Go Virtual and Stay Connected With Your Clients in Under One Hour. 

March 23rd, 2020

Today’s business landscape and consumer relations have changed drastically. The ability to service your clients, as well as prospect for new ones in a virtual space is more important now than ever before. 

With that being said, an important question you should be asking yourself is which client relations and engagement software is best, without needing a “PhD” in computer programing just to operate it or having to take out a loan just to purchase it…? 

We recognize that these are questions our Advisors and Agents may have and we understand the importance of moving forward with a virtual client relations software for you to do your best work. Therefore, we have done all the leg work when it comes to evaluating programs for features, ease of use, and cost. After extensive market research and looking at multiple platforms, we have narrowed it down to the one program we think would allow you to do your job, without breaking the bank.  

Product Recommendation  

Zoom.us

Initial Impression

Zoom offers a Free version of the platform that can be used for holding client meetings. Featuring the capability of one-on-one meeting options with webcam picture–in–picture and screen sharing. Zoom makes holding meetings with clients and reviewing documents more personal.  You can also hold group meetings with the free plan but you will be limited to 40-minute meetings unless you upgrade. 

Webinars and User Interface (UI) 

If you’re interested in performing any scheduled or on–demand webinars, this too is possible with Zoom.  Zoom comes with scheduling widgets, reminder emails and much more.  When hosting the webinar, you have features such as Live broadcasting to social media channels, on-demand or recurring webinar options, and live or private chat messaging channels. 

We found the UI of the app to be intuitive, thus reducing the learning curve even for individuals who aren’t confident with new forms of technology. 

End User Experience 

When it comes to end user experience, or in other words, your clients or prospects experience, it is fairly streamlined.  It’s important to note that the end user will be required to download an app as the platform isn’t web based.  However, with just a couple prompts and directions, Zoom effectively guides the user through the download/installation process.  We would recommend notifying your clients and/or prospects, prior to meetings or webinars, to download the app that way there isn’t any confusion. You can do this within the pre–meeting emails.  

Price 

When compared to some of the other platforms, such as GoToMeeting, Zoom is much more affordable, coming in at $549 annually or $54 monthly for both meetings and webinars.   

Conclusion 

Zoom is a solid platform all around and will help bridge the gap between traditional face to face operations and virtual business practices. Even with being extremely robust, its setup and learning curve are marginal. Therefore, with the information we provided above, we highly recommend this solution.  

Budget Webinar Solution: 

If you’re unable to cover the cost of the webinar option on Zoom, we would recommend using the free version of Zoom for the recording of your presentation. You can then download that recording and upload it to a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo and share it from there. 

Once you’ve uploaded the recording to the platform of your choosing, you can place the embedded code that they provide on your website with a contact form and/or online chat feature on the same page.  

It would also be to your advantage to have an initial webform on a “registration page” that then redirected to the recorded webinar page.  

After you have performed those steps, you will want to invite users to the registration page.  You can do this either via email or SMS text notifications.  To do this, you can use your CRM, your general email provider, or a mass email service such as Mailchimp.  If you have permission to send SMS texts, you may be best suited for Call Loop or TextMagic. Both of which offer prepaid options.   

While there won’t be a live feature to this solution you are still able to get your message to your clients and prospects in order to educate them on your services and keep in touch.