Keeping a Strong Connection with Clients Through COVID-19

Client retention is at the core of all business needs. Fa-mag.com mentions the need for the “customer-obsessed” mindset both internally and in a way that is apparent to your clientele. Now more than ever, advisors should be engaging with their clients where they are and help them to stay on track for their future.

We suggest the following approaches to increase retention, growth, and make a difference in your client’s lives:

Make Sure You’re Communicating

People need communication during a crisis; it’s human nature to crave reassurance during stressful times. Be sure to check in and over-communicate with every client during this pandemic. Make sure to let clients know you understand things have and will continue to change but that you’re with them. Continue to address their financial concerns. Stay in touch via social, email, phone, video conferencing, and in other ways your clients prefer. Always ask for feedback so the clients feel that you are hearing them and that they matter.

Establish Emotional Connections

Your clients want to feel supported, and a great way to do this is to deepen your connections with them about personal life matters. Always ask about personal life matters before financial business. Learn about your clients, make friendships with them, ask about their families. Ask if they need anything. If you can’t help them with what they need, find out if anyone in your network can. Continue to let your clients know you are there for them. With remote working becoming the new normal, it’s essential to get creative to improve overall morale of employees as well. Think of things like sharing photos, videos, stories about working from home. Try to inspire more meaningful engagements and listen when they share, even take notes.

Evolve together

As you learn what your customers want, you can create services to meet those needs. Utilize this new information to help offer a new and unique set of services, evolve together. Make sure to look at data but in time likes these hard numbers shouldn’t be your only focus. Track the relationships, while also encouraging and incentivizing customer interactions. These changes will help with retention and the bottom line.

Continue to enforce the “customer-obsessed” mindset by gathering all metrics, including emotional connections. Make a list of things to do differently over time, discuss goals, offer feedback, and kudos to your advisors. Have customers provide feedback on their overall experience with their advisor to make sure the changes are working. Improving communication, personalizing new approaches, and evolving your services to meet clients’ needs is a great starting point for positive change and relationship strengthening.