. Abby discusses how Elements helps clients assess their financial health, its 12 financial metrics to provide tailored financial advice, the potential of AI in enhancing customer experience, and the correlation between employee happiness and customer satisfaction.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Streamlining Document Processes With Digital Vaults With Clifton Schaller" on The Customer Wins
"Revolutionizing Advisor-Client Interactions Through AI With Tom Rieman" on The Customer Wins
"[AI Series] AI Note-Taking for Financial Advisors With Daniel Yoo" on The Customer Wins
"Harnessing the Power of Online Ratings and Reviews With Whit Lanier" on The Customer Wins
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Quotable Moments:
"We're translating the complexities of finance into vital signs you can easily check – that's the Elements difference."
"Understanding your financial health is like attending a doctor's visit for your wallet."
"The best metric of customer success — a happy team creating happy experiences."
"AI doesn't replace your job; it amplifies your creative potential."
"Personal growth and professional success are two sides of the same coin."
Action Steps:
Embrace the vital signs methodology in personal finance: Abby Morton illustrates the effectiveness of Elements' financial vital signs by making financial planning simple and actionable, tailored to individual needs.
Utilize AI tools to enhance productivity: AI can assist in roles from customer service to development, streamlining processes, and improving efficiency.
Foster a positive company culture: Abby's insights on Elements' approach to employee engagement highlight how caring for employees directly impacts customer satisfaction.
Host regular team events to strengthen remote team dynamics: Abby’s experience with planning quarterly get-togethers at Elements reinforces the value of team building for aligning remote employees.
Manage with an open feedback loop: Abby discusses the importance of management by seeking mentorship and feedback, reflecting the need for leaders to continuously iterate and improve their approach.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win, and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Clifton Schaller of FutureVault, Tom Rieman of Practice Intel, Daniel Yoo of FinMate AI and Whit Lanier of Amplify Reviews. Today, I'm excited to speak with Abby Morton, the Director of Customer Success at Elements. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik!. Using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
All right, I'm excited to talk to Abby. Abby Morton is the Director of Customer Success at Elements and a financial advisor at Dentist Advisors. While at Elements, she has also held the roles of Chief of Staff, head of community and culture and marketing partner and manager. Abby started her career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst, and then eventually earned her CFP. It's hard. Abby is a strong advocate for fostering positive employee experiences while aiming for enhanced customer satisfaction. She believes that when a company prioritizes caring for its employees, customers will have a better experience when interacting with them. Well, our podcast is done. That was exactly what I wanted to hear. Abby, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Abby Morton 1:44
Thank you for having me. We're done. We don't need to say anything else that. Bio is great. I don't know who wrote it, but props to them.
Richard Walker 1:51
I actually hit on a cultural point that I love. So we'll come back to that. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I love to talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. Abby, I want to understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?
Abby Morton 2:10
Yeah, so as you mentioned, I am the Director of Customer Success at Elements. And Elements is basically a new FinTech software. So we've been around for about three years now, and really, like our ultimate goal and mission is think of when you go to the doctor right and you have certain vital signs, right, blood pressure, height, weight, all of those different vital signs to help you know if you're healthy, we are basically that for your financial life. So we help distill a person's financial life into 12 key financial vital signs to help them know how healthy they are, and if they're not, you know, then the area that they need it to improve on the advisor and the end client can work together to basically improve their financial health.
Richard Walker 2:56
That is awesome. Only three years I feel like you guys have done such a great job with your brand, because I thought you'd been around for six or eight years, but, oh, really, seriously, great. That's great. That is awesome. Okay, talk about this idea of health, because health is very subjective, I would think, how do you guys define it? How do you know somebody's quote, unquote, healthy?
Abby Morton 3:17
Yeah, I love this question. Great. Great segue. So there's a couple different ways to know if somebody's healthy, right? Especially in the financial world, you can be healthy compared to your peers. You can be healthy compared to just like industry-accepted standards, right? Everyone knows you should have an emergency fund, right? And your emergency fund should be three to six month of savings, right? Of cash on hand, right? And so there's a number of different ways you can measure how financially healthy somebody is, and we believe it's not just their net worth, right, or just their income, which is why we believe in all of these financial metrics that we've created. Now, these financial metrics are not new, right? It's about your liquidity and your savings and your debt, right?
