How can technology help appointment waiting times?

As a consumer, we would expect any interaction we make to provide some evidence or artefact of that engagement and the effort expended. This could be a letter, an email or even a text message (which even the NHS have just started to get right!). Generating such appointment cards and reminders is the bread and butter of any CRM, can this be taken further? Can we use simple methods to deliver genuine intent and commitment from the client from the outset?

After all, the prospect of purchasing a mortgage is hardly at the foremost of a client’s mind, they’re ultimately buying (or remortgaging) a property. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense to engage those clients into the process as quickly as possible and achieve their goals in a frictionless manner? Such engagement could involve a client factfind or portal to request and log appropriate evidence for application to ensure that advisers can provide a more valuable, advice-lead meeting providing financial support as opposed to collecting data.

With tech continuing to saturate our daily lives, technology-driven processes are not just a luxury, they’re a must-have. Those digital natives are now reaching their mid-twenties to early-thirties expect greater immediacy and will involve themselves with systems if they perceive there is a benefit for themselves. In addition, this involvement should be wrapped within a safe and secure environment with compliant procedures, rather than order taking to be re-inputted at a later time.

From our analytics of client engagement features over 2017 and 2018, clients receiving and returning a client factfind are over 30% more likely to lead to the provision of advice, and clients who received a client portal invite are 73% more likely to proceed. For us, this has demonstrated over multiple businesses that embedding digitalised processes creates intent and commitment of clients, opening-up new levels of trust while placing a sense of control onto clients who can complete a good portion of data gathering process in their own time and surroundings.

Reflecting on the statement about clients waiting more than one week, I’ll be interested to know how much tech involvement is bridging those gaps, delivering significant time savings and providing a signal of intent to intermediary. This is far from replacing what an adviser provides, instead it is an example of blending both physical and digital interactions that encapsulates the individual needs and requirements of clients whilst providing a contemporary and diversified service.