When you’re building a relationship with your client, you have to start by establishing trust. It may not be easy — 65% of survey respondents say they don’t trust the financial industry. The reasons for this lack of trust vary, and you’re not responsible for single-handedly saving the entire industry’s reputation. However, as with any other relationship, trust can be repaired when broken.
Trust can be shattered quickly, and a relationship that starts with suspicion is especially challenging. If, as the survey above indicates, your clients start out not trusting you, you need to prove you’re trustworthy. That’s why transparency is so important. If you demonstrate that you’re reliable, honest, caring, and competent, your clients gain confidence that you care about them.
Inviting Client Participation and Feedback
Clients are in a vulnerable position when they approach you for help with their finances. They’re giving a relative stranger access to information they may not even share with their families. This openness and courage may be fragile at first, so tread carefully.
Take time to get to know your clients and provide reassurance. Learn their values and fears. Ask about and support their goals. Invite your clients to become part of the planning process. Spend more time discussing their priorities, future plans, and risk tolerance than your products.
Some clients may want constant updates, while others become overwhelmed by too much information. Ask for your clients’ preferred means and frequency of communication and level of experience with financial terms and technology.
After you’ve learned about your clients and what matters to them, follow up with implementation. One way to respond to your clients’ preferences is to automate reminders to contact them according to their preferred schedules and interests. You can set up alerts to remind yourself to communicate with clients about their goals at key intervals, making your communication more effective. For example, if your client hopes to save a certain amount of money for a down payment on a house, you can send a communication that:
- congratulates them for reaching 10%, 25%, or 50% of their goal,
- projects how much longer it will take to achieve the goal, and
- invites them to check in with you as they approach key targets or milestones.
Personalizing your communication shows your genuine interest in helping them achieve their dreams.
Communicate Expectations Responsibly
Clients new to wealth management may initially not understand the financial services industry well. Being transparent during the client experience requires you to manage expectations and help them understand less familiar concepts. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for most people, but your upfront honesty and expertise can make the unknown easier to accept.
Take your clients’ concerns seriously and demonstrate the steps you have taken to protect their information. Walk them through your contingency plans and help them understand how you will care for your clients if the worst happens. You may not be able to prevent events like market crashes, cyberattacks, or rising interest rates, but when you explain them in advance, your clients will be confident that you will know how to handle them when they happen. It will help you, too, to get a sense of your clients’ expectations early in the process, so you will know if you can meet them or not.
Providing Reliable Tech Solutions
When you think of transparency, you may not immediately think about computer software, but high-performing technical solutions are absolutely essential to a trusting and open advisor-client relationship. Reliability is a vital aspect of transparency, and if your clients can’t count on you to provide accurate information or file their information properly, they may think you are either hiding something or that you’re incompetent. In either case, you’ll lose trust.
Your clients need to know that you can safely store and manage their information. Your software solution can become part of your transparent conversation with clients as you demonstrate how your digital records, automatic compliance checks, encryption and audit tools, and pre-filled forms will keep their financial records secure, protected, and easy to retrieve when needed.
You can’t force people to trust you, but providing a transparent client experience goes a long way toward helping your clients understand the high value you place on the goals that matter most to them. By seeking to understand your clients, managing their expectations, and using reliable tech solutions, you can create a long-lasting, transparent client-advisor relationship.
Are you looking for a reliable tech stack that will promote transparency and improve your client experience? Contact Docupace to learn about built-in security features and document management solutions that help you spend more time investing in client relationships and less time dealing with administrative tasks.
