Client reviews

Hi@MandyP. A great topic and one that you have already gained some great insights on. from anne.graham  and also jenny.brown . For me there are really 2 issues at the heart of client reviews, the first is making sure they are managed efficiently from an operational perspective and the second is the quality of the experience for the clients participating. Particularly long-term clients. 

In terms of operational efficiency, in a practice where we had 1400 client meetings per year for those on an annual review arrangement and fixed term agreements it was critical for us to use Xplan and threads.  Of course, we had a standard review document template and format. Having a standard base document was critical. however, the content was personalised.

We had some advisers who booked a year in advance which worked for clients who were used to this and we had an auto process of engaging the clients 3 months out from their due date.

We centralised review document preparation for all of our offices and we automated fee agreement reviews so there was less backwards and forwards between different team members.  We had educated a number of our clients which meant the bulk of our reviews were allocated and locked in really quickly.  We then had a couple of our admin team staff who would follow up those not yet booked in. There was transparency for all of the team in terms of who was not booked so if the client called in or spoke to any team member they had the ability with full visibility of diaries to make the appointment.

As others have raised, smoothing the flow of reviews is important as it can create bottlenecks if not managed efficiently.   We also had the benefit of including the next generation of advisers in meetings with the senior advisers to speed up the actions from the meeting and minimize things sitting on desks.

Like others, combining face to face and online meetings has been a god sent, we have a number of clients who now don't need to travel as much and find the online meetings more convenient.

Using technology like DocuSign to get signed paperwork back post important was something that delivered a lot of efficiencies for our practice.

Perhaps a topic for a future conversation is how do we make the review experience about the clients and less about all the forms and processes that we need. How do we mix it up for those clients who have been with the firm for some time.  One of the core questions we have within our review process is checking in with the client and regularly asking them what is that they value about working with us but also what are the areas of the review meetings that they value.

I look forward to other insights.