Use Client Feedback to Improve Your Business

For those of you lucky enough to have avoided any news outlets last week, the midterm elections have come and gone with what was an outrageous amount of coverage. But advisors can take something away from the round-the-clock coverage of the elections: Sometimes it’s good to conduct a poll on the satisfaction of your constituents, or in your case, clients.

It’s easy to see why some advisors might bristle at this proposition, though. Imagine if your business had the same format as a congressman’s. Every two years an opponent steps up to challenge your competency in an attempt to win your job. Then, through the brutally humbling process of democracy, you find out just who appreciates your service and who doesn’t.

Fortunately, financial advisors don’t have that problem. Unlike a politician, your clients aren’t forced into your services and instead have the freedom to choose who they work with or not, regardless of popular opinion. And hopefully, the first time your client voices their opinion isn’t after two years when they call to say they want to give your job to someone else. Instead, you should regularly seek the opinions of your clients. Feedback helps to create stronger connections between you and your clients by helping you understand what it is they like or dislike about your service. On top of that, you gain the added benefit of having data on client satisfaction to be used when it comes time to assess the value of your book of business.

And gathering client feedback is not the laborious process it once was. Thanks to online options such as Survey Monkey or Survata, surveys can be created quickly and filled out even quicker. In addition, these services help to track and organize the results of the survey, allowing you to more easily interpret the findings.

But the problem still remains, what should you be getting feedback on?

Study after study shows clients want and expect many elements of their financial relationships to occur digitally. This process requires advisors like you adapt to numerous technologies. From social media to asset aggregators to financial planning, implementing these technologies into your business is one of the most important steps you can take in order to grow. So it is vital that you do it right. And the best way to know if you are doing something right is through feedback.

Don’t be afraid to “bother” your clients for feedback. People like to voice their opinion and most will be glad to help improve your services since they are the ones who will benefit most. Not only that, when they have to earnestly think about what it is you do for them, they will be reminded of why it is they came to you to begin with and might recall all the needs you fill. And it doesn’t take a politician to know that it’s never a bad idea to answer the question “what have you done for me lately.”