SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hearsay Systems, the trusted global leader in digital client engagement for the financial services industry, announced the results of its independent third-party ROI studies focused on its Hearsay Social and Hearsay Relate solutions. Among the key findings, the study revealed that Hearsay Social reduces advisors’ and agents’ time finding and creating social media posts by up to 90% while lowering the amount of time compliance teams spend reviewing and pre-approving posts by up to 80%. The Hearsay Relate product for enterprise-grade compliant text and voice showed the potential to reduce time spent on client follow-up by 80% and increase the number of leads converted by 10%.
The studies were conducted by research firm Hobson & Company and focused on in-depth interviews with existing Hearsay customers, testing and confirming the sources of value generated by Hearsay solutions. The firm collected data points to quantify the impact of a Hearsay implementation, with the findings falling into three main categories: increased operational efficiency, improved compliance and risk mitigation, and increased client acquisition and retention.
“Hearsay pioneered digital client engagement for the financial services industry, and Hobson & Company’s research underscores the business impact that our solutions have delivered,” said Hearsay Systems Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer Leslie Leach. “Everything we do is about improving the experience and results of agents and advisors, the firms they represent, and the clients that they serve — in order to keep them well ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing landscape, both from a compliance and digital transformation perspective.”
Hearsay Social: The First Product Ever Created for Compliant Social Media Use Remains the Best
Hearsay Social broke new ground in 2009 by giving financial services firms and advisors a way to leverage social media, and it has not stopped innovating. Hobson & Company noted several areas where Hearsay Social made a profound impact. The most notable findings include:
Increased Operational Efficiency
- Finding and posting content: Because Hearsay Social provides easy access to compliant, on-brand company and third-party content, advisors and agents were able to reduce the time spent finding and/or creating content by 90% per publish.
- Content distribution & analytics: Companies using Hearsay Social reported the potential for corporate marketing teams to spend 75% less time distributing and reviewing content through categories and hierarchies organized by topic.
Improved Compliance and Risk Mitigation
- Reviewing and pre-approving content: Hearsay Social customers reported up to an 80% reduction of time spent reviewing content and addressing issues prior to publishing.
- Implementing regulatory changes: Interviewees noted that Hearsay Social saved them as much as 70% of the time it takes to create/adjust policies based on evolving standards and regulations.
Increased Client Acquisition and Retention
- Organic impressions: Using Hearsay Social, the number of posts per financial rep per week increased by two and resulted in cost-effective new leads.
- Conversions: Using behavior-based analytics, teams can suggest content based on which posts get the most engagement from clients and prospects. This strategy has resulted in a 10% increase in the number of leads converted into clients.
Hearsay Relate: Compliant Texting Designed for Modern Advisors and Agents
Texting is one of the most effective digital channels for directly engaging prospects and clients, with text open rates as high as 98% (compared to 20% on email) and 90% of texts read within three minutes. But, texts represent unique compliance challenges for financial services organizations, hindering adoption. Hearsay Relate was designed to enable firms to leverage texting to its greatest advantage while fully mitigating risk. In examining the potential impact of Hearsay Relate, Hobson & Company found:
Increased Operational Efficiency
- Client follow-up: Customers reported up to an 80% reduction in time spent by financial rep on client follow-up calls and emails by replacing it with Hearsay’s compliant texting solution.
- Lead follow-up: In addition to helping agents and advisors work more efficiently with their existing clients, Hearsay Relate also showed the potential to reduce the time required to follow up with new leads by 90%, connecting with them through their preferred communication channel.
- Capturing advisor/agent communications with clients: Hearsay Relate dramatically reduced the time advisors and agents spend entering customer communication activities in their CRM systems – up to 95% according to interviewees – because Hearsay can integrate directly with an organization’s CRM.
Improved Compliance and Risk Mitigation
- Compliance resources: Because Hearsay can efficiently identify and mitigate the risk of inappropriate text messaging by leveraging message blocking, pre-configured lexicons, and supervision workflows, organizations are able to scale texting to agents and advisors while reducing compliance resources.
- Regulatory fines/penalties and lawsuits: By enabling firms to effectively monitor, supervise and comply with policies and industry regulations, including FINRA, SEC, FFIEC, IIROC, FCA and MiFID II, Hearsay lowers the risks of fines, penalties, and lawsuits.
Increased Client Acquisition
- Client conversion rates: Hearsay Relate allows advisors and agents to respond immediately to prospects with automatically generated smart text messages anytime, anywhere, resulting in up to a 10% increase in the number of leads converted to clients.
To read the full reports and learn how Hearsay products can help you, please visit:
- Hearsay Social: Calculating the ROI of an investment in social selling
- Hearsay Relate: Calculating the ROI of an investment in compliant texting
About Hearsay Systems
As the trusted global leader in digital client engagement for financial services, Hearsay Systems empowers over 200,000 advisors and agents to proactively guide and capture the last mile of digital communications in a compliant manner. The world’s leading financial firms—including New York Life, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, and Ameriprise—rely on Hearsay’s compliance-driven platform to scale their reach, optimize sales engagements, grow their business and deliver exceptional client service. Hearsay is headquartered in San Francisco, with globally distributed teams in North America, Europe and Asia.
