When starting their careers, very few UBS client advisors believed they might end up being televised acting on a stage set in front of a live audience.
But that is what the firm’s new training program for client advisors handling small and medium-sized corporate clients requires them to do – spend two and a half days being filmed in a studio outfitted as a typical UBS conference room talking with professional actors playing different types of clients. The program, which started at the end of 2004, will involve some 600 UBS corporate client advisors in Switzerland in a total of 37 seminars to be held by the middle of this year.
The role-play is intended to teach them how to become more creative when they 40 45 deal with their clients. It should teach them how to ask different kinds of questions that help them get a real picture of factors affecting their clients’ businesses – rather than seeing companies solely as the sum of their assets and liabilities.
But the training program is not just makeup and lights. Before going onstage, advisors are faced with case studies, web-based training modules, tests and assessments of their skills. When they do go live, internal evaluators analyze the discussions, with advisors having to complete evaluations of their own performance after each session. After the recordings are finished, advisors get a list of action points as well as a checklist that they have to implement in the real world – accompanied with regularly scheduled discussions back at work with the head of their team.
With eight of the sessions having taken place, feedback from many advisors indicates it has a positive impact on their client relationships. There are plans to expand the program to include the private client advisors in the Swiss retail business as well. In a market environment that demands a more proactive approach by client advisors, the course should help UBS deliver more tailor-made and imaginative solutions to its client base throughout the country.
