Hearsay Social says it is rolling out a client engagement platform that helps advisors reach clients and prospects more easily and more quickly via social media, their websites, email and text messages.
The tool, Hearsay 360, also lets broker-dealers see which advisors are most successful in using social media and other methods of communication, so the firms can share these best practices across their advisor force.
Given the rising popularity of robo-advisors and clients’ growing requirement for advisors to respond quickly to their communications, Hearsay expects that the platform should prove popular with clients.
|Modernize or risk becoming irrelevant
“Google, Amazon and Facebook have set customer expectations for every industry, as evidenced by the rise of robo-advisors and direct-to-consumer online options in financial services,” said CEO Clara Shih, in a statement. “Advisors know they must modernize or risk becoming irrelevant, but they feel underserved or overwhelmed by existing digital marketing programs. Hearsay 360 makes it easy for even the most tech-averse advisors to be findable, proactive and responsive wherever their clients are, including on social, web, text and email.”
The platform gathers data on how clients are communicating with advisors on social media, advisor websites, email and text messaging, which gives advisors “a holistic view of clients’ digital behaviors,” according to the firm. The platform’s “predictive analytics [then] will suggest which client or activities an advisor should react to via an automated list of recommendations on what … is likely to be most effective.”
The tool works in conjunction with firms’ core enterprise systems, including compliance archives and corporate CRM systems. It can save advisors time and get rid of “guesswork,” for instance, by letting them know when clients have reacted or posted comments about the advisors’ social media content and then suggesting the best method of response, such as sending a personalized email.
“It’s proactive in the sense that an alert goes out for the advisor to act quickly, when a client comments on the advisor’s Facebook page,” said Meagan Hency, vice president of marketing for San Francisco-based Hearsay Social, in an interview.
|Web-based application with dashboard
Hearsay 360 is a web-based application, she explains, that also compiles all the alerts and prioritizes them: “Advisors can get alerts via emails, but generally they will pick them up on the [Hearsay] dashboard.”
Over the past year, the social media services firm has launched tools for advisor websites, text messaging and email.
The new platform pulls all the pieces together, according to Hency. “It lets all the apps speak to each other and prioritize tasks. In other words, it unites all the information on clients’ communications and channels … and gives the advisor a to-do list,” the executive explained.
For broker-dealers, the platform “gives them valuable and robust reporting, so they can see what advisors are doing across channels,” she adds. Firms can then focus on what their top-performing reps are up to and use this information to establish and share best practices.
“Our clients expect to be able to seamlessly communicate with their advisors across digital channels, but with a distributed advisor force in a highly regulated industry, this omnichannel client experience isn’t always easy,” said Janney Montgomery Scott President & CEO Timothy Scheve in a statement. “Thankfully, Hearsay Social delivers unique technology that makes digital easy for advisors, while providing the robust compliance and field management functionality that our firm needs.”
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Janet Levaux
Editor-in-Chief Janet Levaux has covered the financial markets since 1991, with a focus on financial advisors since 2005. After graduating from Yale and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she studied global economics, Janet worked as a freelance financial and business writer in Japan, and then as a reporter and editor for Investor's Business Daily and the Bay Area News Group in California. She earned an MBA in 2007 and since then has helped lead key ThinkAdvisor projects like its Neal-Award winning reporting on Ken Fisher, Luminaries awards program and Women in Wealth newsletter.
