Strategically improve your customer communications approach with these five best practices.
1. Ensure Compliance with All Regulations
The financial services industry is full of regulations. It’s imperative that all types of communication are checked for compliance. Otherwise, firms can find themselves in trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
But the process for securing those internal compliance checks and approvals can cause problems. For instance, if all documents must pass through a single person for approval, a backlog can quickly develop. This slows down productivity and efficiency.
Additionally, as assets get passed down the line for approval, it’s possible for copies to be generated at each stage of the process. If this happens, a firm could wind up with several different versions of the same asset from various steps in the process. If this happens, team members are going to struggle to identify which one is the latest version with the final edits and updates. They could accidentally open the wrong one and send it out to customers before the error is caught.
Establishing a centralized location to work on assets and get them approved in real-time can help streamline this process, ensuring, unapproved versions are never accidentally released to the public.
But creating compliant content is only half of the battle financial services firms face when trying to adhere to regulations. In addition, they must have a way to store and track this content in case there’s an audit or investigation by the SEC in the future.
While these tracking rules were difficult to manage back when customers had only a few ways to connect, they’re even harder in today’s digitally driven world. With the updated SEC marketing rule, financial services firms now must store more information than ever. They have to retain transcripts from video presentations, save marketing material sent to more than one person, and keep track of any related pieces of data that helped them arrive at the facts and figures shared. This means one single marketing email could require several additional pieces of source material to back up the claims. That’s a lot of data to store.
Without a single repository for all these assets, a firm can waste time and energy sifting through documents to find what they’re looking for. By keeping everything related to communication in one place, it streamlines access to specific records and data points when they’re needed.
2. Ensure ADA compatibility
All customers have the right to interact with the content financial services firms produce. In order to make this a reality, firms must create assets with full accessibility in mind.
To accomplish this, firms need to make certain their websites are fully compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Any new content created must adhere to these strict guidelines.
- Including alternative text for all images
- Allowing keyboard inputs to be used instead of the mouse
- Creating transcripts for all audio or video-based content
- Adding tags to PDFs and other documents
- Performing an accessibility test
Moreover, firms need to take the time to go back and review existing materials to ensure accessibility. This includes ensuring that the company’s website is in full compliance. Finally, firms must also incorporate ADA compliance into their corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. By taking the time to do so, firms can demonstrate inclusivity.
3. Always Communicate with The Customer in Mind
With so many rules and regulations to worry about, it’s easy for firms to forget why they’re communicating in the first place. Without customers, firms would cease to exist. It’s crucial that the customers are at the center of every piece of communication a firm distributes.
A crucial first step is for firms to keep their customers in mind when they plan their marketing strategy. This means firms need to strongly consider the cadence of customer communications. Sending irrelevant content or spamming customers with too many messages has the potential to annoy customers and make them unsubscribe from future communications.
Next, when drafting content consider using customer-focused words and phrases. Think about where each customer is on their financial journey and send content that resonates at an individual level. This includes taking the time to explain or reword any financial jargon that customers might find confusing.
Finally, write with real people in mind. Marketers should ditch the stiff academic structure that often plagues the financial world and write in a more casual tone when possible. This helps the customer better understand the material.
4. Test New Artificial Intelligence Tools
Technology is changing in the financial services realm. Artificial intelligence is trending, and more firms are jumping on board. Research predicts that 85% of customer interaction is going to be handled without humans in the near future. These virtual agents can work all day and all night without any need for overtime pay. Additionally, they offer laser-fast support. This is a level of care that humans can’t accomplish.
While chatbots used to simply annoy customers, the improvements in technology have changed that. AI agents can now easily chat with customers and handle a variety of issues with ease.
5. Automate When Possible
A recent marketing automation survey revealed that over 75% of marketers are using at least one type of automation tool. As firms realize how much time and money they can save, this number is expected to rise. Automation allows firms to free up the time and energy they need to focus on innovation and growth. Communication is the perfect task to automate since it’s repetitive and data driven.
There are many ways firms can automate customer communications. Here are a few of the most popular tasks to automate:
- Email marketing
- Lead generation
- Report generation
- Asset approval
- Contract renewal
Additionally, firms can use automation to create compliant content. By utilizing dynamic publishing technology, team members can quickly generate marketing material that meets specific standards.
Automation also helps with the distribution of materials. It allows financial services firms to keep track of customer preferences, such as customer preferences for digital versus hard card copies. With this information in hand, automated processes and technology make it simple to deliver the right version to every customer.
Finally, automation helps to reduce errors while also increasing speed, minimizing the number of manual steps in the communication process, providing fewer opportunities for mistakes to be made.
With so many different possibilities, for efficiency improvements, firms should embrace marketing automation technology. It’s here to stay and is only going to increase over time.
6. Embrace an Omnichannel Approach
Financial services firms serve customers across a variety of demographics. Each person interacting with a firm has individual preferences when it comes to communication. Some want to interact with an app and prefer to use text messaging or email as opposed to talking on the phone. Others are leery of discussing their finances through digital means and prefer physical copies of information to be mailed out. Many customers fall somewhere in between these two extremes. These customers want to communicate through digital methods for some situations but prefer physical copies or in-person contact for others.
To meet the needs and preferences of each customer, firms must accept the fact that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. What works for one customer is not going to work for everyone. This means an omnichannel experience is necessary.
With an omnichannel communication system in place, team members can easily track all communication with clients. This means no matter how the contact is made, team members can easily access the entire conversation and have the information needed to quickly and accurately respond. Messages are less likely to fall through the cracks with a system that can handle multiple types of communication.
How Toppan Merrill Can Help
If your firm is facing challenges making the transition to modern customer communication practices, you don’t have to chart a course on your own. Toppan Merrill offers solutions that make communication simple and efficient. With Toppan Merrill Connect™ you can create, manage, and distribute content in a centralized location. The single repository makes it simple to keep your communication tools organized and easy to find and your sales and marketing teams can work more efficiently together.
