I am writing honestly and candidly about serving the FinTech (Financial Technology) community so they can be better at serving their clients — be the hero to their client. I want to educate advisors on educating their clients. While that sentence is ripe for being interpreted as arrogant, I look at this topic with sincere humility knowing many advisors (and readers) are significantly better than I am at support.
But leaders aren’t necessarily the best at their craft, are most knowledgeable, or capable. They ought to lead with humility understanding their role and training the students to excel past the leader.
I want to write about the future. I want to share ideas on growing a Support Team: the bumps, bruises, and benefits. I want to discuss when you may need a Chief Customer Officer and when you don’t. We get wrapped up in so many details, we forgot the customer in the midst of serving them! They are people. We desire to make their lives better — yet in the colossal pile of tasks we forget this. They are humans just like us who want respect and to know they are loved. Listening to some voices out there you would imagine it’s all about data, logic, and systems. Why do we make it into such a game and distance ourselves from the customer as if we’re writing in third-person to formalize, sterilize, and de-anthropomorphize the relationship?
The next few sections are broken out by questions I wrestle with, support philosophy, leadership, day-to-day operations, and the future. I’ve purposefully chosen to open and end this discussion with questions because I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I see this as a continual progression of growth — an iterative set of improvements if you will — and I hope you will help refine my methodology and beliefs. None of us have it all together, so it’s best that we quit pretending.
Jeff Beaumont 