Charlie: Welcome to this episode of the CMO Series Digital Masterclass. In today's episode, we'll explore how to seamlessly integrate customer experience into professional services website projects to ensure optimal outcomes for your clients. We're joined by two industry experts, Gareth Osborne, the Managing Director at MRM, and John Riley, their Head of Strategy. Together, they'll unpack the factors that can make or break a project, highlighting the importance of client experience. We'll discuss how firms can recognize this need early on. We'll also dive into the practical frameworks and techniques to align website projects with long-term business goals. So if you're about to start a website project, this episode is for you. And let's dive straight in. So welcome, Gareth and John. How are you doing today?

Gareth: Good, thank you. 

John: Yeah, very well. Thank you. 

Charlie: Great. Well, it's great to have you on. Thank you for making the time. To kick us off, Gareth, can you start off by explaining what the biggest considerations are for firms embarking on a website project and what they should keep in mind to ensure that the website delivers a seamless outcome for their clients? And I guess also where you often see firms perhaps going wrong?

Gareth: Certainly. Thanks to Passle and Charlotte for having us first off. It’s nice to meet everyone listening. I think there are a lot of common bear traps that people tend to fall into when considering a firms website and digital experience. I think my first watch out, and as a previous CTO, this is a dear one to me, but maybe don't start with technology. I think it's all too easy to pick a platform and pick a technical solution and then try and build off the back of that. I think fundamentally the best client experiences and customer experiences are those that start with just that. They start with a real clear insight and understanding of customer needs and motivations. I think the more end users you can meet be they career seekers be they people attending your events and registering for webinars and that sort of thing through to people actually buying your services the better and that needs to be a spectrum across the business and across the various practice areas that exist within the firm so be customer first build up that insight and that repository of information is super important.

I think that the second point really is to really understand the outcomes and the objectives that you're driving toward it's fundamental that the firm and the business has an idea of why it's recreating a new experience or transforming experience. It can't just be because software's end of life or the next competitor has done something new that we're not doing. Try and baseline measurement, try and have some actual measurable outcomes that the team's striving towards, and then try and ultimately set your strategy towards that. So align, I guess, like desirability from a customer experience perspective with viability from a business value perspective and then layering feasibility from a platform and technology perspective. The best projects start with a real customer need versus an ability for a piece of software to do something, I guess. It's very much about focusing on that big picture piece and then about having a product design, product development mindset to drive it forwards within the firm. So that's less talking about requirements and more talking about value and less sort of software-led. I think in the pitfalls and where things go wrong, it's often around change management. It's often around how the professional teams within the business are consulted, like how partners are involved in the process. So we see success in professional services by creating change boards, by creating doing groups that involve business stakeholders who aren't necessarily asked for permission to proceed but are actually involved in co-creation are involved in setting the direction of of of specific pieces of the experience you know it actually goes into into design and the visual elements of it as well so I think they're the main sort of they're the main sort of things to watch out really is not be tech-led lean massively into what customers want link that to something which is measurable and then drive that measurability through good change management and a product mindset. John, any build there?

John: No, I mean, I think you pretty much captured it. I think one of the biggest pitfalls within professional services is sort of a stakeholder who hasn't been involved in the project, who's quite senior coming in, who hasn't been involved and throwing things for a loop. So I think the point you made around sort of involving the voice of the business and the context of delivering those outcomes that have been defined early and often is really, really critical.

Charlie: Great. Thank you both. Some really interesting insights there. And I think that's a great point that kind of don't pick a technology to start off with. It's about kind of understanding the customer needs and their motivations and really what the value is that you're looking to bring. And then, as you mentioned, that kind of change management piece across the firm and bringing stakeholders in on that journey is obviously key to success. So, John, I guess, kind of in your experience, at what point do firms tend to realize that they need to focus on broader client experience? And how can firms identify early on that CX should be a key focus within a project?

John: Yeah, no, it's a really great question. And I think just to challenge the premise slightly, I'm not sure all firms have gotten to the point where they realize that they should be thinking about that broader client experience. But we're definitely passionate about kind of pushing that agenda. I would say in our experience, there are kind of two main scenarios where the light bulb goes off. The first is, you know, you've actually invested a lot of money and resource into, you know, creating a new platform or updating your website or building a new site. And then someone asks the question, you know, what value have you delivered for the firm through this work? And then that then begins a conversation around, you know, oh, we're driving certain conversion and what does conversion look like in a professional services website? And how do we actually link those digital behaviors to what's happening offline, you know, where the contracts are actually getting signed and RFPs are being won? So I think in that case, that's when a digital team or marketing team is forced to really think holistically around how the website is not just, you know, getting good engagement, but actually shifting and changing the behavior of the various users coming to that platform. I think the other scenario that we see is often new leadership who come in with a mandate saying, hey, we want to be more client experience focused or, you know, we want to be more customer centric. And the tricky thing there is that, you know, there will oftentimes be quite vague mandates, a high-level kind of direction of travel without much direction around what that actually looks like.

