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As of this morning, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has spread to at least 65 countries and has sickened more than 135,400 people, with at least 4,999 deaths. In the United States, cases continue to grow quickly with at least 1,663 confirmed cases and 41 deaths. WHO has publicly characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic and depending on your clients’ risk tolerance you’re likely already getting lots of calls and emails from clients with concern wanting to discuss the state of the market.
While many companies are restricting in-person meetings and moving remote to reduce the spread of COVID-19 you may be wondering what more should you be doing to stay in touch with your clients virtually?
Key Website Elements to Update During the Coronavirus Outbreak
The best thing to do is to communicate and communicate often. Your first course of action should be to ensure your advisor website is properly updated with information on whether or not you and your staff are going to be working remotely as well as up-to-date contact information and key contacts. Click play below to learn more about the three key areas you should update on your website today.
1. Update Contact Page
Focus on updating your contact page with information on phone numbers. Secondly, include an email address clients and THEIR FAMILIES can use (An important point: Elderly clients may end up having families contact you if they become ill. Make sure the right info is easy to find).
Additionally, if you only have a standard office phone number on your website currently, now is the time to add more contact options so clients can still get a hold of you if you and your employees are working remotely.
2. Blog Updates
Adding blog posts to your website with market updates for your clients can be a great way to stay in touch consistently during uncertain times. Consider uploading a letter-style blog post to your site (written by your CEO or leader in the first person). To help with this, we have a sample letter you can use as-is, or completely edit and make your own, right in our Content Assist library.
3. Add a Call Out Right on Your Homepage
Adding a call out right on your homepage that links to new contact information or a letter/blog post you wrote updating clients is a great way to make sure anyone landing on your site can easily find the most important and up-to-date information.
Other Ways to Communicate With Your Clients
Outside of your website, there are plenty of other ways to stay in touch with your clients, quell any fears and provide reassurance that you are monitoring the situation closely.
1. Leverage Email
Sending client-driven content via email is a great way to stay in touch continuously with your clients, remain top of mind and provide reassurance. Doing this creates value for your company, as well as helps to build your brand and create rapport. During outbreaks like this, your clients are likely being exposed to thousands of messages every single day so it’s important that you provide them with compelling content that will be useful. Get our ultimate guide to email marketing for financial advisors.
2. Adopt Virtual Meeting Tools
Tools like Zoom, ScreenMeet and others are great for hosting both internal meetings and client meetings. Learn more about virtual meeting providers for your business with pricing and key features.
3. Integrate Live Chat on Your Website
Even though your website may currently have an FAQ page it’s likely that you’re not addressing the recent Coronavirus there. Instead, implementing a live chat function on your website could be a great option to answer your clients’ questions in a timely manner if your website can’t. Most live chat widgets will also give you the ability to customize automated responses based on commonly asked questions such as the Coronavirus. Learn more about how to integrate live chat on your advisor website.
4. Update Your GOOGLE MY BUSINESS Listing
Don’t forget about updating your Google My Business listing! Let customers know if you’ve made changes to your daily operations due to COVID-19 by updating your business hours and phone number at a minimum.
5. Final Thought
This final thought comes from wealthmanagement.com but it is an extremely important one. Teleworking for an RIA goes beyond just the communications we’ve shared above and will need to include an “ability to make transactions, access client accounts, wire funds or even just produce performance reports from a remote location. Even considering how incoming calls can be re-routed to a remote office location needs to be considered.”
Related: 650 Investors Answer How They Want Their Advisor to Communicate With Them