Where to Automate the Client Experience
A personal touch can make a huge difference for your clients, so automation should be used strategically and only in places where it makes your clients’ lives easier. Automation opportunities can be focused on three main areas of the investor-advisor relationship:
- Onboarding
- Communication
- Portfolio Maintenance
Automating Client Onboarding
Onboarding isn’t the first time a client interacts with your firm, but it will set the tone for the relationship. If it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows during the honeymoon stage, then clouds may be perpetually on the horizon. Automation can make it all seem like a fairy tale dream (the Disney kind, not the Grimm kind).
Using guided digital workflows, such as the one offered within the award-winning Skience solution, advisors can open multiple new accounts without any unnecessary rekeying and then deliver all required forms to clients in one electronic signature experience. This reduces Not in Good Order (NIGO) transactions, enforces compliant processes, and enables rules-based supervision. Plus, standardizing this entire single, paperless onboarding process ensures that every client gets the best experience every time.
Automating Client Communication
Like we said, combining automation with human touchpoints is a delicate balance. You should not — we repeat — should not automate all of your client communication. The occasional check-in phone call can go a long way.
But there are definitely times of the year when you need to send out reminders, documents, or other types of communications where automation makes more sense – not just from the standpoint of saving time and effort but also when it comes to ensuring consistency for all clients.
For example, here are five types of communications you should consider automating:
- Annual reminders, such as giving clients a heads up when they are due to schedule their annual meeting or even when tax day is approaching
- Annual document requests, such as tax returns
- Client feedback surveys
- Sending segmented client content, such as tips about retirement to those 60 and over or how to save for college for anyone with children
- Trending topics content sent to all clients, such as an overview on cryptocurrency or how to guard against inflation
Automating Portfolio Maintenance
When advisors don’t spend as much time inputting data into multiple systems, or asking clients for additional signatures during the onboarding processes, or making countless trades to rebalance portfolios, they have more time available for client service. That means they have more time to devote to their favorite part of the job – their clients.
By allowing advisors to complete processes that normally take days or weeks in just a matter of minutes, they can not only service clients but also do something for themselves. And happy advisors in turn create meaningful client engagement, which then make happy, satisfied clients.
Lean into Automation Where it Counts
The client journey in your firm is unique. So in order to get started with automating areas of the client experience, you first need to map out that journey. Here are some tips to guide you:
- Make a list of all of the key steps in the client journey, beginning with the first touch during the prospecting phase.
- Identify where a human touch is needed and where automation could be used instead.
- Reminder: Automation is a useful tool, but a phone call or personal message can go a long way in making your clients feel special.
How Skience Can Help
With the SkienceONE platform, firms can offer a digital onboarding that boosts productivity by enabling advisors to open accounts faster, easily collaborate with their clients, and provide an overall delightful digital experience for new clients. Request a demo today!