Episode Transcription 

This is the ultimate advisor podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week, we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets, and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Hey there Draye Redfern here. In this lesson, I’m really excited to talk about three of the facets that can have a huge impact on not only your customer service, but also your customer experience, helping to ensure that everyone stays happy. And if they’re not happy, essentially finding the ways that you can reduce, eliminate or mitigate the various ways in potential problems that may arise in your business, I break it down into three steps we have, you want to prevent it, you want to prepare for it, and you want to protect it. So when it comes to prevention, you want to be sure that you have all of the documentation set, you know systems necessary when it comes to customer service. So you can use platforms like Zendesk or maybe inside of your CRM, that can basically document every conversation that you have with an individual on the phone. Now this comes in handy extremely, because if someone says, you know, later on, and you get some sort of lawsuit, and it becomes a game of he said, she said, You have documented processes, this happened and this happened, we talked about this, we detailed this, this was discussed. It’s no longer here. But he said she said all of a sudden it’s documented. Zendesk, for example, lets you have communication back and forth via email that can be logged, and basically, you know, set aside, so that can always be referenced later on in the future, if there’s ever any sort of discrepancy. And that’s a great thing to use have in your back pocket. The next thing when it comes to prevention is actually having the systems, the processes and training upfront with your employees ahead of time, a lot of this can actually be completely reduced, eliminated or mitigated, just by having your staff know what to do, and knowing when to do it very simple. Now, a lot of that involves creating systems and processes. So if x happens trigger y, if y happens, go back to a, you know, if a client is frustrated about f move to G, you know, you can have a super detailed process, but at least you know, having the training of your employees so that they know how to handle problem clients. This helps prevent a lot of the stress and anxiety that could be you know, eventually, you know, that could arise. The next thing is if you want to be sure you can screen oil, the squeaky wheel. Now we all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease or the you know, all of that gets the oil all of these sorts of old school sayings. And that’s true to a certain degree. And as a business owner, as you know, your managers, whoever, whoever you may have, you want to have be sure that those squeaky wheels, you know, feel like their needs are being met to a degree because it’s okay to fire clients. Now, you know, so many businesses and gurus out there say that you just want to make everyone happy, and you will never make everyone happy. Just the reality of doing business. And so if there’s someone who’s upset every now and again, you know, oil that we’ll make sure that squeaky wheel gets the grease, but you know only to a certain degree, when it comes too much. Let them go tell them that you know, you can no longer offer or provide services, you know you’re moving in a different direction, whatever you want to say because you need to keep your mental state sharp, focused. And basically like razor’s edge, the you know your exact direction, the way that you’re going. And if someone is bringing you down another way, you’ve got to let them go. And that’s hard to do as a business owner sometimes, especially when people are, you know, willing to hand money over. But it’s not always worth the hassle. The next thing you want to do when it comes to prevention is actually find ways up front to wow your customers consistently. So from the time you have a customer, you bring them in, you know, how do you Wow them by delivering the product? Is it personalized? Are you sending follow up sequences that are personalized with handwritten notes or follow up videos and we’re going to go through a lot of these tactics later of strategies that you can actually use use a strategy a strategy B, strategy C, to actually keep clients happy, keep them engaged and elevate that customer experience. But you want to find ways to constantly Wow, it’s not just a transaction, like here’s a product or a service, you know, give me your money sort of thing. You want to find ways to wow them. And if you can actually do that upfront, you’re going to drastically reduce or mitigate the amount of time you’re gonna have to spend later on fixing issues. Now we’ve talked about prevention.

And we also want to talk about how you can prepare for, you know, bad clients or even individuals who may be frustrated with you or your business. And the first thing on that list also is consistently and constantly Wow, your customers, we’re going to put it into multiple categories, because it’s so extremely important that when you consistently wow them and do all of these things, you’re building long lasting goodwill, and rapport, because you feel like they have a relationship with you, that they matter with you. And if you do it right, you can induce a sense of reciprocity that can last for a very, very long time, that when you have that, and you basically establish that sense of rapport and reciprocity. And individuals are more often to let certain small things go. It’s like a friend, you know, if you have a friend for, you know, five or 10 years, and you know, maybe they say something that really ticked you off, most likely, you just let it go after a day or two, because you know that the long lasting nature of your friendship, what they actually meant, and you just sort of let it go. Whereas if it’s a new friendship, or a new relationship, whatever it may be, and someone says something that really ticks you off, you’re like, forget it, you jettison them, you get them out of your life, or you hold on to a lot of that negativity, because the nature of that relationship has a very short duration. And if you have all of these upsets in a very short duration or or conflicts, chances are it will be you know, continuous down the line. And that may not be the actual reality of things, because maybe there’s a couple of hiccups up front. But that’s the way that we as humans think and process. So if you can find ways upfront to build in that wow factor up front, and that short duration and a new customer or a new prospect who’s coming in, they’ll feel that long sense of goodwill and reciprocity throughout, especially if we can really drag it on. So be sure to build that in on your preparation. Hey, Brittany here, stopping and pausing for a moment to talk about something that we’ve had so many of you inquire about and that is our ultimate advisor, mastermind. Now, I’m going to start by saying if you are not a growth minded individual, if you are not somebody who is focused on taking your business to the next level, if you’re not focused on engaging your team, and helping them to help you in turn, level up the business, the service model, how you provide that wow experience to clients. If those things are not your focus, just fast forward right now, because the ultimate advisor mastermind would not then be for you. However, if you are looking to take your business to the next level, if you want to experience exponential growth and feel supported along the way, if you want to start working smarter and not harder, if you want to help your team members to work within the God given talents that they were provided, and use those skill sets in a way they haven’t yet to help support you in your business to help them realize their biggest goals, their biggest dreams. If you want creative approaches to marketing, I know that can be an intimidating word. But we’re not talking here about the fancy Facebook stuff, or you know the latest and greatest, but rather looking at how you can market what you do, how you can express how you’re different, and how you can truly differentiate yourself in a crowded market space. If those are problems you’re looking to solve, then you absolutely want to go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth.

