Good Customer Service Just Isn’t Enough Anymore

Today, more than ever financial advisors need to provide exceptional service to their clients. This is how advisors can have high retention and get referrals for new business. When clients feel they can trust their advisor, they are more likely to feel they are taken care of and refer friends and family. Clients need to feel they are more than a number and that the financial advisor genuinely cares about the well being of their family. So how can an advisor provide exceptional service to their clients? Is providing exceptional service enough?

Take The Time To Care

When meeting with a client, attentively listen to what is going on in their life. Know how many kids a client has and what ages they are, their interests. Know if there are significant life events taking place. Take the time to either mail or email to wish someone well, or congratulate them on a significant life event like the birth of a grandchild or a big promotion or a birthday.

This time and extra effort it takes to have amazing notes on each client and take action can pay off 10 fold if a client feels they an advisor truly cares and pays attention to the details and events of clients lives.

Consider What Truly Differentiates Your Service

By proactively setting up a time to review goals and current portfolio, clients will feel they are being looked after. Goals and objectives often change so it’s important to review goals and a client’s portfolio

According to a recent survey, 76% responded that the ability to understand client needs and objectives is the number one factor that advisors claim as their differentiator. The second highest response was differentiating on client service but what exactly does that mean. Is this something that would set an advisor apart from other advisors or is this a basic expectation.

Consider what is truly unique about your advisor service? It seems that the key to true differentiating is either to provide a more specialized and unique service or to provide a service to a very specific clientele. Each generation will value and place importance on different specializations so having an understanding their investor profile and how they want to communicate is something that can’t be ignored.

Consistent Email Touchpoints

As much as advisors would love to take a personalized approach to speaking to clients, sometimes there isn’t enough time to effectively have that personalized connection with each and every client.

Email is a way to provide that consistent touch point without the manual effort of calling someone or emailing clients individually. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email can result in a 4300% return on investment.

Effective email builds a relationship with your audience through compelling relevant content that encourages engagement and sharing,  intriguing subject lines, and a distinctive voice which helps to bring out a unique individual personality. With increasing amounts of data available through email marketing tools and platforms, advisors can effectively segment their list to provide relevant content that is important to their audience.

There are many programs and tools available to help make email marketing something that’s easy to implement and effective. Our platform, Digital Agent, has a built-in email marketing capability that allows advisors to create compliant email newsletters and send to prospects and clients in a way that it is integrated into blog and website content.

Consider what is one thing advisors can different today that would improve the way they service their clients? Creating a service model that would differentiate from other advisors is not something that is recommended but is crucial for success and high retention.