Making for sure you have enough insurance coverage, making for sure your investments are managed appropriately. So the concepts that we've come up with that Elements are not some new found financial metrics, right? It's literally just helping you understand and know, like, how much of your income is going to your debt, how much of your income are you saving? Right? Those are two of our we call it savings rate and debt rate, right? Some other metrics that we love is, how much liquidity do you have on hand, and how many years could you live off of that liquidity? Right? That helps somebody know, right? If I have one year worth of liquidity, if I was to lose my job, like, oh, it'd be okay, because I have available liquidity for about one year, right? And so all of these metrics that we're helping it's just to help advisors know at a quick glance where this person needs to focus on.
I think the financial industry that we have today was meant for a different time, right? And as we as people, have evolved, we're much busy in our lives. We have a lot more going on. We can travel the world. We can take sabbaticals, right? There's so much more to a person's life now than I get hired at a place and I stay there for 30 years and I get my pension and I'm done, right? Like, that's how it used to be, and it's just not like that anymore. And so I think that Elements has been able to be a newfound tool, because it's gonna meet the needs of the clients and where they're at and the lives, the complex, crazy, exciting lives that our clients want to live today. That's what Elements is going to help these advisors do, is help them know every step along the way with where they are right now, how healthy they are, and if they're taking the right steps to then be okay in retirement, right?
Richard Walker 5:42
One of the things I love about what you said is you're focusing on the behavioral change of people. Think back to the 80s. Everybody read the newspaper, and they're looking at small, black-and-white print, and they're used to being on paper. So if you got a morning or Star Report on paper or a statement on paper, that was perfectly fine. Today, we're all icons. We all have our iPhones and our tablets, and we're pointing and clicking on really graphical things, and it's one of the things I think about Elements, because you guys are graphical in that way. And I'm just talking about your brand because I haven't actually had an elements report for myself.
Abby Morton 6:13
Yeah. Oh, we should change that. I'll get you one after this podcast.
Richard Walker 6:17
Perfect. This will help me so much with my wife, she thinks our liquidity should be all of our money.
Abby Morton 6:23
Well, and yeah, so it's just little things like that, right? Some spouses want literally every penny sitting in liquid assets, right? Others want to build up this huge real estate empire and put every dollar into real estate. But the problem with real estate is it's not that easy to liquidate, right? It's hard, it takes time, right? You can do it right. And so I love that the vital signs give you this good representation of at least where all of your assets sit and helping you know, oh, I need assets in every bucket, my retirement bucket, my liquid bucket, and even my real estate bucket, right? Maybe some people even own a business, right? What if they put every dollar into their business. Again, the same problem would be, what if something bad was to happen, like you need to have these other kind of buckets of money sitting there so that you can access them throughout your life.
And so it's things like that that are helping distill someone's finances into a very simple, easy pattern. Because I feel like so much of the tools that we have right now were built for the advisor, right? They were built so that an advisor could do this complex scenario analysis and model out all of these different scenarios that might potentially happen, and if all of these different 100 scenarios happen, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I still know you're going to be okay, but those are all assumptions, right? And it gets complex, and the clients are like, I lost you. Step one, like, I'm still confused. And so we want to just help a way, provide a way with these vital signs for a client to be like, oh, I get it. Like, this is my liquid bucket, and this is what liquid means, and this is my retirement bucket. And like, I need to have so much of my income going to savings. Right now I have 5% but I should have 10.
Okay, like, let's work on those steps to help me get there, right? It just so much more present and real. And we're not like putting all of these things into the system that don't make sense or that are, I shouldn't say, don't make sense, but that are assumptions, right? They're not their current reality. No one really knows if that's what's going to happen. So that's why I think it's so great.
Richard Walker 8:22
When I became an advisor, I started automating everything I could. And I've told the story before, but one of the things I built was a Monte Carlo simulator. I took statistics, I took my client portfolios, and I'd run it through 10,000 simulations of risk and performance, etc. And the crazy thing that I figured out was, when you told a client the straight line saved 10% a year or whatever. You had a 50/50 shot of making it. Monte Carlo showed that to me, like 5050 on a straight-line evaluation, but if you actually start increasing that and perfecting it.
