If there is any lesson to be learned from the COVID-19 impacts on the American economy and everyday life, it’s that we need to start rethinking our approach to so many institutions. As things have shut down, there has been a massive increase in working from home.
According to a study commissioned by Zapier over half of Americans were working from home at peak levels of shutdown[1]. People have been stuck at home and avoiding contact with strangers as much as possible. With studies showing that employees tend to be more productive from home[2], this trend of not going to the office every day will likely continue.

The upheaval caused by this singular event has been stark. The nature of interactions has changed dramatically. A number of service providers have struggled in this environment, with restaurants closing right and left, repairmen unable to enter and fix things in homes, and other service providers not allowing or even struggling to get people to come into their offices for services. While we obviously cannot anticipate the coming of a pandemic, we can certainly see the level to many organizations have been ill-equipped to handle any kind of disruption to normal operations.

This MUST change.

In a crisis - be it medical, financial, whatever the case – the needs of consumers do not change that drastically. There are still goods and services that people want and need, and our economy needs to learn to adapt.

There has also been a clear shift in consumer preferences towards having good and services provided in a more on-demand environment. Amazon has become one of the largest companies in the world not just because of price, but also convenience. One can find any good they need on their platform from anywhere in the world. During this pandemic they have seen a 26% increase in sales versus the same period one year earlier[3], an astounding figure for an organization of that size.

What Amazon has done so brilliantly is design their services to meet both the needs and changing preferences of consumers. In his book Essentials of Service Design and Innovation - 4th Edition: Developing high-value service businesses with PCN Analysis, Dr. Scott Sampson illustrates how service processes can be broken down not only to identify pain points and bottlenecks that hinder optimal company performance, but also how reassessing and redesigning these processes to increase customer satisfaction and conversion[4]. All organizations need to reassess their own processes and reconfigure them in a way that allows them to meet changing preferences, and to meet their needs in normal environments as well as uncertain times.

Positive Examples

Aside from the Amazon, one example of an industry that is well suited to provide desired services in distressing times are food delivery services. Apptopia noted that, “Comparing average daily downloads in February to yesterday's (Sunday, March 15), Instacart, Walmart Grocery and Shipt have seen surges of 218%, 160%, and 124% respectively.[5] With social distancing requirements and the resulting desire to maintain personal health security, consumers are flocking to delivery services. There is no reason to believe that their use (although it may slow from peak pandemic levels) will not be accelerated post-pandemic as customers try and experience the benefits these providers have to offer.

Another industry that is shifting in a positive manner is the medical field. Doctors are consulting with patients via telemedicine at a rapidly increasing rate, and patient satisfaction with the process has shown how much this kind of service design is desired[6]. Patients aren’t having to drive to offices to sit in waiting rooms with other sick patients, only to be taken to an exam room to wait around even longer to see a doctor for a quick chat. The whole process can be reduced to 10-15 minutes on the phone or via webconferencing.

What does this mean for Financial Advisors?

A byproduct of lockdowns and social distancing is that office visits by clients decreased dramatically in my practice. Before this happened I was more than willing to meet clients in their offices or homes where it made sense, which was completely eliminated. The old model of client interaction died overnight.

The most difficult thing is that this social distancing was combined with a financial crisis as well. We as Advisors were caught in a position where we need to meet with and service clients, keep working to grow our practices, and are completely incapable of reasonably meeting with people in person.

Financial Advisors MUST adapt. In fact, it might be crucial for the survival of the industry that we are able to design our processes in way that we are able to deliver our services to clients no matter what is happening in the world. If our systems are not robust enough to accommodate being able to provide service to clients when- and wherever, then we are doomed to fail in an environment where so many services can be had on demand.

What does this kind of service look like?

Online

This is as natural as anything we could discuss, and the obvious starting point. We all have websites, but there need to be platforms for us to interact with and share information. We need to be able to provide Financial Advice with a personal experience anywhere at any time. There are plenty of places where people can go online to do investing (any of the traditional Broker/Dealers/Investment Companies, Robo Advisors) and even some where some Planning can be done (Personal Capital). But these companies are still missing something.

Personal Relationships

One thing cannot change, clients still want a personal experience. Financial Planning and Advice are still relationship-based businesses. They want to see and know the person that they are trusting with guiding them on their financial journeys. We must preserve this part of the service design while shaping our other tools around this. Clients want to know that they have an Advisor that they are directly working with and is walking with them.

One of the biggest benefits of the largest Investment Companies is that you can have access to a large network of Advisors and can potentially pop into offices anywhere to get some kind of service if need, be or if you move to another part of the country there could be someone locally to talk to. But why should clients have to settle for this? People can do better than picking a name and being connected with a random Advisor or call center employee. They should be able to choose the Advisor that they like and get their full suite of services wherever they find themselves.