And I think in those scenarios, really important for folks looking after digital to really be those drivers of change, right? Talking about how, you know, client experience is actually a lot of the responsibility of a lot of different functions that have to come together around sort of shared framework, shared tools, shared measures in order to actually drive that change holistically. I guess in terms of how we can kind of shift this and bring this client experience focus earlier on in the process, I think it goes back to something that Gareth was saying in the previous question around establishing outcomes to a really high level of fidelity early in a project. So not just, you know, the high-level vision statement and the ambitions and, you know, hey, we want the best professional services website, but actually saying, okay, what does that actually mean in terms of value delivery? What behaviors are we trying to change? What are the benchmarks that we want to realize? And I think really importantly, pushing beyond the engagement metrics that you can easily observe within the digital ecosystem. Because once you have that conversation around, you know, value, i.e., we want X number of new meetings that come from folks engaging in our thought leadership, or, you know, we want to engage folks in events and we want to sort of then increase the likelihood that someone gets in contact with an expert after the event by X percent. These are things that are a lot more practical and tangible for the business to get their arms around and also a lot easier to put a value number on. And I think that then forces a conversation around how do we think about that end-to-end client experience, not just what's happening in the digital platform, to then create the right framework context guardrails for what that digital experience needs to deliver.  

Charlie: Yeah, fantastic. Thank you for all of that information. I think that's a great point around establishing outcomes early on and those very, you mentioned, kind of really detailed, I guess, value metrics of what you're going to deliver and kind of what the value is going to be in the longer term. I suppose, Gareth, just coming back to you, when it comes to kind of the process or framework that helps firms to go through this process of identifying the  kind of the challenges and the opportunities, do you have a framework that you use to kind of follow that journey and to help shape a website project?  

Gareth: Yeah, absolutely. We follow a fairly standard 3D, discover, define, deliver process, which most agencies or third parties follow in some sort of sense. It's fairly convergent and divergent in how it operates. So you go big, you think, then you narrow type stuff. I guess the shortest and most overlooked is the discovery phase, right? So coming back to my previous response about the pitfalls we see, the value of discovery really shouldn't be overlooked. And it's certainly not a requirements capture exercise. It's one that we ultimately, who can remember at least, work with clients on to create the business case for change. We look at what the opportunity is for digital to deliver business value back. We look at how we may be falling short in today's experiences and how CX across the multiple touchpoints in a firm is lacking behind competitors or indeed out-of-category comparables and then how that can be applied to this business context or this experience context to deliver greater value.  So the discovery phase really shouldn't be overlooked and should ultimately be the why we need to change distillation, and it can be a business case with financials put against it in terms of what the estimated ROI is going to be. That can also touch on technology. It can touch on why technology is maybe a burning platform, how inefficiencies are causing problems with teams not being deployed effectively and that sort of stuff and that sort of stuff is relatively close to the surface and easy to come by. But also looking at how we're falling short on the experience level. The defined piece ultimately takes that business case, assuming it's approved and moves forward into what the manifestation of the experience should be. And that's not necessarily just the design, right? That can be a content strategy. That can be a technology adoption strategy. It can be how the platform architecture comes together. It could be actually how the discovery piece gets turned into an omnichannel strategy so we can push CX across more than just the .com channel. Into events, into recruitment, into adoption of AI and that sort of thing. So the define piece shouldn't be limited to just the design of a website. It needs to be much, much broader than that.  

