Maintaining Client Relationships During Off-Hours

Surf’s up … right after this client call.

Whether it’s summer vacation, spring break, or even just the weekend, everyone needs time off, and in wealth management, that can lead to conflicts since clients increasingly expect that they should be able to reach their advisor at a moment’s notice. With a little bit of planning and boundary-setting, however, advisors and clients can come to a middle ground where no one’s water-skiing lesson is interrupted to discuss market moves.

Ring, Ring

Technology helps. Whether it’s through emails, phone calls, video chats, or in-person meetings, clients have more ways to access their advisors today than ever before. And that access is key for long-term relationships:

• Nearly 90% of client reviews about advisors focus on relationship quality and emotional factors, while just 10% focus on investments and portfolio management, according to a recent study from Wealthtender, a platform that helps people find advisors.
• The report also found that one of the top priorities for clients is having advisors who are easy to reach and responsive to questions.

Real-time access to an advisor is common at family offices. “Those are the people who are like, ‘I need the answer yesterday,’” said Chad Maggard, managing director of family office services at Johnson Investment Counsel. His solution? A second-chair advisor who maintains the office while he’s away. “He’s a rising star and can respond to our clients just as well as I can,” Maggard told Advisor Upside.

That always-available mindset is showing up in smaller, traditional firms too, sometimes at a cost. “I actually left my job where this was an underlying expectation,” said Omen Quelvog, founder of Formynder Wealth Management. Now solo, he sets clear availability guidelines upfront, which he said clients appreciate. “While I love being an advisor and I love my clients, I also love my time on holidays,” he told Advisor Upside.

Gotta Do What You Gotta Do. Even with boundaries and other colleagues in place, surprises happen. “I was in Spain when a client called about a market dip and a cash-raise for unexpected expenses,” said Dennis Huergo, an advisor at Wealth Enhancement. “I stepped away from a wine-tasting to talk them through it and loop in my team stateside. That’s just part of the job sometimes.”