As you may have seen in the news, millions of people around the world have been ordered by their respective Governments to stay at home. Whilst this is not a feature of the UK Government strategy at present, they are keen for us to stay at home wherever possible. If we don’t do our best to adhere to the new guidelines, we cannot rule out the possibility of the same orders and restrictions being put in place here in the near future.
Therefore, rather than meeting face to face, we are able to offer our clients web conference meetings, telephone meetings, or a combination of both.
Web Conference Meeting – Money Minder’s Preferred Option
As long as you have a PC, Laptop or Tablet with a reasonable internet connection, we can still have a ‘virtual’ face to face meeting using our web conferencing software. Not only will we be able to see each other, Money Minder advisers are able to share their computer screen with you (and you can do the same with us) to go through any important information as needed.
The software we are employing to bring you this option has matured significantly over the last few years and some of the businesses using it have teams located all over the world that need to have regular video based meetings. We have therefore adopted this tried and tested approach to provide you with a face to face style of meeting without the need to have close contact and in order to adapt to the new Coronavirus enforced environment we are all finding ourselves living in. To see an example of how it works, please check out this video
If you have a webcam connected to your PC or Laptop, even though it isn’t quite the same, it’s the closest option we have found to being in the same room. To date, our experience of conducting meetings in this way is very good.
A Telephone Appointment
If you don’t have a PC and would prefer a normal telephone appointment, that’s fine too. We will pay for the call and it’s a method we have been using to discuss our clients financial affairs with them for many years now.
A Combination Web Conference and Telephone Appointment
If you have a PC, Laptop or Tablet without a webcam, we can still combine a telephone discussion with screen sharing. This is particularly helpful if we need to share documents or web based information with each other.
Screen sharing can be enabled for either party so if there is important information to review on either your own or you advisers screen, although we may not be able to see each other face to face, we can still see each other’s screens, as and when needed.
Your Next Step & Getting in Touch
We realise that being asked by the Government to restrict your movement is inconvenient and we also understand that many of our clients would prefer to meet face to face. We are hopeful that these life changing restrictions will be lifted very soon. In the meantime, we need to provide clients with alternative communication and meeting options.
Money Minder Staffing and Ongoing Service
We now have a number of staff working from home, however, hopefully you won’t notice. Our phone lines are internet enabled and even though our staff come from different areas, we are still able to accept incoming calls on our main telephone line (01529 300 300) and put you through to whoever you need to speak to, even though they may not even be in the same building.
As you can see, we are well prepared for the challenges that self-isolation and staff illness may bring to our doorstep. However, this is not the case for all business and we have found in recent times that our information requests from providers are taking longer than usual.
We will endeavour to shield Money Minder clients from our own frustrations and hopefully it will be business as usual for us. If everything goes to plan, you’ll notice no negative effects on our customer service at all.
However, as I am sure you will understand, we are not able to control how long it will take for some of the providers we deal with to action requests. We will of course keep you regularly updated on anything that you, (or we) are waiting on.
And Finally…….
Coronavirus is dominating news headlines all over the world and is clearly a huge concern for individuals and the economy. I have written some detailed articles on the subject but just in case you haven’t seen them, please find some clickable links below. Its best to read them in the order they are presented below, however, please do make sure that you have a cuppa nearby, both articles are quite detailed and run to around 2000 words each.
I hope you find the articles a helpful read. If you do and you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter list, you can do so by following this link:
Click here to Subscribe to Money Minder’s Digital Newsletter
We wish you well and look forward to speaking to you soon.