Business guru Matt Wilkinson opened the PFS Annual Conference in Wales today with an inspiring talk to members on how they can give clients a great customer experience.

Among his top 10 tips:

• It's important for firms to set and beat expectations

• Great customer experiences are "effortless"

• Look at ways to reduce "time on task"

• Think about how you can make things more convenient for clients

• Make things stress free

• Prevent errors, especially digitally. Look at how you deal with errors.

• Prompt, accurate feedback from clients should always be welcome

• A great customer experience is one that considers client emotions and how they feel about what they have received

Mr Wilkinson said that Financial Planning business owners did not need a "Phd in customer experience" to provide better engagement for their clients. Much of it was common sense, he said.

He recommended business owners sit down with a pen and paper and work out what would give clients a better experience and what clients really wanted. Giving clients too many options was often a bad idea and led to inertia.

His talk included practical tips on how to improve customer experience, a topic very successful companies were obsessive about, he said. He cited the example of Domino's pizza which allowed customers to simply send an emoji of a pizza to order one.

Making clients' lives simpler and happier and giving them what they wanted was always a good idea, he said.

Mr Wilkinson is a writer, designer, consultant and expert on customer experience. He has worked with major brands and spoken at events for businesses such as Microsoft, Google, HSBC, Ogilvy, IOD and the FBI. He is the author of the 'Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences' and is the co-founder of customer experience agency Methodical a senior visiting Fellow at Cass Business School.

More than 900 Financial Planners and Paraplanners and other guests are attending the event, organised by the 40,000-member professional body for Chartered Financial Planners.

The theme of this year’s one-day event is ‘Duty Bound - Loving Your Clients to Death’ and there will be 15 sessions, with many focusing on client service.

Today's event is expected to focus mostly on professional development and Financial Planning education and not on debates about the PFS's finances and strategy, recently a source of argument among some members. The event runs from 10.15am to 4.45pm and is followed by a networking drinks reception and live entertainment. 

Sessions are covering Financial Planning skills, leadership, business ethics, advice and wealth management, sustainability, diversity and inclusion and technology.

Speakers include familiar names such as including Chris Budd, Melissa Kidd, John Dashfield and Julia Dreblow while the keynote speakers will be Matt Watkinson, an expert on customer experience, and Catherine Morgan, an award-winning Financial Planner and coach. The event compere will be Chartered Financial Planner Ruth Sturkey FPFS. 

The hashtag for the event is: #pfsdutybound

• Financial Planning Today will be reporting from the conference. Check back later for coverage.