And define can also be done across multiple horizons, so it doesn't need to be done just in one chunk. Define and deliver can overlap. We're working with one firm that we are still doing define and roadmap items that we established 18 months ago whilst the dot com experience was launched back in Q1 this year. Deliver is very much what makes it real and puts rubber on the road, I guess, is when you turn the theory and the PowerPoint and the directional stuff into pixels. It's where design happens both UX design, information architecture, design systems, pattern libraries and that sort of stuff, content creation, where you look at creating the new content that lives in the experiences, and then obviously software development. We find the deliver phase is much often better run in an agile way. We can operate design sprints, we can operate content sprints, and we can operate delivery sprints. And all of those are based on prioritized value and running a scrum sort of method. A lot less waterfall typically to how firms tend to like to run things, but are much, much more effective at the co-creation angle. Much more effective at getting decisions made quickly. It breaks down the layers of approval that typically are needed if you put in a waterfall gated process where you're going back to the business to ask for approval to proceed. That's going to make timelines become 18–24 months for a new experience. If you get buy-in on an agile approach and a more scrum-based way of doing things, the approvals are far fewer and far easier to come. That's obviously matched with good governance and change boards as I mentioned before, but it operates in a bit of a different way. So they're sort of like the three pieces I guess: discovery being about the why and the case for change and the roadmap, define being about the what and the how and ultimately the framework that you're going to work into and the experiences you're defining, and then delivery being the agile sort of engine that is more product-oriented to push things forward. So yeah, that's roughly how we like to work.  

Charlie: Thanks, Gareth. That's a really helpful overview. That discover-define-deliver kind of framework is a helpful way to break it down. And as you mentioned, key points I pulled up are that firms shouldn't overlook the discovery phase and make sure you're kind of using that to establish the ROI at the end of the project.  

Gareth: I think it's fair. Certainly at MRM, our discovery approach is far more akin to a traditional consultancy piece, and John can build that out because he owns that part of our world. But it's not discovery in an agency sense, I guess. It is almost like strategic consultancy upfront. It's in that sort of space. And then the define and deliver are far more akin to a typical digital supplier.  

Charlie: Yeah, fantastic. And you mentioned that in the define phase, it's about not limiting it to a website. And I guess delving into that, the multiple touchpoints that client experience obviously has. John, I don't know if you can answer this one. How do you assess both the digital and human interactions within a firm? And how do you ensure that these touchpoints are integrated and consistent throughout a website project or a digital transformation project?  

John: Yeah, no, I can definitely answer that. And I think it goes back to a bit of the discovery approach being a bit more holistic and really delving into the why. Ultimately, the website is going to exist in a broader context around that customer experience. And it's really important to have good situational awareness around how clients and other types of stakeholders are engaging with the firm to be able to understand what can we improve, what can we optimize, what are new areas of value that we can actually seek to deliver through all of our touchpoints. So what we do is we try to make sure that we're integrating feedback from all of the touchpoints online and offline, really understanding what's happening across that end-to-end holistic experience. And when we say feedback, we're talking multimodal, mixing quant and qualitative methods, making sure that we have a mix of observed behaviors but also stated preferences from various users. The benefit of that is that we don't just identify the areas of pain points that we can address through the new design of a website, but we can also identify new digital propositions that meet some of the broader needs of these users that might not be part of a traditional professional services website experience. And finally, really thinking about the data collection and reporting opportunities that can be leveraged through a rethink of the digital experience as well. How can we get more feedback more frequently distributed throughout the organization through how we design that experience? I guess it's really about being holistic around the broader user and their goals. No one says, "Hey, I want to go and engage with a professional services website." They have something that they want to accomplish. That is likely going to happen through the orchestration of lots of different engagements with the firm. So to understand what the website needs to do, you need to have that broader awareness. Another piece is that CX is not owned by any one function. Having a framework and governance body that's thinking holistically across the CX to really inform what needs to happen on the website, the digital team can also provide requirements more broadly around how the broader experience can be improved over time. Operating a client experience ecosystem and optimizing that broader ecosystem of which digital is a part is really critical.  

Charlie: Yeah, really interesting points. Thank you for that, John. I think that piece around integrating feedback across all of the touchpoints to get a real holistic overview of the client experience end-to-end is a great point to consider. I suppose, stepping back a little from a strategic perspective, Gareth, how can firms leverage their website and digital platforms to ensure sustainable growth, especially when aligning technology decisions with their long-term business goals?  

