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Recently, I invited advisors to submit their most pressing questions. One response identified a common frustration – advisors work incredibly hard, but clients take that effort for granted. How can advisors get credit for all they do for clients?
The question
Here’s the question in which one advisor expressed her frustration:
We spend a great deal of time and money providing what the bulk of our clients tell us is exceptional service. While we know we cannot please everyone all the time we have found that some clients perceive our level of service to be industry norm.
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We provide personal touches like hand-written birthday cards and schedule our meetings like a dental practice. A third-party consulting firm that we use tells us we are doing much more than 99% similar firms. We have four full-time staff (three of whom are licensed) and three part-time staff. How can we communicate the benefits we provide in a way that clients can immediately understand and appreciate?
My answer
I hear comments similar to yours from many advisors – it’s not that clients don’t see any value in your effort to develop financial plans and conduct regular meetings, but that they take it for granted.
I am reminded of a conversation about a year ago with someone who runs a very successful BMW dealership. He described some of the things they’d done:
- Built a glass-enclosed waiting room with comfortable seating, where they serve Starbucks coffee and have a plate of cookies that’s refilled over the course of the day;
- Washed every car in for service before being returning it to the owner; and
- On the month before their birthday, sent customers a card in the mail inviting them to stop by the dealership during the following month for a free fill-up and car wash.
Despite the investment to build the waiting room and wash cars, very few customers comment on them – the dealer’s view is that if you charge a premium, customers expect above and beyond touches and in fact take them for granted. He also mentioned that at one point they sent regular birthday cards but got no response; it was only when they added the offer of a free fill-up and car wash that their effort seemed to stand out and was acknowledged.
