Technology and the art of smart business
01 August 2013 | Magazine Archives FAnews & FAnuus | Technology | Trevor Stacey, atWORK
Technology, the internet, and the apps revolution cannot replace human advisers. This is the feeling of Trevor Stacey, Business Development Director from atWORK. Instead, financial services providers’ businesses can benefit and flourish by embracing and using these modern tools.
Technology is revolutionising the world we live in and changing the very face of society, including the way we work and do business. We no longer need humans on the service end to book holidays or shop for music, or that movie we want to rent or buy. Consumers are getting used to shopping and doing things when they find it convenient to do so.
Technology effects
More often than not, where technology has made life convenient for the consumer, it has made life a lot harder for service providers. Why should financial services providers be spared the fate of the travel agents, shopping malls and music stores if an app can just as easily sell an insurance product?
Recently, future strategist Dr Grahame Codrington told the FPI conference that for humans to survive and thrive in the future, we have to do the things that technology cannot do well. Considering how smart computers are, and increasingly becoming, humans have one distinct advantage: building and maintaining client relationships.
Relationships matter
Financial services providers are in the business of relationships. By using technology smartly, they can free themselves up to spend more time on forging strong relationships. Using Apps and other technology, the intermediary would spend less time on administration and back-office functions and more face time with clients and underwriters.
Advisers should ask specific questions around the use of technology, and how it can assist in building ever stronger client relationships. How do you utilise your company’s website? A good starting point is how you yourself use websites. Even consider your attitude to internet banking and what your preferences are on this. Five years ago you had to go to a branch to do anything banking related. Today, banks are giving clients tablets to enable them to bank when they want to bank.
Consider how you can use technology and different technological tools to service your clients, but support and complement you in the business of building relationships and trust.
Do the basics first. Start by using technology to set up a shop window for your practice and simply provide a self-service portal for your clients. The website can enable clients to look up their own documentation and portfolio’s, as well as leave a message or task for the company to run with.
Once the shop front is built and clients get access to their own data, then advisers can take advantage of communicating using their own websites and client databases.
Human contact
Advisers should consider how they use their websites and online tools to communicate with clients. Social media can be useful in communicating succinct messages to a community of current and prospective clients. This could also be useful to promote brand awareness.
Technology and apps can be used smartly at the point of sale to show a client what you are selling. For example, atWORK has an App that gives a simple needs analysis, and also simplifies paperwork and client signatures. What the client sees is that the adviser uses technology smartly to improve the business process.
However useful technology is, as humans, everyone wants to feel valued and being viewed as a person, a need that cannot be satisfied by technology and the virtual world.
Therefore technology and Apps need not be a threat to financial services providers’ business.
A client wants to feel wanted and cared for in a relationship that is based on care and trust. Advisers can, and should, use technology to do the simple tasks, like managing business functions and supporting client relationships, while the advisers get on with the business of building personal, enduring client bonds.
