Disarming the threat of roboadvisors to independent financial professionals, Advisor Products is integrating a chat application into advisor websites -- those we host and those we do not.

The Case For Chat On Advisor Websites

If a client at a car dealership needs to know if he should lease or buy a car, he can chat you. If a young couple is at an open-house wants to confirm they indeed can afford to bid on it, they can chat you.

Chat on advisor websites will transform a financial professional’s client-service model. In addition, a chat service enables a financial professional to offer a level of client service that large roboadvisors will have trouble matching.

Eliminating A RoboAdvisor Threat

CPA financial planners, CFPs, CIMAs, ChFCs, CLUs, CFAs, and other financial professionals know their clients better than roboadvisors. Roboadvisors cannot compete with you in giving specific advice! 

Chat on an advisor website gives clients what they’ve wanted since I started making websites for advisors 20 years ago: technology and a human with personal financial planning answers. With proper use of online chat, advisors summarily eliminate competition from automated advice engines.

The advice you provide your clients can’t be given by a call center representative who does not have a personal relationship with a client.  Call-center reps at a roboadvisor may have a FINRA Series 7 license, but he probably will not know about the tax benefits accorded a business owner leasing a car or client’s monthly cash flow.

Advisor Chat Is A Strategy For Growth

Chat on advisor websites can also power your firm’s growth. When implemented in concert with with a content marketing and search engine optimization plan to attract visitors to your website, chat becomes a key growth driver.  It will help you acquire new clients.

When someone visits your website for the first time, they are more likely to hit the “chat” button than pick up the phone to call you. It’s easier and they can remain anonymous. Even someone with no tech skills can do this. If they don’t like your answers, they simply end the chat. No hassles.

Best Practices For Advisor Chat Service

Making yourself available during business hours to answer client questions should not be done without forethought and planning. Anyone paying for liability insurance knows what’s at stake. But the business risk is manageable.

If you have staff, consider assigning a junior associate to monitor chat all day, and be prepared to provide chat coverage during lunch. When a client chats in with a question where a professional is needed, your associate hands it off. You call back the person.

If you are a sole practitioner, however, giving clients and prospects instant access to your expertise will position you as being in the vanguard, leveraging technology to run a professional practice that makes reaching you easy because it is good for clients. 

A Free Lunch For Young Advisors

Using chat service is one way in which young advisors are going to eat the lunch of older advisors. Most advisors age 55 and older — the advisors with all the AUM —they don’t understand this Web stuff. They don’t know how it works! As someone who has tried to teach advisors about technology for 20 years, I can tell you they are a technological idiots. They delegate the technology marketing to employees who usually know only slightly more than they do and get sold by local agencies an web developers who come to meet with face to face, sell them on razzle dazzle and charge huge sums. I see it every day. Chat service is a great opportunity for younger advisors.

FreshDesk For Advisors

The chat app Advisor Products chose to partner with is FreshDesk. It is encrypted and auto-archived, and it was less expensive than the big-name brand. I and my staff tried out the two platforms for a month each and they’re more alike than not. But FreshDesk is less expensive. It’s the upstart. I’ve told senior FreshDesk executives we can have a big impact on the way financial advice is delivered to Americans, and they are motivated to be responsive and provide good support.

Advisor Products makes a 20% commission on your first year’s license when you buy a subscription to FreshDesk and you get an agent seat free

Making Advisor Chat Effective

Advisors4Advisors, an affiliate of Advisor Products, will be measuring the effectiveness of advisor chat service. GDC Research, an independent market research firm, also sees the potential of the chat medium for serving advisor clients and will be conducting surveys about this and other online client engagement tactics for advisors. 

Marketing Advisor Chat

Advisor Products will publish a quarterly newsletter with success stories and suggestions from advisors using FreshDesk chat on their websites. Advisor Products will also be publishing articles and videos on advisor websites, which are distributed through email newsletters and social networks, telling your clients and contacts about the chat app on your website.

In addition to telling clients how to use it, Advisor Products in the months ahead will explain to prospects that you’re your website now enables you to provide a level of personal service not available elsewhere, a competitive advantage that eliminate the threat of roboadvisors.