Are Your Consultants Getting It Right? Ask Another Consultant to Check for You.

Are your retirement plan consultants doing a good job? How do you know? Are the fees they are charging you fair? How do you know?

The answers to those questions, in reality, for most companies, are probably a consistent "I don't know", or "I hope so." The fact is that much like relationships with audit firms prior to Sarbanes-Oxley, the typical company has no way of knowing. Oh, they know if there is a disaster, but beyond that, they really don't know if they are getting quality service or high value for the fees that they pay.

Do you? I didn't think so. I bet that you would like to know how to find out.

Perhaps, in the long run, you will save money and get better value from your consulting relationship by engaging a consultant to monitor, or at least review your consultants. Sounds counterintuitive, huh? It is, but if you really think about it, it makes sense.

Essentially what you are doing is finding a consultant who will agree to not seek your ongoing work, but whose purpose is to review the quality and the value of the work that you are actually getting from your actual consultants. If done properly, such a review should be able to answer these questions:

• Are your consultants following accepted professional standards of practice?
• Are they holding to their fee agreements with you?
• Are their fees fair?
• Is the work that they do for you accurate and complete?
• Is the work technically sound? Have any consulting letters explored all the issues, or simply given you the same solution, packaged very slightly differently, that they give to all their clients?
• Are appropriate levels of consultants servicing your account? In other words, is the team too top-heavy, too bottom-heavy, or about right?
• Is the relationship still fresh? Often times, teams that have seen no change do not bring you new ideas?
• What are their other clients saying about them that is particularly good or bad? Would you agree with the good things? Have you seen the bad things? If not, are they not present on your account, or are they just doing a good job of hiding them?

Based on feedback from clients, you see much more variability with the larger firms. Are you getting the A team or the C team? Don't you think it's time you found out?

Your Benefits Center

I had a conversation the other day with an ex-colleague. She was lamenting that at her current employer, you can't just call a person to get a benefits question answered. Instead, you have to go through the maze of touch tones. You know how that goes ... you call an 800 number and a computer voice picks up. You listen to the menu and realize that none of the options fits your question. So, you press '0' and you hear "invalid option." So, you pick one of their options at random which takes you to another menu, and so forth. At one of these lovely prompts, you are asked to enter your social security number, your date of birth, and your maternal grandmother's shoe size.

Finally, you get to a real person. The first thing they do is ask you for your maternal grandmother's shoe size despite your having already answered that question.

STOP! If you are the caller, what are you thinking right now about your company? Somehow, I'm going to guess that at least one of the words is a variation of one of George Carlin's seven words you can never say on television.

That's not good for your company. When you get off the phone, you are probably going to go vent to a friend who works in your office. So, now as the result of the money-saving benefits center, two employees (at least) are unhappy and wasting time. And, you probably still didn't get your question answered properly.

The people who set up and staff these centers need to understand that they are serving clients. In this case, the clients are their own employees. Think about it, if you treated your clients that way, wouldn't you be losing most of them? Of course, you would.

You don't have to hire high-priced people to staff these centers. But, you do need to hire customer service oriented people to staff them. The people who work there should be:

• Friendly
• Positive
• Overachievers
• Happy
• Helpful by nature
• Willing to go the extra mile

Notice that I didn't say smart. Notice that I didn't say that they need a particular level of education. 

Companies measure the savings from benefits centers all wrong. They measure them in a micro world. But, business isn't a micro world. It's time to smell the coffee and smile, rather than causing your employees to use those 7 words.