A consumer can go online and find out what customers think of almost any service provider they can imagine.

Such information is a result of websites that request consumers provide rankings and comments about services such as hotels, restaurants and resorts, as well as service personnel like carpenters, electricians and plumbers.

But those ratings are in most cases quite simple, asking for a 0-10 rating with the (often abused) opportunity for commentary. The surveys are often conducted by the provider themselves. Their value as a true mark of a service provider’s performance is uncertain.

If, however, a third party were to conduct a survey of satisfaction related to a series of hotel chains, or fast-food restaurants, or plumbers, that survey would have some validity in determining how well the company or service provider performs the duties for which they are paid. 

Seeing the results of an actual third-party survey of consumers rating one particular company or industry is rare. But Millionaire Corner offers such a service with its Best Advisor Service, in which the clients of financial advisors are offered the chance to rate their advisor and those ratings are then displayed on the Millionaire Corner website. 

More importantly,  the SEC has issued guidelines that allow advisors to post the results of a client survey on their site if the survey is conducted by a third party and the results are posted on the third party’s site.

And according to an Investor Pulse survey by Millionaire corner, a majority of affluent investors like the idea.

Asked if they consider it important to “see an unbiased third party satisfaction study from other clients for my primary financial advisor”, 54 percent of investors said it was either “important’’ or “very important” to do so. Conversely, only 13 percent considered it “not important” or “Not at all important”.

However, there was a distinct difference in response based on the age of the respondents. For investors between the ages of 41-50, 62 percent expressed interest in an unbiased third-party study of financial advisor client satisfaction. That percentage dropped as age increased to just 41 percent of those investors over the age of 60.

 

©2017 Spectrem Group