What is The 5 Star Mindset?

• It’s a way of thinking, not about awards or accolades.
• Never settling for good but always striving for excellence.
• Understanding how interactions make people feel.

Identifying The 5 Star Mindset in potential employees.

• Hire for attitude and not skill.
• Genuine passion for people trumps pre-existing skills.
• 5 star mindsets often exist in non-5 star environments.
• Affinity for KYC visible and used in customer interactions.

How to implement The 5 Star Mindset.

• Approach customers with genuine empathy.
• Recognise repeat custom and the power of personalisation.
• Take feedback seriously and translate into practical action.
• Own responses to queries or complaints. Don’t ‘pass the buck’.

What are the hallmarks of a bespoke client experience?

• Customer journey based on creating something for a client vs selling something to a client.
• A focus on personalisation and individual client needs vs applying a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
• Listening to understand who the client is and what they’re trying to achieve.
• Empowering clients to make educated purchasing decisions vs decisions driven solely by price.
• Never settling for good but always striving for excellence.

How is The 5 Star Mindset implemented at Kensington Parker?

• Being willing to assist clients with their jewellery needs, no matter how big, small, or different they may be.
• Engaging clients’ multiple times to ensure that they are totally happy with their decision before making a sale.
• Implementing strict product quality control and selection criteria based on client needs before presenting options.
• Educating clients about the value of the expertise that the team at Kensington Parker brings to the purchasing process.
• Targeting specific client personas to ensure brand fit and that their expectations are aligned, to ensure an excellent client experience.
• Building long-term relationships with clients by understanding their individual needs and helping them understand the choices available to them.

The alchemy of the perfect client experience.

• Ensure that you understand a client’s passions, interests and lifestyle to spark a ‘great idea’ together.
• Develop a bespoke plan and timeline, tailored to fulfilling each client’s individual ‘great idea’.
• Don’t replicate, create. The fulfillment of an individual client’s ‘great idea’ requires innovative thinking and a wild imagination.
• ‘The devil is in the detail’.

How can you ensure enjoyable client experiences?

• Never be satisfied with just meeting a client’s expectations, always strive to exceed them.
• Plan to the minutest of details but remain flexible to pivot in response to your client’s needs and desires.
• Remember the small, client-specific things that delight them.

Recruit for shared ethos and values to ensure exceptional customer experience.

• Team members must leverage their intimate customer knowledge to enable them to think like a client.
• Maintain a trusted network of specialists who can be called on to deliver expertise relevant to each individual client and enrich the unique offering your team provides.
• Ensure that your team is scalable and agile to ensure responsiveness to your client’s needs.
• Team members should resonate with your brand’s personality and authentically reflect it in their daily client interactions.
• Team members’ creativity trumps doing things the way they’ve always been done, but the goal is to always do everything ‘right the first time’.

Product vs Service

• Magical, world-class customer experience can only be realised through the perfect combination of superior products and impeccable service.

Blend psychology with client intelligence.

• Client intelligence is, effectively, data. Psychology helps us to make sense of data. Data that is filtered through human experience becomes intelligence and can be used to guide client-related solution decisions.
• Remember that clients are not all the same. Data, although similar for some individuals, should be filtered through each client’s personal experience to create personal context and nurture tailored solutions.
• Interrogate the impact that external forces may have on your client. Each client is affected by and reacts differently to a combination of external forces. You need to understand what these forces are and how your solution will reduce the negative impact of these on your client while amplifying the positive impact.

Keys to managing complexity.

• Understand what the outcome is and clearly articulate the strategy you will implement to achieve it.
• Determine the tactics that you will implement to achieve the strategic outcome. The tactics you use will be guided by your level of risk appetite.
• Be flexible. As more information becomes available you may need to modify or change some decisions to ensure that you stay on track and achieve the desired outcome.
• Reputational impact should be considered when making decisions. The impact of what you do will positively or negatively impact the reputations of all stakeholders.
• Be patient. In most cases, outcomes aren’t achieved overnight. Understanding the ‘bigger picture’ will help you to manage expectations.
• Trust is non-negotiable.

Integrity, the most important value.

• It is about doing the right thing at the right time.
• It is about putting your client’s needs above profit. Offering customers only what they need and not recommending things they don’t need.
• It is about actively building trust and offering confidentiality.
• It is about maintaining a trusted network of specialists who can be called on to deliver expertise relevant to each individual client and enrich the unique offering your team provides.
• It is about providing an excellent level of service always. The level of expertise and service provided should be unparalleled.

Values that drive the performance excellence.

• Strive to deliver at the highest level always.
• Inspire creativity through stakeholder wellbeing.
• Embrace diversity by being inclusive and welcoming ideas from people of all backgrounds.

4 Steps to achieving performance excellence.

• Collaborate with partners that inspire and empower you to consistently outperform yourself.
• Ensure that your team shares your team, or company, values and can engage openly and honestly.
• Understand that ‘the devil is in the detail’. Achieving performance excellence requires attention to detail.
• Don’t underestimate the power of your ‘instrument’. The quality of your tools has a direct impact on your performance.

The Stradivarius, unparalleled in performance excellence.

• Extremely responsive to the lightest touch, it delivers consistent and precise sound every time.
• With longer ‘f’ holes on its front, it can amplify the quality sound it produces.
• From the choice of wood to the varnish used to create the beautiful finish, the materials and recipes used to achieve quality sound can’t be comprised.
• A product of countless experiments with many shapes, materials and processes which resulted in a refined building technique over time.
• Played by only the very best musicians in the world.

How did you get into this line of business?

