When thinking about the best wealth management tools for your firm, you may consider the latest trends and technologies. If a product meets your clients’ expectations and responds to their demands, your clients will be happy and return to you for more business, right?
Maybe. But technology does more for your business than delivering the newest products or the flashiest investment app. Processes, such as how quickly you respond to client questions or how long your onboarding experience takes, may be more subtle and less flashy than the latest cryptocurrency fad, but they are just as important.
Clients may not always be aware of the tech stack that drives back-office operations at your firm, but even so, they know when their client experience is less than ideal. They don’t need to understand the cause of your slow service or the cumbersome paperwork at your firm to leave a bad review or find another advisor. Clients may not tell you about the reason for this dissatisfaction directly; however, slow, inefficient processes will impact your business in one way or another. But with the right technology, you can improve your processes to transform client experience and differentiate your firm from the competition.
How do you know your processes are negatively impacting client experience? Here are four giveaways.
Information, not Conversation
When you take a long time to gather the information you need, your clients spend a lot of time waiting. Whether they sit idly while you type data into on-screen fields, wait to talk to an actual person while they’re on hold, or answer the same questions multiple times, you’re wasting their time. If you could improve your process, you could manage your time with clients more effectively.
“I’m sorry, my computer is extra slow today” is a line clients may expect from a government office, but they expect more when visiting a financial advisor. You could save your clients time with a document management system that eliminates unnecessary duplication and simplifies document retrieval.
Lots of Paperwork — with Actual Paper
Asking clients to fill out and sign stacks of paper is another way you’re wasting their time. This is especially true if multiple family members fill out the same information. There’s no need for your clients to give themselves paper cuts as they shuffle through reams of paper or even to fill out digital forms in your office multiple times. Instead, you could make your forms available online for clients to fill out and sign electronically. That way, they can fill out paperwork at a time that’s convenient for them and spend their time with you developing relationships instead.
You Know Your Clients’ Numbers, but Not Your Clients
If you’ve spent your first few appointments with your clients gathering data and filling out forms, you may not have had time to get to know them on a personal level. Financial advising is about more than the numbers — it’s a relationship.
Do you understand your client’s hopes, dreams, and values? Do you know what matters to them and what legacy they want to create? Do you understand their hobbies and interests? And do you have a record of that information so you can provide communication that’s relevant to them? If you answer negatively because you’ve spent so much time filling out paperwork, you may want to reconsider your processes.
App-Switching
It may not seem like it takes much time to move back and forth between different applications on your computer, but when you add it up, it may be more significant than you think. Using several platforms to perform basic functions costs a lot of time and money. It’s not just closing out one application and opening another — it’s also the time it takes to train yourself and your advisors to use each of them proficiently, especially if your platforms aren’t integrated with your CRM. Not only that but the more applications you need to accomplish basic advising tasks, the more potential you create for something to go wrong when the applications communicate with each other.
Although each of these four warning signs, including long silences during onboarding, excessive paperwork, under-developed client relationships, and app-switching, signal you’re in danger of losing clients to your less-than-efficient processes, the good news is that you can upgrade your technology to make your processes more efficient and effective than ever before.
Are you ready to learn more about how Docupace’s fully integrated document management and digital operations solution can transform your client experience for the better? Contact us today.
