[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Why do so few client professionals have an efficient process for recording their meetings and managing their file notes? After all, the technology available to streamline the process has been around for over a decade! In this article, I hope to provide you with the context for why you need to record your meetings and a little insight into the tools you might consider applying.
Why you must record your meetings & interactions
1) Efficiency of access to information
For any client facing professional, the ability to record the key elements of meetings is a critical aspect of both efficient workflow and service delivery. It is also essential for professionals that work in teams, and run or participate in collaborative team meetings, to be able to do the same thing. Dictation devices have been around for a long time and now there are also a plethora of audio recording apps for smartphones. The challenge is that you need to be able to index the audio files so that you can find and access the details you may be looking for without having to listen to the whole meeting again.
2) Time-saving through the reduced need for ‘file note’
In almost all circumstances, by creating effective strategies for the recording of meetings and interactions with clients, you can significantly reduce the time spent by client-facing professionals (or their support team members) on the creation and documentation of file notes and the allocation of tasks post meeting.
3) Training and professional development
The simple fact for any client facing professional is that the value they are able to create is dependent on how they interact with others. As most professionals will be largely meeting with and talking to clients on their own, without the ability to record those interactions it becomes almost impossible to self-regulate improvement of the process. It also becomes even harder for companies to develop effective training and support because they lack the fundamental data to be able to identify where improvements can be made.
Any sole proprietor should be investing heavily in their own interpersonal interactions. That means both the ability to review your own performance as well as to seek the expert opinion of objective third parties. However, for any business that employs multiple client facing professionals, this is an essential factor in being able to ensure those professionals are as effective as possible and ultimately providing as much value as possible during their interactions with clients.
4) Reduction of Compliance and Litigation risk
Through the creation of effective measurement and training, a business is able to significantly reduce compliance and litigation risk that may be brought about by the spoken or written words (or lack thereof) from an individual client facing professional.
However, you should understand that the key to the process is more about effective empowerment rather than ‘big brother’ monitoring. We warn you that, if you introduce meeting recording as a security/monitoring methodology without providing the context of empowerment and support (i.e. that it is for their benefit), then you will run the risk of significantly damaging your team culture and overall performance.
In almost all circumstances, breaches of what could be seen as compliance are a result of a fundamental misunderstanding by the individual of their own value, especially in the context of your services. This translates into a perceived need by the individual to overcompensate or to take short cuts.
The purpose of recording the interactions with clients is to:
- a) Identify and deal with compliance breaches proactively
- b) Identify the actual causes of the breaches and to create ‘empowerment solutions’ that will actually resolve the issue and create a more valuable team member
5) The ability to measure performance improvement
Without the ability to measure the changes made by the professional in their interactions with clients it becomes impossible to know what changes are contributing to either an uplift or decrease in key metrics. Essentially, it not only allows the diagnosis of issues but the success, or lack thereof, of both the changes made by the professional AND the training and support provided by your company.
6) Ability to identify the means to improve (on an individual professional basis) the following key areas which are generally issues that greatly affect the productivity of client professionals.
- Engagement times – the time it takes between the first contact with a potential client and their successful onboarding.
- Fee-related issues – client sensitivity and willingness to pay fees is largely dependent on the approach of the individual professional
- The rate of referrals achieved by each individual professional
- The retention rate of clients
- The comfort level of clients – during both the onboarding process and at later stages in the relationship cycle
7) Improving the overall client interaction process
By measuring the best performers within teams and assessing their interactions with clients, you are able to more rapidly improve your standard engagement protocols and the training you provide to your client facing team members. In fact, within the scope of your privacy framework, it can also be extremely beneficial to use the actual recordings of your best performers as part of the education and empowerment of those that need more assistance.
Warning: Your greatest resistance to change and especially what could be considered ‘monitoring’, is likely to come from your most senior/successful professionals.
Whilst it is still imperative that your business seeks to help and empower these professionals, we can all make improvements. It will be imperative for any business to focus on providing the context to these professionals based on elements such as, ‘for it to work, everyone must do it’ and ‘the business needs to learn from your success’.
The Tools
There are a range of tools that can be used to index the audio from a meeting to the keynotes that are taken (a critical element of rapid information retrieval). However, we find that in practice for most people pen and pad still work the best.
For that reason, we generally recommend the use of an audio recording smartpen such as those made by Livescribe. There are three models and which one will work best will largely depend on your situation.
When working directly with clients we usually help them to create custom processes and depending on circumstance, which pens or technology we use will vary.
How can I get more information?
This article is largely an extract from a process guide created for our Social Hub members area. If you would like to know how you can use this methodology to identify why your client professionals are not – getting referrals, charging enough, struggling to get clients across the line etc (and how to solve those issues) then you should know that we have developed a custom identification matrix and training support program for this very purpose. Contact me on LinkedIn if you would like to learn more.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]