Helping Customers Tackle Difficult Issues

Some subjects are more difficult to discuss with customers than others. Retirement plans, for instance. The plain truth is that most people, unless they are naturally drawn to numbers and financial issues, avoid getting as involved as they ought to be in planning their own long-term financial futures. It’s not that the subject is taboo or anything, but many of us simply put off thinking about the long term. It’s not immediate, so it just never seems to rise to the level of importance it probably ought to command with us. And it’s often uncomfortable to think about our own financial vulnerability. Or whatever.

This is one of the problems I tried to address when I gave a talk to the 1500 or so folks at the annual convention of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (“ASFA”), just a few days after my talk to WOBI's World Marketing and Sales Forum event last month. (“Superannuation” defined: a regular payment made into a fund by an employee toward a future pension; a “superannuation fund.”)

The location was terrific (Gold Coast, see the view from my hotel room above), and the entertainment included a performance by Australian rock star Jimmy Barnes (“Barnesy”).

Barnesy’s rock-out session soon had hundreds of “super” folks dancing and having a great time, and the high-cheer attitude at the evening’s festivities seemed to symbolize for me the cheery difference between Australia’s pension system and ours (in the U.S.). 

In Australia, the retirement pension system is well-funded and on a sounder financial footing than is America’s Social Security program, despite the fact that about the same amount of contribution is required in each country (12.5% in Australia, all contributed by the employer, compared to 12.4% in the U.S., half from the employer and half from the employee, on the first $118,500 of income). 

The big difference between their program and ours – and possibly the reason theirs appears so solvent while ours appears in constant danger of imploding – is what happens to the money once it has been contributed. In Australia, the money goes into a privately managed “superannuation” fund, and you (the employee) actually own all the funds contributed in your name. In the US, by contrast, the money goes to the government and you never actually own the funds you contribute, although the more you contribute the higher your monthly benefit will be (up to a limit).

Each Australian employer specifies a “default” fund manager for its employees, but the employee can choose to have their contribution moved to a different fund manager. (And it’s the people who work for all these superannuation fund managers that you see dancing in the Jimmy Barnes video above.) 

Australian workers are free to contribute more than the employer’s 12.5%, and they are actively encouraged to do so, but the vast majority don’t supplement their retirement funds with much, and take little interest in their retirement funds at all, pretty much leaving it entirely up to the employer. This is one of the reasons ASFA invited me to speak at their conference – because superannuation fund managers have a vested interest in the financial success of their members, and want to do a better job of communicating with them, engaging them, and ensuring their financial security during their retirement years. 

In the end, I told them I thought the real key to securing more customer engagement when it comes to the subject of retirement would be to embrace the stress and tension directly, in order to have sincere, human-to-human discussions with their customers. As frictionless and simple as they may be constructed, it will take more than menu choices and level-of-risk options on a website to engender these kinds of discussions, if you want to break through in this area, because our own financial livelihood is a deeply personal subject, fraught with emotion. So rather than mailing pieces, or online prompts, it’s important to find a way to embed a human face and voice in the outreach program. 

The more human, empathetic, and compassionate you seem to the customer, the more willing the customer will be to engage in a frank discussion involving such a sensitive subject. In-person would be best, but failing that, if ever there were a place for video interactions with customers, this would be it. Younger, more technologically dependent workers might even prefer video to in-person interactions.

Maybe, with a little human assistance like this, you could talk your customers into doing the right thing for their own financial wellbeing. Which would be a good thing.

And Australia’s already first-rate retirement system can be made even better. 

Anyone have any additional ideas for addressing these kinds of issues with customers?