Improving communication with advisors’ clients

Advisor360° President Darren Tedesco shares his perspective on the future of advisor-client communication and how systems built on a strong data foundation will communicate proactively with clients across their preferred channels.

Video transcript

Chip Kispert: So as you look at the next five years and you look at the experience that you see investor customers/prospects are going to be looking for, how does that change from a technology standpoint in your mind?

Darren Tedesco: Well, it's always more more more, right? So, what can you do for me that you haven't done for me before? What we're really seeing is a big push into communications. How can you improve the communications? The pandemic has had a lot of bad things happen with the world, with the pandemic obviously, but there's some good that's come out of it, right?

So think about the expectations that clients have for collaboration online. So whether it's through messaging, whether that's through text messaging, compliantly, of course, in our industry, video chat, all of these technologies are now being embraced and people are requiring them. Leveraging great communication tools, the Constant Contacts, the Mailchimps of the world, all of those have become a really important part of the advisor experience with the client. Those are only going to extend.

The biggest shift I probably see in the next five years is leveraging that data layer and using that data. You hear companies, the Salesforces of the world and other companies, talking about that next best action. I think next best action is in its infancy. And what I mean by that is next best action is usually suggesting next best actions.

Really where I see that world pivoting toward is the system is actually taking the actions. So if you know, for example, in your CRM record of choice, whatever that happens to be, that you want to have a meeting, if I wanted to meet with Chip every six months, the system has a field that says, “here's six months, here's the last time I met.” Is there any reason a human should be involved at all with setting up that entire communication protocol for you getting an invite via text—because we know you like text—you click on that link and you say, here's my meeting, set up, "bang," and do I want it to be a Zoom or do I want it to be in-person? No human's ever involved. And it's just using that data layer to basically control that workflow. That's where I really see the systems enabling the advisors and broker-dealers in the future.

Chip: The medical field is already doing it, my dentist does that.

Darren: Right. It just hasn't made it to financial services yet, which is ironic.