Webinar-based Interactions

Direct client interaction needs to be seamless across any platform. Clients should be able to meet with their Advisor from their office, home, vacation, etc. without any change in the quality of the interaction. Clients who have gone into the Advisor’s office for years should feel just as taken care of hopping on a Zoom chat. At the same time, prospects should be just as comfortable seeking out new Advisors without ever meeting them in-person.

It is just too easy to provide these kinds of interactions via webconferencing tools. Zoom, Skype, GoToMeeting, Facetime, and so forth. There are myriad options available to Advisors to meet with clients. It provides a safe, easily accessible option for clients and prospects to meet and work with Advisors. It saves them the time of the trip of the office while giving them the personal interaction that they need.

IT IS TELEMEDICINE FOR THEIR FINANCIAL HEALTH.

These platforms allow for the sharing of screens for talk about information. They can be recorded (always ask for permission, of course) and used for training and feedback purposes. If you are covering a specific topic that is based upon general information, and doesn’t involve the client at all (short presentation on a specific topic – why you do Financial Planning, a specific concept, etc.), then that recording can be used for you YouTube page or website which gives prospects an idea of how you work with clients. It can be a marketing tool.

It could also be a valuable savings tool for Advisors. If you have a home office, maybe it helps to reduce the amount of overhead needed for an office. A smaller office could be leased, or maybe none at all. When a pandemic hits, weather makes it tough to get to the office, Advisor working a shorter day and wants to avoid added commute time, whatever the case is, it allows clients to be delivered the highest quality interaction without having to come see you in a particular building.

Accessible and Transparent

Information is on demand now. It is inescapable, and the reality of the world we live in. Why wouldn’t client investment accounts, financial plans, and insurance policies be easily accessible in the same way? There can be the tendency to want to make the financial plan seem like a mysterious entity that can only be manipulated by the advisor. Why can’t a client have the ability to test scenarios themselves with their own information, and then bring that to Advisors as a starting point for discussions about their financial lives?

There is nothing secretive or magical about what Advisors do. If our clients dug deep enough, they would figure that out too. The days of making it seem like we are the only ones capable of working with and understanding clients’ information need to be over. Clients (and regulations more and more) demand transparency, and they deserve it.

There are a plethora of software for solutions that offer clients the ability to easily access their information whenever they want. I like RightCapital for their ease of use, simple interface, customization/branding options, and especially the app clients can download to see their plan/info and play with scenarios. The settings allow for their inputs to not make changes to the real plan, so there is no impact on what the Advisor has produced.

Efficient

We need to provide our clients with a more efficient Advisory relationship. It starts with the webconferencing, saving time to and from the office. No more waiting while we compile paperwork for them when they can just DocuSign everything when it is done. No more two-hour meetings where you ask questions and look over documents that can be easily input online. Their time is valuable. Our time is valuable. Both need to be protected.

There are planning platforms that allow for the upload of documents and input their own financial data. Many allow for clients to link accounts as well so that you both always have real time data and investment allocations. The linking process takes just seconds, and then everyone can move on to the next task. If clients simply want to upload documents and have you fill everything out, then it saves them a tremendous amount of time in meetings, and you can sort through and enter the information at your convenience. It is better for us is if the client inputs all the data themselves. They still get to move at their convenience, and it greatly increases our efficiency as Advisors. This makes it so that people who might need help, or might want an Advisor, but can’t get away from the office long enough during business hours, can become clients and get the help that they deserve. It opens up potential access to new clients!

Transparency and things like client portals or apps as discussed in the previous section also make it easy for the client to have the information that they need at their fingertips. If properly versed on the platform capabilities, the need for interaction with you as the Advisor could be greatly diminished. It is a lot less service work and more time spent on productive tasks like prospecting, outreach, onboarding new clients, etc. Everybody deserves a more efficient use of time in the Financial Planning and Advisory process.

In Summation

We must adapt. We must change. We must transform our process design to the world we live in now and set up systems robust enough to handle even the most disruptive of world events. Our processes should be structured in a way to function especially through the most disruptive circumstances. Our clients need that, and our clients deserve that. It is a shift from the way this career has traditionally been approached, but as Advisors it would be better for us too.

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All written content on this site is for information purposes only. Opinions expressed herein are solely those of Snowcap Financial, unless otherwise specifically cited. Material presented is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by our firm as to other parties’ informational accuracy or completeness. All information or ideas provided should be discussed in detail with an advisor, accountant or legal counsel prior to implementation.

[1] https://zapier.com/blog/wfh-report/

[2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w18871.pdf

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-sales-jump-as-coronavirus-prompts-surge-in-online-shopping-11588278740

[4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1506027172/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_6?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

[5] https://blog.apptopia.com/instacart-and-grocery-delivery-apps-set-consecutive-days-of-record-downloads

[6] https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2020-02/ama-digital-health-study.pdf