So here's the thing that makes me think about all this. The pandemic changed a lot of stuff for us. It created food insecurities, job insecurities, money insecurities, all sorts of different things. And I'm kind of wondering if Elements grew out of that. Saying, my gosh, we need to change how we look at financial planning, because the road changed in front of us. The bridge went out in an unexpected way. Is that part of your Genesis story?
Abby Morton 9:16
It is not, but we did come about during that time, right? I like that connection there of realizing right during that time, we could say, your Monte Carlo simulation never modeled this right. Like there's things that you are never going to know, that are going to happen, that you cannot predict. So let's control the controllable, and let's manage what we know we can manage, and let's help that. So I definitely think it helped. The reason why I say it was not just a true correlation from the pandemic is because the Elements philosophy was actually built and tried in an RIA for over 10 years.
So in my bio, you mentioned that I worked previously at dentist advisors. And dentist advisors is where this methodology came out of. Reese Harper, who's the CEO of Elements, and was also the CEO of Dentist Advisors, basically created this like, ultimately, he was looking for one number. Like, give me one number that my client can know how financially healthy they are. And ultimately it turned out to be 12, because there's not really one exact number, right? And as we've mentioned, some people might need to focus more on savings or liquidity or investments or interest, like, there's different aspects to everyone's life. So it can't really be one number, but it's 12 today, right? And so that's what's exciting, is he built this. He tried it out with his dental clients for over 10 years.
We loved it. We tweaked it. We knew that clients loved this process and methodology, because they were signing up in droves to come and work with dentist advisors. And they understood. We talked about this philosophy on our podcast all the time. We would even say, like, you don't have to have tech. You could just do this on a spreadsheet for yourself. Like you don't have to even, like, we were educating the clients how to do it themselves. So that's why I'm saying like. It didn't fully come out of that, because we had done it for over 10 years, and then ultimately, during yes, in 2020, 2019, we were like, hey, other advisors could really use this tech. So let's build the tech behind the methodology that we had ultimately implemented.
Richard Walker 11:15
I think some of the best successes come from within the industry, and I love that. That's where you guys came from. So your product, you say it's for advisors, but clients actually do get a report right, and do they access it in real-time, or is it once a year? What's kind of the pattern you see advisors using your tool?
Abby Morton 11:32
Totally, so we sell our tech to financial advisors, and I think ultimately why we went to advisors and not in consumers, is because we believe, like financial planning, it can be complex, right? It can be super easy. And there's basic things that you need to do to, I think, put together a good financial plan. But ultimately, it's always nice to do, we call it like, do finances with a buddy, right? Like, have this buddy in your corner to help you do, to understand what you're doing, to validate what you're thinking you want to do, and just to make for sure you're on the right track. So that's why we went the advisor direction. We feel like, ultimately, to help the end consumer, the client of the advisor, feel good about their money is working with an advisor. So that's why we went that direction.
But yes, ultimately, the advisors will ask a client to onboard themselves, or the advisor will onboard the client whatever process they want, but then it's a mobile interface that the client and the advisor work together. They can understand what each of their scores are, and then the advisor can even set a specific target, right? Like I mentioned the savings rate example. Mr. Mrs. Client, you're at a 5% savings rate, but I really think we should work to get you to a 10% savings rate. And here are the things that we're going to do together to make for sure you work there. And with each of the 12 metrics, the advisor can do that. And so it feels like a bit of a gamification where I know I'm here and I know I want to be there, and these are the things that we're going to do together to get there right.
And so it's really you like, we built our tech to make for sure the end client, like, it makes sense to them. It's colorful, it's pretty designed, right? So they want to be engaged in it. So, yes, I would say it's, like, it's ultimately, we always have the client in the back of our mind, right? Like, what's going to make them happy? What's going to make them understand their finances the best?