• Starting in fashion, styling and owning a high-end fancy dress shop, Olivia’s career path has been varied but always people centered.
• A decade ago, she was approached by ‘the mother ship’ of luxury matchmaking and asked to support efforts to grow their client base internationally.
• Traveling internationally for several years she met extraordinary people and gained an understanding of the nuances of different cultures.
• Subsequently she ran a horticulture focused social enterprise that supported disadvantaged young people and underrepresented communities in London.
• Exposed to a variety of different people, her work was all about people and ‘matchmaking’ differently, matching needs to solutions.
• While at the charity, she was asked by a friend to help him find a partner and, after a successful match, word spread and more people started seeking out her services.
• She then decided to set up Hamilton Rigg at the end of 2019.

Delivering the perfect client experience.

• It is a process, not instant. It’s about ensuring that a client understands the process and how their objectives will be met at the end of it.
• Compatibility and a trust relationship are key. Perfect client experience is a process that requires honest communication so that expectations can be understood and met.
• Once trust has been developed it is important to spend time getting to know your client and what they believe and value.

Values that ensure perfect client experience.

• Discretion creates the environment for honest communication and trust.
• Quality and quantity approach.
• Respect goes both ways. A client needs to respect your offering and ability to provide a perfect experience and you need to tailor your offering to match your client’s needs.

Tailoring solutions for clients.

• Focusing on a customer’s lifestyle and solution needs enables us to tailor solutions ranging from advice on current pieces in customer wardrobes that they would like to complement to making new garments in-house.
• Knowledge of different solution options and products means that our customers are guaranteed fit-for-purpose garment solutions.
• Garments and wardrobe solutions are bespoke and designed to fit each of our customers’ individual builds and lifestyles.
• Spending time getting to know our customers, wherever is most comfortable for them, helps us to advise on the best options from fabrics to buttons and buttonholes.

Understanding that every client is different.

• Every solution designed is bespoke, reflecting a customer’s individuality. Even if it is made from a fabric previously used, by the time details including the pocket and stitch detailing and colour of the name embroidery are chosen, our customer will receive a unique garment.
• Create opportunities for customers to express their individuality. We like to invite our clients to events where they can show off the bespoke garments that we’ve designed for them.
• We try to understand what our clients are trying to achieve, from once-off garments to wardrobes for a business trip, we use our understanding of fabrics etc. to provide appropriate solutions for them.

The ‘premium’ behind the wine.

• As a rule of thumb, when buying wine for ‘everyday’ consumption, it is worth paying a bit more per bottle. It costs, on average, £5 to produce and label one bottle of wine before it’s filled. Spending £10 – £20 on a bottle will ensure that the wine you purchase will be of immeasurably better quality.
• When paying between £1,000 – £10,000 for a bottle of wine, the rarer the wine the higher the premium. Collectors and investors are willing to pay large premiums for bottles of wine that are rare and sought after. Interestingly, just because a bottle of wine costs £10,000 it does not mean that the wine it contains is necessarily better than that contained in a £100 bottle.

Choosing the perfect pairing beyond price. 

• Don’t look solely at the price. When picking wine on a night out, people will often focus on finding a wine on the menu closest to their maximum price point. Just because it’s more expensive doesn’t mean that it will pair well with what you are eating or be as enjoyable to drink as a more affordable bottle.

Compiling a portfolio for a client.

• To build a bespoke portfolio an investor’s individual risk profile, target returns, investment time scale and levels of investment must be considered.
• Each portfolio is unique to each investor. The physical wine making up each bespoke portfolio is stored in bulk on behalf of the investor.

The importance of culture, value and ethos.

• Ensure that culture statements and values are defined and clearly communicated as key to any team environment.
• Encourage team members to be ‘hungry and humble’. It’s about being aggressive in the hunt for clients while caring for and serving those that you have, at the same time.
• Teamwork is a key. It’s about each individual and team doing their part to collaboratively build a world-class, customer experience ‘machine’.

Taking time to understand the needs of your client.

• Knowing your client well, gives you the edge when providing a bespoke service. Customer tastes, passions and hobbies are key elements that will enhance your client advisory efforts.
• Give customers access to various ways of interacting with you. Some clients seek in-person advice and interaction while other prefer to communicate and transact with you online.

Explain your history with Buckingham Palace.

A footman and under butler at Buckingham palace, Martin was employed by the royal household for a period of four years. During his tenure he worked with the finest silver and crystal, surrounded by the most exquisite furniture and works of art and met anybody and everybody in society, royalty notwithstanding.

His top 3 lessons learned in service and applied to his current role:

1. Ability to communicate with very important people (including the King of Spain).
2. First impressions and viewing clients as royalty.
3. Gaining a practical understanding of how to handle priceless objects and artefacts.

What is ‘White Glove Service’?

Technically, ‘White Glove’ service is the literal wearing of white gloves when handling delicate, often extremely valuable, objects.

The term is also used to describe offering the most excellent service paying attention to the smallest detail with the most care and attention that can possibly be given.

The hallmarks of ‘White Glove’ client service.

• View customers as royalty, regardless of who they are, and treat them with the utmost respect.
• Be personable and friendly. Being respectful doesn’t have to mean being stiff and stuffy.
• Get to know your customers so that you can anticipate their needs.
• Aim to always meet your clients’ expectations. They know what they want and like and you need to deliver only that, nothing more and nothing less.
• Customers notice everything so an eye for detail is vital. Strive for perfection.
• Always provide a consistent level of customer service.

How to build a relationship with your client.

• View clients as royalty, regardless of who they are, and treat them with the utmost respect.
• Invest time into getting to know your client and building rapport.
• Listen very carefully to what they say and learn to pick up on nuances and to ‘read between the lines’.
• Ensure that you deliver on their explicit and implicit expectations, nothing more and nothing less.