Today’s consumer can be hard work

With the growth of the internet and changing consumption patterns it can be hard work connecting with potential customers. Russell Hutchinson discusses some of the options available to advisers.

Monday, August 31st 2015, 8:27AM

by Russell Hutchinson

I hate it when I can’t get information online, fast. I also hate it when I can’t get a person to talk to me, or I can’t arrange to meet.

Maybe I’m just awkward, but it seems increasingly, I am a typical consumer.

ReadWrite.com have picked up on the defining characteristics of today’s consumer: smartphone enabled they form views about services and companies and seem to buy into a story, and switch allegiance with dizzying speed. They want wi-fi all the time so that they can stay in touch, and check on, whatever is going on – including comparing whatever they are about to buy or do with another alternative that might be just around the corner.

This isn’t new, but it has caught out a lot of businesses. People were making jokes about how internet companies were running around with silly graphs showing how soon everyone will be connected. Then suddenly it is today and that is no longer news. Various studies have identified the growing demand from consumers for online to serve them at any time 24/7 connectivity.

It does tend to be younger people, better educated, and those with more money. But if your business is dependent on the remaining category then watch out – the dry higher ground is shrinking as more and more of the market is inundated with the services that permanent connection facilitates.

But the insight of the ReadWrite.com piece was that consumers still want an emotional connection. They don’t want to be shunted off to person-less digital channels all the time. But they also don’t want to be locked in to high touch, time consuming, and expensive face to face channels all the time.

They want both, and to succeed in scale you need to have both. Consumers can be hard to please. That’s a fact.

Fortunately it is easier than ever to have an online presence running around the clock. It can also be responsive in much of that time. It is also cheaper than ever before to have people support that during business hours, plus a bit, in order to meet more than 95% of the demand for personalised support.

Options abound: co-location with other businesses, mutual support cover, and virtual assistants – all provide ways to scale up support when you need to, or provide a point of presence with all the facilities of your own office when required.

Consumers are also comparing, even judging our services in comparison to those provided by technology companies, big retail outfits, and banks. It is seemingly unfair but is actually an advantage for third-party financial advisers. If an insurer either cannot or will not compete in the area of customer interface – how we present, combination of services, and features – then we can change that and create a layer of value unique to your business.

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