Richard Walker 13:15
So are you seeing clients, the actual investors, using this tool? Like, in real-time, hey, I lost my job. Let's change the let's put that into the model and see how it impacts me. Or I have higher expenses this year, inflation, whatever, so my savings rates coming up. Do you see them proactively going in and changing the information to then see the impact of the score and figure it out? Or is it more reactive? The advisor is saying, hey, client, you told me this changed. Let's go look at the results now and see where you're at.
Abby Morton 13:42
Yeah, I would argue it's a little more reactive. I think the client could look at their element signs and start to think about, okay, this happened in my life. How could this potentially affect my Elements scores? But I definitely don't think the clients are going in and like changing and modifying anything. I think ultimately, we would love to have that one day, like, kind of a scenario analysis, right tool where clients could do that. Definitely not what we have built out today. But, yeah, it's definitely a way that I can have some peace of mind knowing that if I lost my job and I have a liquid term score of two years, oh, like, I'm going to be okay, like, I don't have to drastically change everything about my lifestyle.
Now, yes, if you lost your job, you likely would change some things about your lifestyle, but it's maybe that peace of mind that you're going to be okay. So definitely thinking they're reaching out to their advisor, talking to them about that change that has happened, and then working through it together with them.
Richard Walker 14:36
Yeah. Okay, so let me ask a question early on that I normally save to later. Let's talk a little bit about artificial intelligence, because maybe this plays into what you're seeing. What are you guys doing with artificial intelligence, and how do you see it impacting your customer experience?
Abby Morton 14:51
Yeah, we definitely. I mean, all of the people in our company, we love AI. We use it just internally, as employees to try to be more efficient at our jobs. Have lots of tips and tricks about how just to do it better with my role as a customers in a customer success role. In terms of how we plan to incorporate AI into our product, we have lots of ideas, and I think we're actually going to start building out some things this next quarter. So I don't know that I can, like, give any, like, large insights into exactly what we're building, but we've talked about, like, meetings. So software, right? Dictation software, right? I mean, ideally, Elements is the place where the advisor and the client go when they have a meeting, right? Because all their financials are there.
We have a one page plan, which is probably, like, one of our best features, where, literally, in one page, they can see their financial purpose, right? Their goals, their next steps, and then their element scores to just know, like, where they are at financially. And so how can like, we help the meeting software maybe fill out the one page plan. We have some other ideas of like, how can we just give people assessments, right so and consumers can enter in their data and instantly get an AI assessment? There's pluses and minuses to doing that. Some other ideas have been just building out some additional features. We actually have a feature that now today, it's like, oh, it looks like AI built that, but we actually built it before AI was a thing. And so like, oh, could we make that better?
It's basically email templates on each of the Elements scores to help an advisor, just send an email that's already written out to their clients, like, hey, I was reviewing this element. Hey, this is what I'm thinking about it. So I'm not really directly answering your question, because I'm like, we have so many different ideas of how AI can help, and we definitely believe in AI is the future, and how can we help move that forward? Just not really sure exactly like the direction we are going to go.
Richard Walker 16:42
It's a big question, actually, because there's so many opportunities and potential that AI presents. I mean, I run a tech company, so we have evaluated like, where do you spend your time and money, and what's going to deliver the most value? Is it efficiency? Is it new features? Is it something we've never thought of before? Is it more accuracy in some process? I mean, it's kind of crazy when you start thinking about it, but I'll tell you one thing that some clients have shared with me that they're doing, they're doing sentiment analysis, and to me that's a little bit scary, like they're looking at somebody's facial reactions to looking at the number like, oh, your risk profile, is this?
Your time horizon is this? Whatever it might be, and they're trying to assess, is that really, do they feel good about it, or don't they? Yeah, I can't advocate for it, but I find it super fascinating that an AI could actually watch somebody's reaction and try to gage the sentiment to see, does that correlate with what they feel or see in the information you're presenting to them.
Abby Morton 17:40
Yeah, no, totally, totally, I agree. And I was listening to an earlier episode that you did with somebody, and you talked about AI with them, and how AI is just really a tool to help you be more efficient and better at your jobs, right? How can we do less data entry, for example? How can we give AI the ideas that we have and help it maybe produce a good copy for whatever that idea is. We recently did just a marketing webinar with a lot of our customers, and we were talking about AI, and a lot of people in the chat were coming back, like, I'm gonna look like a phony, or AI can't just write everything for me, or it's gonna sound like AI. And a lot of hesitations to AI.
