Accounting firms are constantly looking for opportunities to fuel growth. One of the easiest ways to grow is leveraging your existing client base. But to get your current clients to engage your firm for additional services, you need happy clients.
High-quality work and valuable service offerings go a long way toward making clients happy, but one of the critical components of excellent client service is a frictionless client experience.
A frictionless client experience is all about making it easy for your clients to collaborate with your team and complete the tasks you need them to complete.
Thanks to the cloud and mobile devices, your clients are accustomed to a high degree of ease in conducting day-to-day tasks, from scheduling appointments to transferring money between financial accounts.
The trouble is that too many firms focus their technology decisions inward, choosing solutions and processes that work best for the firm without regard to the client experience. Creating a frictionless client experience requires identifying and eliminating sources of friction in the client journey, wherever they might exist.
What it looks like
A frictionless client experience will look different from one firm to the next and even from one service line to the next. Regardless of the actual technologies and processes used, the goal is to limit confusion, complexity and miscommunication.
Here are the common features.
1. An end-to-end digital experience. Cloud technologies offer greater integration and automation opportunities than we’ve had in the past. The architecture of the solution, mobile capabilities and level of openness that the vendor has adopted are becoming as, if not more, important than simply feature and function.
Your clients and internal team members expect data to flow between systems.
Some examples of an end-to-end digital experience include:
- Clients being able to send tax and other documents to you securely by simply snapping a picture on their phone;
- Data flowing from the client’s accounting system to the trial balance to the tax return without manual input; and,
- Clients are able to review tax returns and financial statements on a computer or mobile device and sign electronically.
Processes are moving toward “click it and forget it” as the systems automatically handle more and more of the manual tasks with algorithms. Are you offering these capabilities to your clients?
2. Transparent processes for how they interact with you. Equally as important as the technology tools you and your clients use are the processes you employ when doing business with clients. Streamline the workflow not just for your team but also for client-facing processes to make it easy for clients to do business with the firm.
From simplifying the process for data collection to providing an easy-to-use system for delivering your work product, the goal is to minimize any hurdles the client must overcome in their interactions with your team.
3. Clear points of contact. Depending on how many services your clients engage the firm for, clients may interact with several people and use several platforms for collaboration. How do your clients know who to call and which communication channel to use?
Ensure that your processes and points of contact are clear, so clients don’t get frustrated trying to figure out who to call or being shuffled around from person to person.
Mindset matters
Technology and processes combined can help create a frictionless experience for your clients, but the mindsets of the people in your firm are also critical. The firm’s leaders must evangelize the desire to make the clients’ lives easier and recognize and reward team members that bring ideas to the table that achieve this goal.
In the end, if you adopt the strategy of making the experience of working with your firm easier for clients, you will have a loyal client base that will buy more services and refer others to the firm — both of which will help you achieve growth in today’s competitive environment.