Gareth: Absolutely. I think it comes back to the definition of what sustainable growth is. This links back to the very first point of identifying objectives and having a very clear measurement approach to how we operate digital more wholly, I guess. So knowing what that sustainable growth is aspiring to be ultimately is very important. Put in measurement, put in some real hard metrics that aren't just engaged sessions and number of searches and partner profiles viewed. Try and link and attribute marketing more holistically to business growth. That will almost inevitably involve marketing and BDs coming together. It's going to have to have a touchpoint across those who are at the front line working directly with customers plus those working in marketing. If done correctly and in unison, it can be very effective for optimizing marketing and digital experience more holistically. In terms of the technology piece, I said not to start with technology when kicking off. I think that MarTech is hugely underutilized. I think there's a statistic about 33% of MarTech is only used. So there is two thirds of MarTech ultimately going to waste where companies aren't adopting it. I think having a very clear channel strategy for how technology enables sort of multi-touch point or omnichannel marketing is clear. If your architecture isn't composable, if you've got pieces in your arsenal that you aren't using, then we need to ask why ultimately. We need to look back at the discovery, strategy, and the pieces that unlocked why we have an all-singing, all-dancing asset management platform that we're only really using to store brand assets.  Sense-check: Can we get greater efficiency out of using it in more detail? Can we reach more customers by deploying it across more channels and that sort of thing? Understanding why is particularly relevant when we look to AI. I think how firms pick up and leverage AI moving forward is super key, particularly in their MarTech stack. That's going to be a piece of technology that maybe we haven't put investment dollars behind yet, but firms will certainly be looking at how to do so. The sustainable growth and long-term business goals piece needs to be considered when building out their AI architecture. Every firm in a marketing sense needs to have an AI strategy. We work with quite a few clients on how to put AI strategies in place across the MarTech stack and how AI tools—be they generative AI for shortening the content creation lifecycle, AI in the operational sense for making processes more efficient, or agentic AI for serving customers better in search-based or query-based experiences—are key. Linking sustainable growth, having an idea of what that means, and tying it back between marketing, BDs, and the rest of the business is super key. Value realization from your existing MarTech is fundamental. Pushing into the two-thirds of MarTech that's reported as unused, linking it back to strategy, and looking towards longer-term goals like AI will ultimately shake up your current technology investment, which needs to be evaluated even more in 2025.

Charlie: Fantastic. Thank you. Lots to consider and unpack there. It's an astounding figure, isn't it? Two-thirds of MarTech is being underused or underutilized. Quite astounding, really. I guess some of that comes back to getting that kind of buy-in from stakeholders early on and bringing them on the journey to make sure that when deployed, those tools and technologies are being adopted correctly. Interesting stuff. You spoke about AI strategy—something else I imagine lots of firms are beginning to think about. Everyone's talking about AI, but actually having it on their agenda as a strategy going forward is going to become much more crucial. Well, thank you both. There have been some brilliant insights. We could probably talk for hours on this, but just to round things off in traditional podcast style, we'd like to finish with a piece of advice from you both. For any CMOs starting a project like this but suspect they need to focus on client experience, what would be your single most important piece of advice to help them get started on the right path? John, should we start with you?

John: Sure. It’s a really interesting question. My perspective is that the key thing is to build allies across the firm. For a website project to be seen as an integral part of the client experience, you've got to have the senior stakeholders who touch different elements of the client experience to appreciate that. Take the time to build relationships, understand what's going on elsewhere, and position what you're doing with the website as part of a broader piece of work. Having people on board to deliver a holistic CX improvement through the website is critical. We're working with a client where the CEO says CX is a priority. They're asking us how a brand and comms department can drive that. We're creating a case for change and getting marketing, EDs, and client-facing employees on board with a holistic framework. When we report leads from engagement, thought leadership, or how leads are picked up by other teams, it’s not a surprise. We already have allies, a common language, and a common framework. Build allies and get folks on board before starting the process.

Gareth: I totally agree. Shifting the organizational mindset to be customer-first and having a CX belief is fundamental. That comes from having it across all departments, up to the very highest level. If that's taken, my second would be a bit geekier—data. When marketing looks to activate a multi-touch point CX strategy, data is fundamental. You need a grounded use of CRM, a single customer view, and input from all departments touching the customer. The professional services industry typically does CRM poorly. There’s far more parity now with consumer brands, using CDPs, data lakes, and ML models to enable richer CX, touchpoints, and messaging. If I can’t pick the togetherness piece, I’d say get your data in shape and think more seriously about CRM platforms.

Charlie: Wonderful. Thank you both. Build your allies and delve into the data—two very important points to end on. Thank you for all your insights today. That’s all we’ve got time for on this episode. Thank you for coming on, Gareth and John. 

John: Thank you.

Gareth: You're welcome. 

Charlie: Thank you all for listening to this episode of the CMO Series Digital Masterclass. Never miss an episode by subscribing to the Passle CMO Series podcast on your favorite platform or visit passle.net/digitalmasterclass for all episodes. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.