In addition, advisors should create content designed to at least acknowledge, if not address, client pain points. Articles, virtual workshops/webinars, tools and resources, in-person group workshops and videos are the most-requested kinds of content clients are looking for, the survey found.
“We’re seeing an increase in things that are a bit more on-demand. Send me an article, send me a video, send me a resource that will help me understand my financial situation,” she said. “The key is it’s changed. So as we’re thinking about education or value-added content, we’ve got to look at it through this lens.”
Advisors should also record client preferences for the frequency of meetings and the format of those meetings.
“I was surprised last year when 53% of clients said they wanted to meet in person. A couple of years before that it would have been in the 80s. So I was even more surprised this year when that dropped further to 39%,” Littlechild said. “The reason for that is because they learned how it worked during Covid. So we have trained our clients now to expect and often want a very different experience and we need to be sure we’re delivering the same extraordinary experience virtually as we feel that we do in person.”
In order to be sure they’re embedding the voice of the client into their businesses, advisors can use an advisory board, surveys, focus group or structured interviews, she said, as long as there is a regular process for bringing in data that can then be acted on.
And finally, advisors need to be visible enough to be found by future clients on Google, LinkedIn, client-advisor matching tools and any other tool someone might use to search for an advisor, she said.
“If they’re looking, do they find you? And when they find you, they need to see that you work with clients like them,” she said. “This is where I think we can differentiate ourselves, but it does come with a level of courage and vulnerability that I think is difficult for many of us. I know this because I talk to advisors all day long who, when I say, ‘Hey, this is on the minds of your clients,’ say ‘Oh, I don’t go there. I don’t want to be a therapist,’ and the wall comes up. And I get that because you’re not therapists.”
However, she emphasized, there’s no path forward on client satisfaction unless advisors understand the context in which they’re creating a financial plan and then investing.
“You can’t get away from this,” she said. “It’s more important now than it probably ever has been before.”