Rachel Schnoll, head of FinLife CX at Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.
By necessity, those of us in the financial services industry have embraced video conferencing as a part of our day-to-day work. While the health of our families and colleagues is our top priority, we should not overlook the value of virtual meetings as an addition to our client experience toolkit — and a powerful way to add scale to your firm.
This has not been a smooth ride, even if you were fortunate enough to have hit the ground running with remote work equipment and technical know-how already in place. Across the industry, our tools didn't always work the way they should.
We learned the angles of our cameras gave our clients and coworkers a more revealing glimpse of our domestic lives than we liked. Or we tried to keep our composure during unfortunately timed (and very audible) meltdowns from our children.
Empathy matters now. Every technical hiccup or photo-bombing family pet is also a shared connection with the people on the other side of your screen.
Your clients understand your plight because their work, their lives and their families have all collided in sometimes messy ways. But after a few months of this, we've seen how dramatically remote service can improve with just a few changes to the advisor's setup and approach.
1. Make the Most of the Hardware You Have
First, a quick word on hardware: Not all of us had invested in high-quality microphones and webcams before we migrated to remote work. To be fair, these tools might not have been necessary in our day-to-day tasks beforehand.
And when it comes to staying safe and meeting our immediate needs, webcams rightly took a back seat to food staples, medicine and cleaning supplies. Unfortunately, video conferencing hardware has become scarce thanks to unprecedented demand.
But you do owe it to your clients, right now, to make the most of what you have on hand. That could mean using a wired, Ethernet connection to the internet for more stable calls or learning to optimize your video settings. In a pinch, the cameras on our phones are likely superior to the ones built into our laptops.