And I think what I've learned is that humans do a job really well. Like, we are very creative. We are very inventive. Like, we can come up with the ideas, right? And so how can we give our ideas to the AI? And the AI can just help spit it out in a better, maybe more robust, or maybe even more concise way, than, like I could naturally write it. And so I think that's an important aspect, and I love that you kind of felt that same sentiment in your previous episode, where AI is just going to help us do our jobs better, it's not going to replace our jobs. Am I reiterating that correctly?
Richard Walker 18:56
That's how I look at it. I see it as a tool. If you didn't learn Excel and Microsoft Word back in the 90s, you got left behind. Right? If you didn't learn to type fast, you got left behind. And today, it's no different with AI, if you don't learn how to use AI as part of your daily life in some manners. Now you can do that easily by buying tools that just incorporate AI and you don't know it because it just does it. Or you can go get a chatGPT, a cloud or something, to start leveraging it by prompting it. But nonetheless, I think we in our jobs, everybody, I've challenged every person in my company to do the same, figure out how AI can help you. And that's it, because you're not going to get replaced by AI. You're going to get replaced by people who learned AI better than you. It's just a tool.
Abby Morton 19:38
I like that. I think that's good framing and thinking about when you didn't know how to use Word and you didn't know how to type you're right, like you did get left behind. And so I found it also helpful playing around with AI, but then also having co-workers or a community of some sort, right that you can talk like, Hey, this is what I was trying in AI, and it didn't work. And what have you tried and sharing your tips, because it's so new, I feel like people are using it and playing around with it in different ways, and so we can definitely learn from each other. So I like that, like, we have this community of my coworkers all sharing how we use it and to be more efficient, because you're right, like, we will get left behind if we don't know how.
Richard Walker 20:15
Yeah, I think pretty soon you're going to see job descriptions that have the line, AI trained and x, or AI complementary skills or something, right? So true. Okay, so let's switch gears. I want to go back to your role, and one of the things in your bio, which I'm not going to reread, but we'll paraphrase it, is the belief that how you treat your employees is kind of how you treat your customers. Where does that stem from for you and explain how that manifests.
Abby Morton 20:43
So ,one of the awesome things about, so a tiny bit of a backstory, so I worked at Dentist Advisors. I got my CFP and started to become an advisor there. Elements, like I said, came from Dentist Advisors, so I didn't like apply for a new job at Elements. Just like, hey, this company is coming out of the other company, right? And would you like a position over here? Yes, I do, right. So I was probably employee, I don't know, five or six, right? One of the first employees Elements, and obviously one of the most important things is thinking about the culture of the company that you're wanting to build.
And I think I owe a big testament to Reese Harper, our CEO, like that has always been a big deal to him is like creating and establishing the right culture, and I've learned a lot through him throughout the years, of just being able to, like, sit in conflict with people, being able to disagree with people, and like working through those challenges, because then we're all going to come out better on the other end because of that, right? And so I've loved learning that from him, but I think, like understanding from him how important a culture is. We also then decided, like, I think actually, because of Covid, we're going to be a remote, basically virtual company, right? So we all work from home. Now, a lot of us sit in Utah just naturally we came from Dentist Advisors, which is also sitting in Utah. But culture is, I think, almost more important. We don't have a physical like office space to go to, right?
And so we've established quarterly get togethers where we fly everybody into Utah. And I actually get the pleasure of planning those activities and putting them together and being really creative about what do we do that can bring people together? And there's a committee of three of us, and we're always thinking about, how can we help the development team, talk to the sales team and talk to the CS team, right? Because I feel like when you do those types of activities, everyone just didn't gravitate to the people they know, right? The devs will talk to the devs, and the sales will talk to the sales, and you're not accomplishing the goal.
And so we've always been very intentional about the types of activities you plan and the things that we do when we get together and making for sure, it's almost like forced interaction in a way, right? Like we put always people on teams, and make for sure the teams are a very diverse mix of all the different organizations in our company. And I'm kind of telling the story just because I think it goes back to our culture, right, and who we are, and being able to know that like I'm here with like I feel like my friends, like my coworkers, right? Like I can rely on you, you can rely on me. We can trust each other, but we also can, like, work through hard challenges and hard problems.
