A positive client experience is essential for retaining clients and growing your business, both through referrals and through digital marketing. Today, clients expect more than ever, and accounting firms must adjust their approach to meet those expanding needs. In fact, 86% of clients will leave a brand after just two or three poor experiences, according to Emplifi. All the more reason to create a seamless client experience that can differentiate your firm from its competitors and ensure that your clients are happy to stay.
So, what measures can accounting firms take to improve client experience? After years of working with thousands of tax firms and over a million accounting firm clients, TaxDome has created a few strategies that can help firms enhance customer satisfaction and improve the overall client experience.
Set expectations with engagement letters. By issuing an engagement letter for the customer to sign, expectations are established firmly right from the outset. Your engagement letter should include the scope of work and pricing, timing and deadlines and ways in which your clients can communicate with you.
Start off on the right foot with client onboarding. The average time it takes an accounting firm to onboard a client is 60 days, which is a long time in a world where clients may be expecting instantaneous results. For that reason, your onboarding steps must be paced and easy-to-follow, so that the onboarding process becomes a way for you to build a long-lasting relationship.
Set clear and predictable outcomes. At TaxDome, we help accounting firms onboard their clients in a way that is predictable and easily understandable, which increases client satisfaction and allows firm owners to focus on their bigger business goals. Consider using a tax platform to automate the onboarding process so that you can free up more time to pursue new business.
Communicate with flexibility. An omnichannel customer experience for clients to communicate with you gives them access to the firm via multiple channels such as emails, chat, texts and social media. By incorporating a client portal, firms can also accommodate these needs by keeping all communications in one place.
Be proactive! Proactive communication is an essential part of delivering a satisfying client experience. For example, TaxDome’s automated client communication tools enable accounting teams to achieve more with less. By setting up automatic reminders, for instance, you and your team can focus on new client acquisition, while simultaneously maintaining active communications with your existing clientele.
Creating a better client experience has multiple upsides, including greater retention and profit. A recent study by Bain & Company found that a 5% increase in your client retention rate could yield as much as a 25% increase to your firm’s profit. Working toward improving client experience can therefore safeguard you against losing clients. Using automated client communication tools, such as those available on the TaxDome platform, will help you better allocate your resources and grow your business at the same time.
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