Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 145: Ideas to Implement - Create a "Guided Responses" Cheat Sheet to Improve Client Service and Empower Your Team

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145: Ideas to Implement - Create a "Guided Responses" Cheat Sheet to Improve Client Service and Empower Your Team · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You guys.
• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I love a super duper simple tool that solves a problem, and this week's episode was literally just that.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: So welcome back.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I am so, so glad you're here.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Each week, I want to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about the actionable things that you can implement from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So every week, I'm gonna distill the episode down into just a couple of bullet points that I want you to act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I want you to take whatever it is we talked about in the long podcast on Tuesday and really genuinely implement it.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Do the thing.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: You know how I feel about very, very tactical things that you can put your fingers on, that you can make happen and that you can literally implement in your business right away.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I am your host of the Efficient Advisor podcast.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Libby Graywee and I started from scratch, built and sold a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and really all of the hats that you could potentially possibly wear as a human it feels like, and I'm here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same thing and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We are about to take that one right next step to build a business and, even more importantly, a life that you love.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was all about creating a guided response cheat sheet to improve client service and really empower your team Right, and so I mentioned this in the long episode.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We've all had that experience where we've overheard someone on our team interacting with a client of ours and we just thought like, oh man, I would have totally said that differently.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Or ooh ouch, that is not the way I would have wanted them to say that.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And then you have to find time with your team member to really coach them on what to say next time and then hope that the next time that they have that interaction, that they'll recall that conversation and remember whatever it was that you wanted to tell them, exactly the way you wanted them to say that.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So there is a solution, a super simple solution, to ensure that they are losing using the language that you want and that they can recall the proper language at the next interaction or the next time that it is needed.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Enter the guided response document.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So this is such a simple tool that can make a big difference in your business.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So, of course, the longer podcast episode is where I break this tool down into detail.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: But long story short, you and I go through different ways that you can create it that are really effective ways of building it into your business.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But long story short, having a guided response document and basically what it is, it's like a comprehensive tool that just really equips your team with structured responses to client questions, to issues, to common concerns, to feedback, and it serves as a container to hold clear and consistent messaging right that you want them to be using.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And it's important because cover a couple of reasons right, consistency is key.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: We want a consistent level of client experience, regardless of who in our office is talking to the client or responding to them.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: With a guided response document, you can really ensure that every team member follows a standard approach and you can kind of guarantee a uniform customer experience.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It also increases efficiency and speed.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Your team can respond with ready-made templates, ready-made responses.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: It improves accuracy.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So if you've got consistent or common inquiries that are coming in, your team will be better equipped to provide them accurate and well-informed responses.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And, of course, for training and onboarding it is so much easier to train new team members and ensure that they understand kind of your company's tone, your company's policies, your company's best practices when it comes to customer service.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So what do we need to keep in mind when building an effective guidance response document?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: First of all, we need to know who our clients are and what their concerns are and what are the potential things that could come up for us.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: In the long episode I give a whole bunch of examples of this.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So we want to identify kind of common scenarios and then categorize those scenarios into different sections within this document.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And we want it to be a searchable document so your team can type in some keywords and go right to the correct area.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, we want to have standard responses crafted.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So in the episode I give different examples of how you can go about doing this.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: But whether you sit down and craft them ahead of time or as they pop up as a team, or you overhear something, you want to go in and just craft a quick response or, let's say, something happens.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so everything going on in Israel right now.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: You might be receiving client emails or phone calls saying like, hey, how does this impact the investments that we have?
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: What does this impact what we're doing?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Should we be making any changes?
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Is the whole world going to implode, all the things that are going to be coming in as a result of this current headline?
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: You're going to want to have a crafted response ready to go so your team knows hey, this is what I'm going to say to a client when they email or call and I can direct them to this particular resource.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And, as always, you're going to want to have it be part of your CEO day every year, maybe every other year, to just kind of go through your guided responses and make sure that they're still in alignment with your brand, with your voice, with the way that you guys are operating and doing business.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: So the benefits of having a guided response document are huge.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: We have just improved client satisfaction.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: We have happier customers when they're receiving a response or a message or language that is very intentional and directed towards them and keeping them at the center of the communication.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: You are going to have obviously enhanced team efficiency because your team can respond faster and have be more empowered right, we wanna have more confidence in our teams interactions with our clients.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: We wanna reduce stress I gave a couple examples of some scenarios that incurred our office and how that could really improve job satisfaction for your employees.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, you know, streamlined training for new hires.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Having a guided response document serves as a super valuable training tool.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So I would love to see your action item for the week is just create the outline, create the template, create the framework, put it on your next team agenda and start talking about how you wanna build this out and have your team co-create it with you.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So, if you are lucky enough to have staff or team members around you, you know, explain, send them this episode, have them listen to it, but explain at a high level what it is that you're trying to do.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe come up with some language together, but really understanding what are the common things that they're getting, that they have, that they struggle to answer, or so in the episode I give just a boatload of examples, but co-creating that with your team, I think is a really important thing.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, having your ducks in a row when it comes to where you're gonna store this.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It can't just live on everybody's desktop, right?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It needs to live in a living, breathing, organic.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: So a shortcut on your desktop, great.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But it needs to be able to be updated by any team member at any time, especially you, as new things pop up and you want to identify an effective way to craft that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, I would suggest, anytime you make an update, letting your team know that you've made some updates to the guided response doc and that they should just take a minute to kind of just peruse it and look at some of the changes that you made, because they will hopefully, over time, start to memorize some of the guided responses that you've given them or provided to them.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So anytime we make an update, we just wanna make sure that they know to go out there and just double check and see what's been added, deleted or modified.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I hope this is helpful for you guys.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Go ahead, just get that framework built, start messy.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: You can always come back and make it fancy later.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I hope this was helpful to you guys.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: And, of course, if you are in the Systems to Scale Group Coaching program, you will be receiving the guided document template with all the examples as part of the program.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: If you're not, the new one launches January 11th, so go ahead and get on the wait list and you'll be among the first to be notified for those 15 coveted spots.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And we are, I'm, really excited.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We are a couple of months into the August start group and it is fun to watch the needle moving inside of their businesses and them taking things off the to-do list that's been lingering for years and actually getting them on the done list Super fun for me to watch and such a joy to be a part of.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: And what a super cool.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So if you're in the group, by the way, you guys are super cool.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: What a super cool group we have this year.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I look forward to working with you guys in January as part of that program.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, I hang out in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook and over on LinkedIn and I hope to connect with you there.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next week.