It just goes back to like, if I love what I do and the people that I spend my hours with, day in and day out, like I'm going to be a better employee. I'm going to do a better job, and therefore, I'm going to build a better product for those you know that are receiving the end of my product. So, like it really just trickles down if your employees are happy.
Richard Walker 23:48
So I don't want to create a royal we here, but I identify with everything you just said. And essentially what you said are the four cultural tenets of my company, which is we love what we do, we must provide outstanding service, and that's to each other first and then to our customers. We must design products that are so easy to use that you don't need a user guide. And the fourth is, we do say we're going to do it accountability, it's trust, it's transparency, yeah? And so I asked this question, because we're seeing tremendous success with our customers, the loyalty, their happiness, their satisfaction, the scores that we get.
And I attribute it to the fact that we treat ourselves really, really well. And to hear you talk about that just is so validating, and I love it. And I really, really hope more companies can adopt that kind of internal ethos of we're going to treat each other really well, because we work together. We're on the same team, for crying out loud.
Abby Morton 24:43
Yeah, well, it feels like when you say it like that, right, like our end clients are going to be better because our employees are happy. It feels counterintuitive, right? It doesn't feel like it could work. But, I mean, I've learned from multiple different I know there's other right, companies that are out there doing the same thing, and it goes to show that, like the company overall thrives when the employees are happy.
Richard Walker 25:06
I have a simple kind of analogy to prove it in my own head, which is, if you want to stop using curse words and swearing out in public, you have to stop doing it in your house. You can't do it in one place and expect to not do it in the other places.
Abby Morton 25:22
True. I like that. That's a good one.
Richard Walker 25:24
Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you another question. Your business is about helping advisors understand the health of their clients, and for clients to understand their health. How do you know in customer success, how do you know the health of your customer? How do you track that?
Abby Morton 25:38
Yeah, this is a great question, and something I think that we're always evolving with as to how we really know that. Obviously we can track like time and app and how many clients they've added to the system. Those obviously are like the easiest indicators of knowing if they're happy and healthy, because obviously they're in the product a lot, and they're adding clients, so therefore they must be liking it right. Now, we've talked a lot about, okay, maybe, if they don't do that, right, there are some advisors who they really only have 10 clients right now, and maybe they've only added all 10.
So then their time and app maybe goes down and they're not adding clients. So it's like, is that a bad sign? So some other metrics we look at is, how many webinars do they attend? We do, like, office hours. And ask me anything we do kind of these community-type groups. Are they attending those? How active are they in those types of scenarios? We also send out kind of customer satisfaction surveys. How often are they answering those? So it's a big thing to try to figure out, right? And it is ever evolving as you're adding in new tech or new features that you're always kind of wanting to double check and make for sure that I love what you said about like, people know how to use our tool without a user guide, like they just can easily figure it out.
I think that's what we've really tried to accomplish with just design and helping it be easy and simple. So, yeah, I don't know that I have, like, one tool that I use that helps me figure that out, but it's ever-evolving. And I think something to always keep your mind on is making for sure the customer is happy and understanding kind of what those different breakpoints are.
Richard Walker 27:13
And then how do you communicate that to your team? Because you are on the front lines, and you may have other people working with you hearing this feedback from the customer, how do you then pull that back so everybody understands the impact of those feedbacks?
Abby Morton 27:25
Yeah, we have a couple dedicated Slack channels, one that's literally called customer wins, right? And then other ones that are just like general, like CS initiatives that we've put out and how well they've gone, right? When our webinar goes really well, when we have high attendance, right? I think tracking those metrics, tracking the attendance and registration of your webinars, same thing with all the other things you're doing, but then also, like you'll just hear from time to time, a good story from an advisor, and we try to be really cognizant about sharing that with the team, especially for our developers, that right, our developers are never talking to the client like they sit in this back Room, for example, right?
And code all day long. And so they love to know that what they're building is actually bringing about change, that people are loving it. And so I think that's why we've kind of built this culture of really communicating, like the values and the things that we're doing to the whole entire team.
