From the start, we wanted our proposition to be fantastic. This was non-negotiable. A key reason we established WKM was to be happy at work and how we get there is through the enjoyment levels of our clients. Happy clients, happy work life. If a client enjoys their journey and outcomes, we can say we are doing a great job. While part of this enjoyment is in the results of their financial planning and investment management, of great importance is our communication with them. You can be the greatest in your field and have a fantastic service, but if you don’t master communications, you will be delivering this with one hand tied behind your back.

Returning calls and answering emails is only part of this. We wanted our clients to be able to see exactly where they are with their planning without having to reach out to us.

To achieve this nirvana client status, we needed perfect systems. Not good systems or great systems but perfect ones.
Operating these systems would require diligence. Any system fails when incomplete data is within it. Imperfect data not only gives you client dissatisfaction and operation difficulties but prevents you from changing systems in the future as you simply exaggerate the problems. Our systems are built for change. In the future, we will need to change a component as better ones are made and so keeping the data clean is paramount and so is having an exit strategy in mind from the outset with any system we setup. The best exit is planned.

Our chosen communication hub for clients is our WKM app, available on both android and apple. It allows our clients to see their WKM planning, their investments, house value, and bank accounts all in real-time. Our letters, emails, reports, and regulatory documents in the app, which pings a notification on their screen and email to their inbox. Other relevant documents can be stored online, including a tax directory where we deposit annual certificates for tax returns.

Alongside this is our cashflow modelling and risk profiling tools we use as part of our planning process. Both are online for a client to consider in advance of our meetings, which once setup, needs minimal input each year allowing clients to update us of changes quickly in advance so we can make every conversation productive.

Over the next few months, we will be collating our client experiences and evaluating our systems. Do they deliver? Are we fully utilising them? What improvements can we make? Asking these questions to the client and ourselves should get us closer to client nirvana.

Thanks for reading.