Frances Easton
Partner – Alman Financial Planning
Client service has always had a high priority at Alman’s, a fact backed up by our deliberate and detailed client communications. One example is the inclusion of personal recommendations in our half yearly income distribution notifications to clients. We don’t question the value add of this exercise, but it is a time consuming and not inconsiderable task – taking up to four days twice a year to prepare advice and manually write to each client.
Our quest to find a quicker and simpler way of providing customised and personalised notifications, without the manual work, lead us to look to our platform, XPLAN.
Working with our IRESS Account Executive, we developed new fields for storing data and a template document for notification which we could use for all clients to pick up the dollar value of the distribution, plus our recommendation. We also included the option to email the distribution notifications direct to clients who prefer electronic communication.
This simple development and change in process allows us to get our recommendations to our clients faster. Automating this process has resulted in a better service to our clients, allowing them to implement the advice up to seven days earlier than our previous manual process.
“We developed new fields for storing data, and a template that we can run for all clients which picks up the dollar value of distribution plus our recommendation. We also included the option to email this direct to clients who requested electronic communication.”
There are many other advantages of this new approach that we have come to understand since implementing it. These include:
- A reduction in key person dependency in the office. Any staff member can now complete this process.
- Staff freed from manual time consuming work to more productive and enjoyable work
- A reduction in errors
- The ability to search and identify clients with a particular recommendation.
- Happier clients and staff involved in the process.