Richard Walker 28:15
No, that's awesome. And I like that you're talking about all these different facets. Because, yeah, you can have NPS score, you can have CSAT score, you can have scores. Even Elements is 12 different scores, right? You can't distill it down to one thing. It's a bunch of things that you're doing. Abby, I'm kind of inspired by what you're saying. I want to share one thing that we're doing. And this comes from my director of customer success. She brought this to us, and that is, how do we take what we're hearing from a customer, good or bad, and deliver that to the product and engineering team.
So the way we accomplish that is anybody on the team who hears feedback, anybody can go to our JIRA idea board and log an idea ticket and they describe what the functionality request is, the bug, the problem, whatever it is, yeah, every Wednesday in the product meeting the product manager starts off with, let's review the idea board, and then we talk through what is the idea. We talk about the potential impact. Is it good or bad? Some things never make it. They get cut. Some things get put on hold. Some gets put right into the design phase, and then we take action on it. So I don't know.
Abby Morton 29:17
I love that. I mean, that's how you build a great company, right is having a way for your customers to provide feedback, and then a good method and process for you to be able to implement right, that same feedback. So I love that. What other things do you feel like you've learned from your customer director as to like tips or things that you feel like help your customers win? Because I'd love to learn from you.
Richard Walker 29:39
Well, I appreciate that. I'll share another one that she brought to us. It's our Slack channel called 911, what do you do when there's an emergency, an emergency as a customer has a problem? And now we have rules. We actually have this all written out in our Confluence wiki. We have the rules of what actually turns into a 911 issue. And one of the rules is, can two or more customers validate this? Can we replicate the problem? Because if one customer has an issue, it could be their network, could be any number of things. If two people are having it, we have an issue.
And what happens then is, all eyes go to 911, channel. Everybody in our company starts looking at it, and we then divide and conquer. So customer success person might say, I'll communicate with customers and keep them apprised. Another person says, I'll update the status health check website. Another person's like, I'm going to start researching the problem and recreate it. Another person's going to say, I'm solving the bug and looking at code. And we have a team interaction, whereas it used to be one person and guess who? Hello, I'm standing right here because who called? Who they going to call? I'm going to call a CEO and tell them this problem.
And I'm a technologist too. So I could solve some of those problems, but that's not effective. I can't take calls and solve problems, and today I don't do any of it. My team handles it, and they handle it beautifully. And then we track our time. We track how long it takes us to solve it, and we document it, and we give feedback to our customers. We actually show reports, incident reports, of what happened. When did it start? When did it stop? Etc. The 911 channel has been a game-changer for us.
Abby Morton 31:09
I like that. Well, and I like that because so I as our customer success director, I'm over like, our tickets, right? And any bugs or issues that come about, right? I'm kind of overseeing the person we have that's managing that. And we have had incidents like that. I mean, we call them incidents, right? And it's normally the support person and a couple members of the dev team who are all hands on deck. But I like what you're saying is it should almost be a little broader than that, right? How can someone from customer success, also be watching that, and if it needs to be communicated with clients, therefore you are and everyone's jumping in to kind of help, kind of alleviate or ease the pain, right? I think that's a great idea. Maybe we will be implementing that.
Richard Walker 31:56
And one of the things we learned recently was our customers need to understand that that's what we do, because they may not get the feedback immediately because we're researching. And they're like, are you like, are you listening to me? Do you know I have this problem? My customers are upset, hey? And we're like, yeah, there's 18 people working on this right now.
Abby Morton 32:11
Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean that goes back to something even in financial planning, that we talk a lot about, is advisors do all of this work for their clients, but oftentimes they never tell the client that they do all of that work. And so we just had an easy way to expose, hey, Mr. Mrs. Client, I checked out your savings rate today, and you're looking great, like good job. No, we don't need to meet I just want to let you know that, like, I got eyes on your financial health, and I know what's going on. I think that applies in so many different aspects of life, right? Like, literally, just even a bug ticket that comes across, like, people need to know that you have eyes on that, and that you're doing something about it.