The next thing is we want to actually tackle problems before they get too big. Now, this is really hard to do as an individual, especially if you’re an introvert. But if you’re an introvert and you actually are the face of your brand, sometimes it’s really worth picking up the phone and calling the problem child or the problem client or whatever you may have in your business. It’s amazing what a phone call can do to actually lower the pressure. Now we a lot of times hide behind receptionists or secretaries or people or products or this is our terms of service, we don’t break our terms of service. And I get all of those things. But sometimes it’s nice just to put the humanization back in the relationship with the customer. And we’re going to talk more about humanization later, but be sure to actually you know implement that. When it comes to preparation. We also want to make sure that we document everything as we talked about Zendesk and some of the other ways you can have in your CRM, document everything every phone call, make sure that every email is saved, because you never know when you may need it later on. So this helps with the preparation. And then also the final thing when it comes to actually preparing for any sort of bad incident or ensuring that they don’t happen is get feedback and get it often you this can be done via surveys or an online questionnaire to figure out how people are liking or engaging with your product or service. Now you can ask them during the experience which a lot of businesses do because

It feels like you’re going to help tailor that experience to the rest of that experience or that purchase cycle with that individual, you can do it after, after they they’ve had their product or they’ve had their good or service and exchange the money to know what they felt about it. So if there is any issues, you can then reduce or eliminate or mitigate them at that time. Now, the final step here is protection. No one wants to talk about protection, because it’s the scary nature of any business, you know, the reality of that something negative can happen to me or my business, or my you know, my employees. And that’s the reality is that no matter what, you know, how long, whether you’ve been in business for a year, three years, five years, 10 years, or 50 years, you will always have clients that will come up and maybe you know, create some conflict with you. So you want to be sure you have built in relationships ahead of time, that can help protect you. And so the three relationships that I always recommend that everyone have, are a good lawyer, a good banker, and a good insurance agent. And what I mean by all of these things, I’ll walk through it. So an insurance agent number one, you want to make sure that you’re protected with your professional liability, or with your general liability, because if you have a customer coming in, and they slip and fall on your way up the stairs or something along those lines, they can sue you and your business and try and take you for everything you’re worth. It’s the litigious nature of our society, you’ve got to protect about that, if you’re offering some sort of service, you want to make sure that you have professional liability insurance, because you could offer information, they may take it wrong and may write it down wrong, they may, you know, think that you’re crazy and implement something nuts and try and come after you just because they feel like it also the litigious nature of our society, make sure that you’re protected. And we’re going to link to various resources with all of that stuff below this. Now, additionally, you want to make sure that you have a really good attorney on hand, you want to make sure that you have these relationships ahead of time, because in the event that you actually need them, you want them on speed dial to know exactly who you can call to help reduce, eliminate or mitigate these concerns. Now a great attorney is really awesome when it comes to having these disputes, to either send cease and desist letters, or tell someone to knock it off or tell them that you’re not going to budge. Or really if you did do something wrong, let them know or at least me put up the guard of how you can best lay out the legal process to really you know, facilitate minimizing reducing this hole, whatever the issue may be. Finally, something that’s often overlooked is you want to have a really good relationship with a banker. Now, why a banker because the reality is if you get in the the pits, or you’re stuck in your business, you want to have a really strong relationship with a bank so that you can go to them and get a line of credit, or a loan, or some sort of support to keep your business afloat that you never know when that may actually happen. And you may never need it, which would be great. But you want to make sure that you’re actually protected in the event that these things do happen. So make sure you have an awesome insurance agent who understands your business, the you know the ins and outs of it, whether it’s professional liability, general liability, a business owners policy, all of these sorts of things have a really solid, you know, General attorney who knows the ins and outs of business or litigation that you can have on speed dial if you need them, and also have a banker, that you have a solid relationship with who knows your business, and who can be an awesome resource for you if you ever need it. Now, not just in the event that something bad happens in your business, but also if you want to grow or if you want to make acquisitions, bankers are wonderful to basically get that line of credit or that money upfront to buy other businesses. Now, over the last 10 years, we’ve bought multiple businesses and having a banker on speed dial has helped immensely because all of a sudden, you can pick up the phone, they can make the deal happen in less than a week. And then oftentimes are saying, This is great. We love this deal. How will you know how else can we help you and support you to give you more money to grow your company even faster. Now, when you have banks beating down your door to give you money, all of a sudden you’re in a really, really great place. And it allows you to grow and prosper by other businesses expand and r&d, you know, invest more in your marketing far more than you could have if it was just you trying to bootstrap this whole endeavor. Now, I don’t know where you are personally in your business, whether you’re just bootstrapping it upfront, or you have a well established business plan. But regardless of where you’re at, make sure you have those three relationships because they can be a huge factor when it comes to really protecting and growing your business for the long run. So this is a little bit of a side note of what can look like the downside of having bad customer experiences. But I really feel that it’s important to cover these upfront before we really how you know round out the rest of the customer experience and ways that we can lay in all of these tactical frameworks and ideas that can help you keep clients coming back time and time again, year after year. So we’re gonna get more into that stuff right now. We’ll see you there.

Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don’t keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimateadvisormastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community and we look forward to a continued relationship.