How to Personalize the Client Experience: Julie Littlechild

We’ve got to invite the voice of the client in. So whether that is through polling or surveys or informal interviews or advisory boards or what have you, we need to understand what’s truly on their mind and then use that to inform the experience.

So you could use simple examples like a lot of advisors will share … some curated or created content with their clients. And I think they need to let go of the idea that we can just send generic content that we think is interesting because we’re the advisor and start to be able to say, “These 20 clients told me they were interested in this topic. Therefore I’m going to share content on that topic.”

That’s how I think personalization kind of comes to life for them. I think if they can get that right, if they can have a client experience that’s truly responsive to the needs of clients, then I think that that would be a big win for them in 2023.

Anything else you want to mention that you think they should do?

One area that we’ve been talking to a lot of advisors about is how do we do this as it relates to the review process. So how do we not only engage clients at a deeper level but engage their partners or spouses at a deeper level and build an agenda around what’s most important for them?

And I think that means they need to be a bit more intentional and thoughtful about the agenda for their review meetings. Are they focused on the right things? And I think they need to think about helping clients to articulate what they need to talk about.

Anything specific regarding advisors using YouTube or TikTok or any other social media sites?

We love to go, “Oh, please, who would use TikTok?” But then I go home and I talk to my 13-year-old, and I’ll tell you that’s exactly [who would use it]. So I don’t think we can dismiss any of these or we sound like dinosaurs.

The reality is it’s going to have to come to the advisor to say, “Where are my clients?” And do they even know where they are? If they’re on TikTok, go to TikTok. If they’re on LinkedIn, go to LinkedIn.

But I think, social media, we’re certainly seeing it increase as a method by which clients might interact with their advisor. Like slowly, year after year after year, we see more of them doing that. So we’ve got to pick our lane and do it well. I don’t think we have to do everything, but it’s a great place to show who you are and be real.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, one or two of your clients are using something that’s less well known than Twitter, like Mastodon. What would you advise? That they get on Mastodon also even though it’s a more limited number of people they can reach on that platform?

We’ve got limited time and resources, so my advice would always be to go where your clients are.

There’s a caveat though. If you’re finding clients are on these, even if it’s a few, I would make it an objective this year to understand them, just to know what’s coming so that we’re not always responding. We’re actually ahead of the game.

The other thing that kind of relates to this, I guess, is we’ve done a lot of work around demographics and how we engage different segments of our population or our client base.

And one of the things that I’ve seen advisors get wrong … is that they make these assumptions that, because their average client is a certain age, their entire strategy should reflect that. Now we know that younger clients are using different platforms. We know they want to meet more often. We know they prefer virtual. We know all of this. And yet too many advisors are ignoring that because they’re not the biggest segment they work with.

It’s leading us into this area where we’re going to need a segmented client experience approach, and age is going to be one of the biggest drivers of that. And if we’re pretending it’s not, I think we’re putting our heads in the sand.