Richard Walker 32:49
Abby, I just realized how long we're going and I love talking to you, so we should have a second episode and just talk about tactics. This is so much fun. I have to wrap up here, and I want to ask you another question. But before I do that, what's the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Abby Morton 33:02
Yeah. So me individually, LinkedIn is probably the easiest. Just Abby Morton in there on LinkedIn, I also am the co-host of our podcast at Elements, the podcast is called Elementality, basically, we talk to a financial advisors about anything they could potentially need to be successful in their businesses. So marketing challenges, how to get more clients right, how to use the elements framework, the methodology we bring outside people onto the podcast to talk about how they've created, the great companies they had. It's a really great podcast, a really great like introduction to understanding what Elements is. But then if you really want to deep dive, you can go to our website, getelements.com and check out exactly what we're doing there.
Richard Walker 33:43
Awesome. That's perfect. Yeah. All right. So here's my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?
Abby Morton 33:50
Yeah. So I honestly think the biggest person that has had an impact is our current President and COO Wade Anderson. And the reason why is So, Wade came into this company probably about 18 months, maybe two years ago, and I feel like, since he's come in, like we've all been rowing in the same direction. We all understand what we're doing. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the book Traction or the operating system, like the EOS model. Wade was really big into that. And I was actually trying to implement EOS Elements before Wade came.
I was doing it, not the best, but he came in and, like, implemented it. And like, have us all rowing in the same direction, but I love what you even said about, like, your leadership style, right? I am somewhat new to this customer success role and being a manager. And I've been a manager in the past, and, like, didn't have a great experience, right? And so I've been hesitant to, like, become a manager again, because managing people is hard, right? And understanding, yeah, they're messy. They have unique challenges. You have to talk to, it's like your children, right? Like you need to talk to one employee one way, and a different employee a different way. And there's lots of things that you need to know to, I think, be a good manager. And so I've not only like, watched Wade and how he's come into the company and had us all row in the same direction, but how he's communicated how he's handled problems. But then, as he said, hey, do you want to take this role and be a manager?
I said, yes, but only if, like, you help me along the way, right? And if I can have, you know, quarterly check-ins with you, just to make for sure, like I'm doing what I should be doing, and you can be my sounding board. I feel like we grow better as people when you have this community and you have like mentors that help you along the way. And so I think Wade is my more recent one that I really has, think, impacted me as a person, as a manager, but also has, like, helped our company as a whole, and there's a million more people I could put in there, but he's the one that I feel like more recently, has really impacted my career in a positive direction.
Richard Walker 35:53
I love that. So a friend of mine said that the growth of your company is a direct reflection of your personal growth as a leader. And one of the things that I think you've done super smart is to ask him for feedback and to essentially mentor you along the way, because that points to your personal growth, your willingness for that growth, and your awareness that you need others to give you that feedback so you can keep growing, that is such a hallmark of a great leader and a great manager, Abby, and I'm not just trying to give you a compliment. I truly believe that, and I encourage everybody. That's why I'm saying. I want everybody listening to this to realize, go ask for help, go ask for the feedback, get a mentor, get somebody to help you along the way, so that you can grow. Because everything you want to do is about your own growth.
Abby Morton 36:37
Totally, totally. No, I love it. Actually one interesting conversation I've had with Wade that really relates to what you said is, he's really big into reading self-help books, manager books, whatever you want to call them. And I have always been like, when I'm not working, like I want to be reading a fiction book and something that is just fun, and I enjoy it, right? And he said, I look at that as reading those types of books helped me as a husband, as a father, right? Like I look at it as how it can help me as an individual, grow and be better and then also, therefore, be a better manager and be a better employer, right? And so I love that framing how, like I can take things that I learn from Atomic Habits, for example, right? And that can apply to my personal life, but that can apply to my professional life as well. And so I thought that was really good shaping for me to hear of like I can grow myself as an individual, but then also as a manager.
Richard Walker 37:32
Yeah, I love it. Oh my gosh. We can keep talking. I got to wrap it up. I want to give a big thank you to Abby Morton, Director of Customer Success at Elements for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Abby's website at getelements.com and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com, where we make processing forms easy. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Abby, thank you so much for joining me today.
Abby Morton 38:00
Thank you.
Outro 38:02
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