Now more than ever, it’s important to segment your clients and be sure you are focused on the top 20% to 30%.
They represent the bulk of your practice’s revenue and deserve more
financial planning help, client service and communications than your other clients.
Unfortunately, your best clients often don’t receive the attention they deserve — and you feel stretched trying to do too much.
To provide you with a solution, this month, we will focus on what affluent clients want from their advisers at the present time and give you practical ways to deliver that service without adding to your workload.
First, let’s examine what clients want.
In my discussions with advisers around the country, here are the service elements that clients consider Tiffany-grade service from an adviser:
1. Meeting with clients’ attorneys to make sure wills and trusts are in order.
2. An annual insurance review to check coverage and beneficiaries.
3. News about investing from top money managers.
4. Helping family members with generational issues, including elder care, long term care, assisted-living arrangements, special children’s needs, etc.
5. Receiving regular updates about investments and other news through a newsletter or e-mail.
6. Providing client input through a client advisory board.
7. Client-appreciation events tied to lifestyle interests, including museums, cruises and family gatherings.
Remember, the key variable in your service levels will be the frequency of contact you can provide and the services you offer.
To remind you how important frequent contact is to wealthy clients, consider what J.D. Power and Associates of Westlake Village, Calif., discovered in its most recent survey of customer satisfaction with full-service brokerage firms.
The company found that affluent investors — those with more than $1 million in investible assets — want 4.2 proactive calls from their adviser each year.
Mass affluent investors — those with $100,000 to $1 million — want 2.8 calls a year.
Mass market investors — with less than $100,000 to invest — expect 1.7 calls on average each year.
You can use investors’ instinctive understanding of service tiers to help you set the service levels and elements that will satisfy them.
Communicating your service levels to clients
Once your service levels have been defined and geared to your top clients now comes the hard part: communicating your new service levels to your clients.
If done properly, lower-tier clients will be comfortable with the changes.
Taking a page from the airlines’ mileage programs and banks’ tiered customer service levels, create several client communications to be sent over a two-month period.
Make each letter all about your clients and how the service levels are designed to meet their needs.
Each communication could lead with: “Our team is committed to helping you reach and exceed the financial goals we have set. We have aligned our team and are dedicating resources and communications to serve our premier clients better. As one of our premier [or platinum] clients, here are the additional services you can expect and how they will be delivered.”
Post your practice’s branding or mission statement and service levels in your lobby, on your website, and include it in referral communications. Customers welcome knowing exactly where they stand and what services they can expect to received.
Review your plan with your internal team
Here are some suggestions to help your team understand the changes you are making to your service levels and the reason for doing so.
1. Share verbally and in writing the service levels your team is committed to delivering and the branding or mission statement for the firm.
2. Assign team members their specific responsibilities in delivering each of the services.
3. Set aside 15 minutes each week to check on execution of the service levels and ensure that newsletters, client reviews and events are on schedule.
4. Once a month, have a team member walk through the office and evaluate the client experience including pulling into the parking lot, walking in the front door of the building, waiting in the reception area and departing. They should also note the appearance of the office.
Service levels are only effective if clients feel that they are receiving what they expect to receive.
An adviser’s success story
Are you afraid that creating service levels will offend clients? Actually, the exact opposite is likely. One adviser I know recently created his tiered service levels and mailed a letter to all his clients outlining what he will do for each level.
Rather than be offended by not making his top tier, many lower-tier clients — once aware of the exact nature of what they would be receiving — moved their insurance plans to his practice in order to qualify for “platinum” status.
Next week: Deliver proactive communications and have a crisis plan ready.
