Doug Wood, January 5, 2021
When a wealth management company makes a decision to “bank” on core, supplier-provided, business critical software or services that plug in to the heart of the company’s day-to-day workflow, they aren’t looking for a vendor/customer relationship.
For a supplier in this kind of partnership, this calls for a shared understanding of every aspect of the client’s relevant business and ongoing requirements. This calls for responding to and anticipating a client’s needs with consistent, predictable execution and market-leading capabilities that equal or surpass the competition.
In addition to all of that, a true partnership calls for unwavering, quantifiable, excellent service and support. At Advisor360°, we refer to this level of support as extraordinary systematic care.
“Extraordinary” in the way we respond to and exceed the needs of our clients. “Systematic” in the way we proactively leverage state-of-the-art tools and practices while measuring everything we do. “Care” in the way our people deeply commit to serving our clients, ensuring they succeed.
Our clients are at the top of their games. Earning the initial right to partner with them at that level, and then re-earning that right every day, is our primary focus.
Last month, Rich Hart asked if your wealth management platform was up to this kind of challenge—and then showed that Advisor360°’s platform is uniquely constructed for this role in your business. Jenn Sawan followed up by emphasizing the service component of an adaptive and responsive SaaS offering, and referenced real-world examples that show how we’ve responded and why that is so critical.
My role at Advisor360° targets Customer Success & Operations. My team’s responsibilities include supplying a trustworthy, enterprise-class infrastructure for our SaaS platform. Also, as that platform is delivered and improved, my team ensures that our customers are immensely successful as they come online and use our offerings effectively. In those roles, we can never be satisfied, and instead must show clients we are constantly improving.
Client expectations of a partner related to service and support go very deep. Partners align and collaborate at every stage of the product life cycle. That alignment is necessary during the sales, customization, onboarding, go-live, and roadmapping phases. It is also central to every aspect of ongoing use, as well as service and support.
Partnered clients expect that you have taken every opportunity to deliver on a platform and its surrounding infrastructure with an eye toward avoiding the need to resolve issues and to ensure continuous operation indefinitely.
To meet these client expectations, the supplier must:
Even with all of these, problems may be encountered. At these times, the strength of a partnership will be most thoroughly tested.
Clients demand a partner that:
No supplier meets all of these objectives all the time. But a supplier partner needs to achieve at a very high level and continuously improve.
At Advisor360°, our partners are our business. Their success is our mission.
Douglas A. Wood is Senior Vice President for Customer Success & Operations at Advisor360°, ensuring clients have a true partner, and the service and support they need to achieve anything.
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