After facing the economic recession, the South–African and global business sectors startedrevaluating their human capital and the positions they represent within an organisation. Eachindividual now had to prove that they contributed towards the organisation’s bottom line, as eachand every cent had to be counted and accounted for. Some functions within organisations couldeasily prove their contribution towards the bottom line by providing production or sales outputs.The public relations practitioners and the corporate communication efforts they offered, however,faced a bleak future, as their contribution towards the tangible assets was very rarely recognised(Kim, 2000:276).The financial services sector however, in which an advisor’s contribution towards theorganisational bottom line is easily quantified, started to acknowledge the need for this sector toimprove upon its ‘softer’ intangible assets such as client communication and client relationships.The sector believes that communication establishes relationships, and sound client relationshipsis the only way to sell financial products and services, as people seldom entrust their life earningsor financial dreams to strangers (Christiansen & DeVaney, 1998:7).Public relations practitioners know how to use communication optimally in the quest for buildingclient relationships, and financial services need those skills in order to sell their products andcontribute towards the bottom line. These two functions could thus work together towards theachievement of their goals - public relations to prove their bottom line contribution, and thefinancial services sector towards improving client relationships.These statements led to the general Research Question of this study: “What is the nature of therelationship between (i) corporate communication efforts, (ii) client communicationsatisfaction and (iii) client relationship satisfaction, and these concepts’ relationship to(iv) client economic contribution, within a financial services organisation?”This Research Question is answered from the systems theory as meta–theory with the support ofthe strategic communication, excellence and relationship management theories, and FuturumFinancial Group (FFG) services as the financial services organisation for this study.A qualitative and quantitative research approach was followed to establish the constructs, and therelationships between the constructs.The Financial Advisors and public relations practitioner in FFG have a good understanding of theneed for strategic communication efforts, and a relationship between their efforts and the client communication satisfaction and client relationship satisfaction could therefore be indicated. Afurther relationship between the client communication satisfaction and client relationshipsatisfaction and the client economic contribution was also established.Recommendations to improve the situation within FFG included a better focus on databaseadministration, corporate communication consistency, Financial Advisor diligence, and providingclients with more frequent updates regarding their financial situation. The greatest strengths wereclient–advisor trust and corporate communication professionalism.This study thus contributes to the argument that communication efforts add tangibly, by means ofclient economic contribution, to the organisation’s bottom line, within the financial servicesindustry. The study furthermore provides some recommendations for the financial servicesindustry to improve their communication skills in order to build client relationships.
