The following post is courtesy of Diane Harrison who is principal and owner of Panegyric Marketing, a strategic marketing communications firm founded in 2002 specializing in alternative assets.
If you want to understand where your weak points are, ask your critics. In the endless battle over investor acquisition, the smartest money managers actively search for ways to strengthen their impact on investors. They don’t flinch from the harsh realities of dissatisfaction, and don’t pretend that client feedback isn’t actually what it is when it highlights issues.
Why is it important to focus your time and efforts on understanding the critics of your business? For one, criticism leads to a deeper understanding of what you do, good and bad. It allows for a wider perspective on how others perceive you and your offerings. And it improves your ability to formulate a stance and define your position.
Criticism also teaches humility and a need for acceptance of differences in opinion. It can help to uncover solutions by forcing a closer look at the issues creating a problem. So how should a money manager solicit such valuable feedback? Understandably, most managers are reluctant to proactively gather criticism, but there are ways to uncover such information that can be more discrete. Having a space on your client website for users to provide confidential feedback on any aspect of the client experience allows for both parties to maintain anonymity while providing the weak points that can help the business strengthen their services to the clients.
Another method, typically useful for getting a more concentrated amount of feedback in a given time frame, is to survey a selected group of clients and associated individuals who are involved with the business, such as vendors, suppliers, third-party associates, etc. The focus of such a survey is to ask those participants, who are in regular contact with your business, about what areas they feel could be improved upon or changed to provide better service.
This is a ‘warm’ solicitation in that this group is already engaged with the business and has a vested interest in improving the relationship, so purportedly will take time to be candid and provide genuine feedback. Again, this type of survey can be administered in such a way as to maintain the anonymity of the respondents but provide the manager with specific issues to be addressed. There are businesses that specialize in conducting such surveys as well as online providers which a manager can access directly to do the same.
However the data is gathered, addressing what has been uncovered is essential. While not every criticism is perhaps solvable, thoughtful evaluation of each point should be performed. Out of such an exercise comes a plan for improving that which can be addressed and a prioritization of the most aggravating pain points your clients and associates may be experiencing.
All businesses can benefit from such work, but particularly those engaged in money management, an emotionally charged business for clients in general, and one which heavily relies on relationship building for long-term success.
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